Content consulting involves developing a plan for creating marketing content that delivers your business real bottom-line results.
If you’ve been on social media or surfed the web lately, you’ll know that the internet is full of content. Some of it is really useful, some of it is entertaining, some of it is brilliant, and a whole lot of it is a real head-scratcher.
Some of the content you consume online you will remember for days; other content will be forgotten immediately.
And that fact has led to a rise in marketing expertise known as content consulting.
Content consulting involves a marketing professional taking a deep dive into your industry, your business and your aspirations, to develop a plan for creating marketing content that delivers your business real bottom-line results.
What is content consulting?
Content consulting is when a business engages a content consultant to develop their content marketing plan.
Developing social media tiles, videos, advertising and blogs may be strings in their bow, but content consultants are not always content producers.
Content consulting develops a deep understanding of your business, your brand and your aspirations, and creates a content strategy that helps you achieve your goals.
They take into account the industry in which your business exists, the products and services you offer, as well as your unique selling proposition.
Content consulting looks at your target audience, where they consume content, and the type of content to which they best respond.
The content strategy that is created outlines the type of content that should be created, the messaging, the voice, as well as SEO – all designed to get in front of potential customers in the most effective way.
What does a content consultant do?
A content consultant is hired to create content strategies that build brands and increase profitability – and the way they do it is a real art.
A content consultant will start by developing an intricate understanding of your business. They will look at your goals and aspirations, but importantly they will look back. What marketing efforts have worked in the past? What is the current brand perception based on previous marketing efforts?
A content consultant will work with your company on content marketing and editorial strategy and help develop style guidelines.
Then they will help organise your content by creating editorial and social media calendars, and sometimes they will help pull together a team required to produce the content, including journalists, photographers, bloggers and vloggers.
How a content consultancy works
Working with a content consultant generally involves a five-step process:
Step 1: Every piece of content marketing should contribute to your overall business goals, so it makes sense that the first step be understanding and refining your marketing goals.
Step 2: Then the content consultant will research your target audience, identify their needs, pain points, and types of content to which they best respond.
Step 3: In this step the content consultant will review your competitors, looking at what they are doing and what is working well (or not). This step will help the content consultant better define your unique selling proposition, and what will help you stand out in the crowd.
Step 4: Next is a deep dive into your existing content. The content consultant will assess quality and relevance and identify gaps or required resources. They will decide which platforms to use, with a strong focus on SEO.
Step 5: Finally, the content consultant will create a content strategy, which will identify the types of content you need to develop for particular platforms. The content consultant will then develop specific briefs for content creation. The briefs will contain detailed information about each piece of content, including messaging and audience.
The benefits of content consultancy for your brand
When it comes to content consultancy, there are so many benefits!
To begin with, the research undertaken by content consultants identifies your current content weaknesses and strengths, which produces great marketing intel.
Content consulting allows you to budget for content marketing and makes sure every cent you spend packs the maximum punch. Each piece of content you produce will have the singular purpose of achieving your business objectives.
Content consulting is invaluable in brand building. Customers’ perception of your brand is formed and developed by the content they consume.
Importantly, by identifying your unique selling proposition and developing a strategy that elevates it, content consulting allows you to stand out from the crowd.
The benefits of content consulting doesn’t end when your content consultant waves goodbye and moves on to the next client. The information it provides will inform all the content you produce, well into the future.
Need the expertise of a content consultant?
While anyone can call themselves a content consultant, it’s important that the professional you engage is a marketing expert, with years of experience developing targeted marketing content.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne and we understand the importance of quality content to build brands and grow businesses.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.