Herding Your Content Cats!

We can learn from Hollywood on how to enable our employees as influencers and content creators.

Apr 08, 2024

It’s Monday! Robert here - and it’s time for TCA’s LENS.

Well - it’s hard to upstage an eclipse - but you know the moon. It’s just going through a phase…. No? Okay…

Isn’t it a little weird how it seems that everybody is an “influencer” now. I mean, if we’re all influencers - can we actually be influential? Don’t we need alot of, you know, those who are influenced in order to be influential.

Well - it seems that the newest trend is whether we’re a small startup company, or a global organization of thousands - we are being encouraged to make our employees our marketing army.

Hmmm… But speaking of marketing armies - (see what I did there I’m segueing)… before we move on…

<quickly changes into a fleece vest>
We’re rolling up our sleeves and working with clients on a whole bunch of interesting fractional content marketing services. We can not only help you roadmap your approach, but if you need an addition to your content team to get some you know what done - well check this out.
<removes fleece vest>

Okay… Let’s get to it…. In today’s edition.

Think like Hollywood to herd your content cats
Women’s Basketball is having a moment
There’s gambling going on in the Generative AI Casino. I’m shocked.

Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: HERDING THE CONTENT CATS

If you ask an actor or screenwriter about their career goals, they’ll almost always say, “But what I really want to do is direct.” This Hollywood trope is so prevalent that someone put it on a T-shirt.

Ironically, the director may participate the least in the creative work. A director’s role isn’t to write, act, play music, edit, or even point a camera. The director’s job is to direct and enable the individual artists’ contributions to the film product.

In a great film, the words, pictures, actors, costumes, music, and editing mesh so completely that removing any of them would pull the piece apart. Transcendent directors do this so successfully that their signature style shines through even when they use different contributors for each project.

Bring Your Inner Tarantino To Content Strategy

So, one of the more exciting trends in marketing is the rise in interest in engaging employees as influencers and content creators.

Recent research from agency giant Ogilvy finds that 89% of C-suite B2B marketers recognize that tapping employees as influencers “holds immense value for their businesses.”

As a result, I see just about everyone rushing to create content to help the business.

Now, that small earthquake you just felt was the collective shudder of marketing practitioners in B2B businesses across the planet. They’re worried about little things like consistency, tone, story, and quality. You know, everything that makes your content and marketing strategy work.

So - how to you make those two things work: scale your content so everybody can create it, but maintain control and balance on quality?

Well, here’s the thing: whether or not you give employees the chance to be content creators, you have to scale anyway. And the ability to grow doesn’t lie in the capability to produce enough content.

The ability to grow lies in turning the content strategy team into more than a collection of creators skilled at words or pictures who create content assets.

You need a team that wants to direct.

The content team’s remit must expand into the role of director. That means it:

Sets the standard
Prioritizes the content
Guides and enables the organization to tell a consistent story.

Like movie, television, or stage directors, your content team may sometimes serve as the storyteller. But it should always enable employees as influencers – enabled throughout the organization to tell the business’ stories.

By directing enterprise content, your team can influence the vision, words, story, and experience to deliver a business strategy poised for box office success.

I’ve got six areas of responsibility you can use to set your standards and bring out your inner Hollywood director.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Have an awesome week.

WIDE ANGLE LENS: MARKETING SNAPS

Let’s get it all in frame. Shall we?

⛹️‍♀️ 14.2 million - That was the audience for the nail biting game between Iowa and UConn last week (side note - it was a foul don’t “@” Me.) It was also one of the most-viewed games in any sport other than college football and the NFL over the last couple of years. All signs point to this year perhaps being the pivot year for Women’s Basketball

💰 $18 million per company - That’s what venture firm a16z says every company is going to increase their spending on Generative AI to this year. Uhhh… yeah. Maybe not. But, yeah, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that A16Z is hyping up (aka Content Marketing) GenAI as it’s got more than $400 million sunk into AI startups. You know, it’s shocking. There’s gambling going on in the casino.

To quote Stefan from Saturday Night Live - Generative AI is the hottest club that no one is going to. There is still so much use case building and not a whole lot of integrated, well, use….

My weekly news item summed up my thoughts on the A16Z Report.

LENS FLARE: - TCA Events & Happenings For You

We’ve got a great new webinar for April
Join us on April 25th for our monthly webinar series - and this one should be fun. It’s basically what the hell should we do with our social media channels in 2024. We’ll talk about what modern Social Media looks like in 2024 - and what you should be doing on them. Come register today.

Don’t Miss Our March Webinar
We had a bunch of technical difficulties for our March Webinar live event - but we’ve managed to get the recording, and cut it together for an on-demand version. If you’re interested in diving into the world of Fractional Talent - and what it means for content marketing and content strategy - it’s a quick hit of goodness for understanding why it’s an important trend.

LENS CAP: Let’s Finish With A Flourish

My advice to any content leader looking to scale a team and become more strategic is to buy every content team member a T-shirt that says, “But what we really want to do is direct.”

Then, coach the team to stop acting as an internal content production studio and start directing all enterprise content regardless of who creates it.

It’s the best way to herd those cats - because it’s not just herding them, it’s enabling them to be the creative kittens they can be!

And if you need some help - we can help you sort out how to wrangle those cats - let us know.

See you next week.

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