The 5 Content Culture Pillars

In a previous newsletter, I outlined how to overcome content creation challenges. I pointed out that content should be ingrained in your company culture.

I recently got some feedback. “That’s great, but how do I make content creation a part of my company culture?”

This is a fantastic question, so let’s dive into the 5 Content Culture Pillars you should implement within your organization.

As we go through these, you’ll notice a bit of overlap as each value feeds into the others to form a holistic approach to content.

Document (& Store) Everything

Let’s start with building a strong foundation. If your company isn’t already doing this, it should.

Because we’re now in the new era of work with distributed teams, flexible schedules and unique team compositions, you must document everything and have a central repository for information to keep everyone aligned.

Once you have something in place (whether it be Notion, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.), enforce that your team stores all valuable information. Even better if you could assign a specific person to this task.

This can include QBRs (quarterly business reviews), meeting notes, competitive research, customer/prospect information… to name a few examples.

By doing this, you break down information silos and get the most out of tasks your team is already doing. For teams with a resource crunch, this is an especially efficient means of extracting information to build content.

Why build content from scratch when you’re probably sitting on tons of useful stuff that only needs to be repurposed?

Learn It, Teach It

It’s one thing to have a central source of information, but what if no one is looking at it?

That’s why it’s imperative to actively share information within your organization instead of storing it in a random folder that never sees the light of day.

Promote a culture of learning and teaching.

This can be done through initiatives such as Lunch & Learns, Department Highlights or Education Days.

This goes beyond learning new skills or trade information, but can also include market insights, useful customer information or reviewing first-party data.

Your marketing/content team should always attend these learning sessions as they are a great stepping stone to content production.

Specifically, such sessions between marketing and sales and customer success teams should happen regularly, to ensure your initiatives are aligned with your audience.

Share the Knowledge

And not only should your culture of learning and teaching occur within your company walls, but also outside of them.

As your team acquires new skills or experience, that information should be published externally.

As I previously mentioned, educational content is among the most successful in the B2B space.

And this doesn’t only include your core audience of prospects and customers but is also a great way to engage your secondary audiences.

As an example, many development teams of software companies have their members share new technologies, coding languages or systems they learn and use.

This, in turn, becomes a great recruitment tool to attract prospective employees.

When you share in public, it’s also a great resource for further learning as you can collect perspectives and feedback from others on the content you publish.

Publish Fast & Get Feedback

One of the biggest roadblocks to publishing is getting stuck in endless internal feedback loops and fixating on every last detail.

You needn’t worry about producing perfectly polished content. Instead, focus on authenticity.

By no means should you be careless or sloppy, but it’s best to get your thoughts into the world by publishing and then iterating on what your audience tells you and what the data says.

This is the best way to iterate. Publishing content is just as much about gathering information as it is about any other outcomes.

The more you publish and the more insights you collect, the better your content will become.

You can practice all you want, but there is no substitute for game experience.

Systemize Your Processes

Once you have all the necessary pieces in place, you must fit those pieces together to ensure an efficient process. Otherwise, again, you risk getting your content “stuck” within your organization.

This is where having a clear system comes into play.

Every organization’s process will be different, but as a rudimentary example:

1. Capture and share content in a central repository.

2. Conduct weekly internal content reviews to source publishing ideas.

3. Ingest content and ask any questions to the original producer.

4. Draft the content

5. Collect feedback from the necessary people

6. Clearly understand who is responsible for final sign-off

7. Ensure this person provides timely feedback

8. Get final sign-off

9. Add content to a content calendar

10. Publish

11. Collect insights

12. Iterate

If your team is still having trouble, even with a clearly defined process, there are a lot of tools and software that can help, which I’ll explore in a future newsletter.

These content culture pillars will provide a strong foundation for your organization to efficiently publish quality content.