Using Whiteboards for Content
It’s no secret that content marketing is the backbone of every digital marketing strategy. It’s one of those foundational activities that impacts so much. For example, content enables the search engines to have more opportunities to return your website to people searching for information, and it also gives you something to share on social media. And these are just a few examples.
Since it’s so important, you may feel as if you need to have the most stellar content marketing planning strategies that you possibly can. This, surely, will help you create the best content that your digital marketing needs.
So, you might turn to a collaborative strategy like white boarding in order to plan things out. But does it really work? The answer is – it depends. Here are some points to consider:
White Boarding Can Offer a Collaborative Approach
If you are working with multiple people, all of whom have strong opinions on what should be covered in the content, white boarding sessions can be very useful. This gives all the main players a chance to weigh in during each strategic session. This has a lot of benefits, such as allowing for fewer bottlenecks in the chain of command of approvals, because everyone feels as if they already had a say in the types of pieces that were chosen.
This can be especially helpful if upper management has strong opinions about the content, since they are the ones who may know about business strategies and strategic focus at a higher level. This can improve leadership buy-in for the content strategy. We’ve noticed that upper management often needs to feel a part of the process in order to really believe in the content strategy.
White Boarding Without Strategic Planning Can Do More Harm Than Good
Although taking a collaborative approach can be important, this isn’t always the ideal scenario. A good white boarding session needs to be facilitated by someone who has advanced knowledge of the digital marketing strategy. Advanced collaboration will do more harm than good if the strategic objectives for the digital marketing strategy aren’t met via the content.
Just because someone thinks something is a good idea, in other words, it doesn’t mean that it actually is a good idea. Each topic chosen needs to have a clear objective with the ultimate goal of attracting the right audience. Ultimately, you want your audience to the the buying audience. Not every piece that “sounds great” is going to be relevant in terms of the strategy.
Pay attention to clues during a white boarding session. If someone has really vocal opinions about content that consistently isn’t aligned with the overall digital marketing strategy, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and share the details of the strategy with the team. This will ensure that the content that is created in these sessions is relevant and has the overall business goals in mind.
White boarding can be a helpful, powerful tool for developing content ideas – but only if it’s done right.
Categorized in: Content Marketing
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