Content marketing: why is it more valuable if it is done with people?

Content is a fundamental element of every relationship between companies and people. It is able to involve them, inspire them and lead them through their journey towards an action or a memorable moment. Even today, however, its value is anchored to strategic needs strongly linked to pure content marketing logics, which guide companies to a common action: creating and sharing contents that are able to generate stable and lasting relationships with their customers.

How to create content by involving people

Taking into consideration aspects of the content that are indispensable by now, that have a more communicative approach and that no longer see the consumer as a stereotype with well-defined characteristics, but as a person. A drift frequently told and represented in multiple lists of “trends”, “best practices” and “tips” aimed to define a clear and, above, all strategic approach to content for companies:

• Content is interactive: a company must not only talk about itself, its offer, its differentiating elements, its history. It must be able to convey its essence through an engaging approach: only in this way people have a memorable experience;
• Content is durable: the contents must continue to be as real time as possible, but creating lasting and cross-generational interconnections to enhance their value and the growth of knowledge;
• Content evolves: not the same content for a single channel, but a differentiated development in all the brand communication channels, in order to reach each person in an appropriate way, involving people in an emotional and lasting way;
• Content is dynamic: in digital channels time and people’s attention are few. For this reason, a content must be designed in a way that it can condense more information, telling it better and engaging people, thanks to its dynamism and flexibility;
• Content is meaningful: it expresses credibility, it is the brand values bearer, it is authentic. It talks to people to start a positive dialogue with them. It models the way a company is and shapes people’s imagery. The content has a great responsibility and generates sense to delight, inspire, change;
• Content belongs to people: it is always more important to think that contents’ recipients are first of all people who are rich in value, able to express desires, needs and emotions, at any time. The companies themselves are made by people and to communicate they must put themselves in the shoes of the people they want to talk to.

Putting people at the center of the content creation is a good practice for sure, but… What a news! Contents belong to people, but we must ask us a question: are people really involved?

These are the basis for us and our Manifesto confirms this. For us, it is now implicit to start from people, considering how they can be a resource in bringing out and manifesting their experiences. We have learned the importance of listening, in order to understand expectations, desires and tastes, but we have also understood that the experience and planning of content with people is a fundamental step to ensure that companies can rediscover their original goal: genereting value for the people who come to them.

Co-designing content with the company and its customers

This approach applies to every area of ​​activity and, in the case of content design, it is even more true, but still unusual. It is not a simple application of a consumer engagement strategy aimed at creating UGC content (user generated content). It is a different activity, more engaging in experience and value.

In fact, the involvement of people from the early stages of designing a content strategy helps the brand to communicate with its tone of voice, also considering the expectations and desires of its audience. Creating content co-creation workshops is for us a natural path of collaboration with a company: in this way, we can get some qualitative insights that only people, whether they are inside the company or not, can bring out.

Involving people directly gives companies the opportunity to reconnect with them, creating more relevant and effective content, able to involve and excite those who meet them and put people in touch with the brand in a new way. For example, the evidence that emerges from co-building workshops in brand identity becomes the basis for defining the verbal and visual tone of voice and making the contents consistent with the real personality of the brand and at the same time people’s desires.

Listening to people, talking to them and taking care of them, even as a brand, has become the main added value to create the relationship between person and person, but also between brand and person. Only in this way we allow reconnection between people and companies.