By Gini Dietrich
If you spend any time online, it won’t come as a surprise to you that everyone is talking about content.
Content is king! No, content is prince! No, content is queen! Whatever content is, it’s important, but many organizations struggle to figure out how to use it in their marketing.
The interesting part about the content creation today, however, is most of it is text-based. But, according to Wikipedia, 65 percent of human beings are visual learners.
More than half of people in this world learn by watching or seeing visuals and, yet, most of our content is text.
Add on top of that, many people are not good writers, nor do they have the inclination to become so and, with that, you have business leaders struggling to figure out how to incorporate content into their marketing programs.
The good news is you don’t have to write for great content creation!
Content Creation without Writing
Enter YouTube, Vine, Instagram, and iTunes.
- Longer-form videos. People love to watch videos. In fact, YouTube is the number two search engine, behind Google. Videos are passed around like candy. It’s pretty easy to create a video – using your laptop’s camera or the camera on your phone – and upload it to YouTube. Then you can embed the video in your website, on your blog, and share it on the social networks. Think about the content of the video just like you would with written content. What pains do you solve for your customers? What solutions do you offer that are different from your competitors? What crazy and fun things do your employees do in their off time? The answers to those questions make for great content.
- Super-short videos. A new app called Vine allows you to create six second videos. No, you can’t say or do a lot in six seconds, but you can easily showcase your manufacturing floor, the lobby of your building, your office structure, or your retail location in six seconds. It’s only available for iPhones and Androids, but you can download the app and play around it with it without any risk.
- Photos, photos, and more photos. Pinterest is the fastest-growing social network ever and many speculate it’s because it is so incredibly visual. Look around your business and consider what you can take a photo of that would be compelling to your customers and prospects. Snap a photo with your phone, upload it into Instagram (an app available for most smart phones), apply some filters and a border, and hit publish. Some organizations post ads from their history, others shoot their technology in action, and others have their teams pose in fun shots. What you do is up to you and Instagram helps you make it more compelling. Then post your images to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for a quadruple whammy.
- To podcast or not to podcast. The life of podcasts has been pretty volatile. First they were the next big thing. Then they died. And now they’re rumored to be the next big thing again. Creating what is essentially a radio program that you promote through iTunes is not easy. It’s the most time intense of these four ideas, but it helps with brand awareness and credibility and, if done well, every little bit helps. Some of the podcasts that are done really well are Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, Freakonomics, and A Prairie Home Companion. Listen to those and steal ideas!
With the exception of podcasting, once you figure out how to use the technology, these ideas take less than 15 minutes every time you produce something new.
If you’re not a writer, you can create content quickly and easily with these ideas.
What other ideas do you have for content creation that don’t require someone to write?
A version of this first appeared in my monthly OpenForum column.