There might have been a time when hiring an employee to do your content marketing would have been a ridiculous thought. It’s a major outlay and if your business is chugging along just fine without creating content, then what’s the incentive? However, it’s marketing, and at that marketing with longevity.
Your Marketing Spend Has All the Clues
Depending on the size of your company, you will be investing a certain amount on marketing. Your decision to hire a media professional as an employee is likely to make more and more sense the bigger that budget is. If you have a marketing department and a sizeable budget to allocate, this is an opportunity to try something new.
The Balance Between Traditional Media and New Media is Changing
It’s a new economy and while it’s very unlikely that traditional media – such as television, radio and newspapers – will disappear, new media is growing in popularity and importance. This means that the balance is adjusting – it’s always adjusting! So if you are noticing that press ads don’t seem to be as effective as they once were, this is the time to start experimenting with your marketing spend. If you have an ultimate goal, it would be to have a significant presence across both traditional and new media.
Sharing Content Creation Duties Around the Office Can Produce Mixed Results
Perhaps you can see the importance of content creation and have decided to start with the resources you have. This may mean you devote a certain amount of time to it or it is a duty that is shared between your staff. What you need to watch out for here is consistency and quality. While some of the office may love doing this creative work, others may struggle. Also, is this where their time – or yours – is best spent? We should all be focussing on building our strengths instead of trying something new.
What to Look for in Hiring a Media Professional
The key difficulty of this role is that most people in the media focus on one area. So if you are hiring just one member of staff they must have multi-media skills (if you want videos, audio and blogs created). Bear in mind the following factors:
1. Experience – this is probably the most essential factor and the best indicator the person you hire will deliver.
2. Ideas – content creation is on-going, so you need someone who can see the opportunities and find the best way to present them.
3. Motivation – someone who takes the initiative is important if they are effectively running their own department.
4. Budget focussed – it may not have been their focus in the past, but the right candidate should be fully aware of the what funds are available for production (and possibly equipment).
5. Quality – as always, the content you publish should match your brand values.
6. Dedicated to seeing your company grow – the right candidate should have a burning desire to see your company become a market leader. This is tied in with motivation.
7. Speed – how quickly can material be turned around. Some people will be faster than others.
Overall a Production Company May Offer the Same or Better Value
There can be benefits of taking things into your own hands, but there are also downsides. The biggest risk is that your content marketing will only be as good as the person you hire. You may get lucky and a get a genius who is creating more great content than you ever imagined. The likelihood is the content may be quite one dimensional. This is where a production company has a team of people to bounce around ideas, consider what concept will work best and all the right equipment to do it. A lone ranger has limits.
Of course you could build up your content marketing department and hire more than one member of staff, but at that point you should also look into how that whole budget might be spent with a production company. A block booking for producing a certain amount of content per year should get you a pretty good deal!
Who looks after the content marketing at your business? What would you like to do in an ideal world?
