We often think creating content is the sole responsibility of the marketing department. After all, it’s marketing that decides how best to present the product to the target audience. However, this can’t be further than the truth.
Which departments should be involved in creating content is an important question in the Hubspot Inbound Certification Exam. The right answer to the question is “all” but what does “all” refer to here? And how are all departments responsible for content creation?
To understand this, first, let’s understand the importance of creating content. Then we’ll see which departments should be involved in creating content and how do all departments contribute to the purpose.
Importance of Content Creation
Content creation is an inbound marketing practice that aims to engage potential customers by giving them free resources (read: content) to help them solve their problems. The idea is to lead them to your website to ultimately make them a customer.
Content marketing costs less than traditional marketing and leads to 3 times more leads. Content can be in the form of blog posts, podcasts, videos, and graphics. With a proper content marketing strategy in place, brands can increase brand loyalty, generate leads, gain attention, and eventually increase their sales.
With so many benefits of content creation to companies, which departments should be involved in creating content? And if the answer is all of them, how will that work?
Let’s attempt to understand.
The content that goes on your social media channels needs to be unique, valuable and you need to put it out consistently to drive conversion.
Keeping all of these things in mind, you should be able to divide your customers into segments according to their interests and behaviors. Customer segments will then help you identify the content that should be put out and will be relatable to them, thus increasing customer engagement.
To put out valuable and relevant content, after you have identified what kind of content needs to be put together; you need to consult the relevant departments for their input and feedback.
Only the people who are experts in their fields will be able to give you valuable information that can make your content unique. To further understand this, let’s find out which departments should be involved in creating content and how can they help.
Which Departments Should be Involved in Creating Content?
Marketing
Most understandably, the first department that comes to mind when you think of content creation is marketing. Marketing overlooks the entire content strategy making sure relevant marketing materials is distributed on the relevant channels to drive engagement and increase leads.
Marketing uses strategies and tools for social listening such as Notifier that helps them dig out important and relevant consumer insights that can give ideas for content creation. They know customers are talking about the problems they face online and through social listening on popular platforms, they can understand their target audience better thus leading to better content creation to generate leads.
Sales
The sales department works hand in hand with marketing to devise product growth strategies. The sales department is client-facing and gets first-hand feedback from consumers regarding the product. Keeping this in mind, the sales team can have valuable suggestions and ideas to create content that drives traffic and sales.
Sales understand the market the company is operating in and trying to sell the product. This information is pertinent in creating content that appeals to relevant markets.
Product Development
The product development team at any company is well-aware of the industry that they’re working in. Companies that want to excel and connect with their customers better need to understand the industry and stay ahead of developments.
The product development team can help identify and uncover industry-specific news, trends, and insights that can be used in content creation to educate customers. Often customers are unaware of industry-specific facts and by learning these they are better able to relate to the company, its work, and its product, thus increasing customer engagement and sales.
C-Suite
Ideas come from people and often people in the c-suite can be the best brains behind the content you put out. Every brand has a team that is leading it and these could include the CEO, executives, and the president(s) as well.
Posts or videos that introduce your c-suite executives, share their journey, or send out inspirational messages from them can also be integrated into your content strategy to build brand reputation and awareness.
People love to know the brains behind the companies, how they work, and strategize. This allows the audience to better connect with a brand. Articles or blogs that portray thought leadership from these executives can also help shed a positive light on your brand and help you gain funding from investors as well.
Human Resources
Content creation is for external as well as internal purposes as well. How companies brand themselves, reflects on the image that they are trying to maintain of themselves. In this regard, input from Human Resources is very important to build a positive brand image.
Human Resources can help create relevant content for the company to attract the right talent, hire those that align with company values and then further share content with them that enables them to learn about company policies and procedures. Content is also vital in employee training.
When departments work together to achieve a common goal, they are more likely to appear cohesive and as different parts of the same machine. Content creation thus becomes a task for all departments to showcase the brand and its products in the best light possible.
To understand your target audience better and be present where they are, it is important for companies to use social listening. Social listening can also help generate content ideas. To stay on top of trends and news, make sure you are using a tool like Notifier to fine-tune your social media strategy.