A 7-point guide for content-based startups

Content marketing has become one of the most powerful tools to drive revenue and achieve targets. A deep understanding of the facet of online marketing can help the brand gain desired popularity and visibility.

With the growing use and importance of content creation and marketing, there is a surge in the number of content businesses coming up. The catch-22 here is most people, marketers and content developers, in particular, do not seem to understand content consumption patterns and trends.

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This knowledge about content consumption is what plays a pivotal role to break even and become profitable for a content business start-up.

Content is a delicate thing. It needs careful curation and long term thought behind its development to accomplish business goals and objectives. Often you will need to understand these things even before the reader starts. Here is some good for thought:

Long-term vision

Align all communication that goes out to the readers, with the long-term vision of the brand. The underlying theme should be the same even though the content would be different.

The mindset

One needs to understand their target audiences very well, especially their demographics, to design and curate relevant content for them.

Scale

It is very important for the business to build a five-year roadmap to their growth, scale, and reach.

This clarity often provides a platform and basis to grow exponentially in the next few years. Also, this is how you will be able to take decisions pertaining to diversity vs focus.

Profitability and investment

This is a yet another important point from the business finance and strategy perspective. Be clear on the amount of investment needed to reach the desired scale and also the expected profitability status. It is known that big businesses take a few years time to stop bleeding and become EBIT-positive.

Ad space

A lot of content these days is taking the form of advertorials. This is again a space to watch out for. Advertorials are columns or blog posts about a particular product designed in a way which gives a feel of an editorial copy. They prove to be really dynamic and foolproof ways of communicating messages.

Keep reading

To be on top of your game as a content developer or content moderator, you need to continuously be in the process of reading. This not only helps understand latest trends and lifestyles but also gives a nice insight into the ever-changing consumer behaviour.

Innovation

For quite some time in the 2000s, we saw stagnancy with the kind of content that came out. Today, the youth, and also those who aren’t internet-savvy, are all hooked on the social digital platforms waiting to read something interesting. The style of storytelling is both an art and science. It needs constant innovation to get the right content for your audiences. Thought provoking and inspiring content is the current trend.

Be it any business, there are hundreds of things that need to fall into place to get take off, and on the other hand, one major blunder can bury you. Having said that, it is not impossible to reach the desired business objectives, all one needs is to understand what will work with the masses.