When it comes to editing digital content and controlling your brand message and brand story, it is far easier to control when you are publishing content to your own website, rather than pushing content ‘off-site’. But for ultimate success you need to be actively promoting your content onsite and offsite.
There is often more visibility and brand ‘eye-balls’ on your onsite content (anyone who has had a ticking off from a brand manager for an incorrect phrase that goes against corporate guidelines will know what I mean), but you can retain all publishing control when you own the platform you are publishing on – indefinitely too so you can go back and edit if necessary. When creating content offsite, it is often far harder to control.
Create daily onsite content for SEO and social success
So if publishing content and content strategy in general worries your brand, start with onsite content first, heavily promoted via Google+ Authorship and other social networks.
Build up your brand voice, maybe even experiment with a few different content styles and content types; see what works, what you like, what your users enjoy about your content. It is an evolutionary process. Tweak your strategy.
Only then, when you feel confident about what you are creating and you feel as if you have something worth sharing – a website that you are happy to invite people to come and look around, packed with loads of great content – do you engage in off-site content amplification.
Use blogger outreach, PR and guest posting, as well as possibly Native Ads and other amplification services to amplify your content message and create a strong brand message.
It’s these simple first steps that pay-off in the long run when formulating a content marketing strategy that works.
Should content marketers edit content that no longer fits in with their brand?
So you’ve develop a great new content strategy for your brand. But what to do with the existing content on your website? Do you edit or leave it where it is?
Should brands edit content they have created in the past when it no longer meets their requirements or tells a story they no longer wish to tell?
There is a lot to be said about leaving your content as is – it is an historic record after all that you can get some marketing miles from; brands can make much out of saying ‘this was us, this is us now’ and flipping a negative into a positive.
Usually the editing that is needed centres around areas such as brand repositioning or corporate messaging. But if you are thinking about embracing content and content strategy, as all brands surely are, this is one thing that you may want to think about too. The decision really depends on what exactly the content said. If you had a celebrity on board that has now fallen from grace, editing is a good thing to consider.
