Businesses today wear two hats. They have that of their regular core product or service that they must run and operate profitably. Modern day companies must also run the media side of the organisation.

In the digital age, it is the content generated by a business that is key in determining how customers and prospects perceive the business. What does it stand for? What are its vision and mission? What problems does it solve? It is the carefully crafted content that you publish that tell potential customers that you are the company that is better placed than any other to help them out. Such is the importance now of online search that potential customers are 70% likely to buy from you before they even pick up the phone to talk to you.

Video streams, blogs, webinars, white papers, e-books etc. are all valuable pieces of content that go toward helping to build your company brand and generate viable inbound leads. These should not be randomly produced. They should be part of a carefully conceived publishing plan to move prospects from interested to signing on the dotted line.

Start by developing your customer personas (see previous blog). That will help you to focus on the key words and messages that your content needs to portray in order to attract the people for whom you are best suited to work with. Think carefully about what those people will be searching for and what words they are likely to use in their questions. Then take the time or employ the right people to develop the content. There are also key types of content for different stages in the buying cycle. You might want to read in a bit more detail here.

Your media company should become a priority within the organisation. It is not something to put off until you get around to it or when have a spare moment. All businesses, large and small, must have a dedicated content production arm that dovetails in with the rest of the marketing mix to help meet its business objectives. Like it or not, every business is now a media business.