Good content grows with your brand as it grows: ensure it tells the brand story you want to tell through an effective content strategy for evolving brands. Consider this take two: content management 2.0! The content strategy developed and initially implemented when your team officially launched must be consistently managed during your evolution but also thoughtfully reworked at major organizational milestones.

Content is a necessity and a critical one: it keeps customers returning and is part of developing a relationship.

It’s ongoing and sometimes, it often requires a rework. A web redesign phase, particularly to a responsive mobile site, is a good time to deploy a full content rework.

Find the People Who Know: Involve Subject Matter Experts: Combining your communications and social media staff, together with the specialized and expert teams who know your industry, will help you not only solidify your brand voice but ensure the voice reflects the people in your industry.

Before any new web project, annual report or content deliverable goes live, ask for the content to be fact checked by those who know your products or services and industry.

Photographic Curation: You likely invested funds well spent in headshots, professional site photography and products when you initially launched your brand, a new product or a project. Ensure your content rework incorporates the use of new images meeting the changing needs of your company, your brand and your team.

Making photography work as part of the brand content strategy involves more than just asking for a quote from prospective photographers: source photographic talent and ask for sample books to find the style and tone you want.

Keep your social channels in mind and find images that aren’t too polished for some less formal communications on channels that work well with more day-to-day imagery.

Focus Group Focus: The focus group you held with internal and external stakeholders when you defined your brand voice and tone should meet again to discuss the change in voice and direction as the brand has grown – if major negative or positive milestones have impacted your company, the tone may need to be.

Gone Global?
Atlantic Canadian businesses are increasingly global. Ensure your content, tone and photographic choices meet the values, needs and objectives of any sensitive international audiences. (Export Development Canada is always a good source of information on cultural etiquette for teams working across borders, even virtually.)

Accessibility: Make content matter for all of your stakeholders by reworking accessibility features into any content rework, especially if your website is undergoing a redesign. An inclusive world is important for all of us and each business has a role in ensuring websites in Canada are easy to access regardless of disability.

Tell your story better by getting inspiration from a few big names:
• AOL CEO talks content
• Content strategy from COCA COLA
• Tory Burch at The Business of Fashion

More from The Digital Collide…[catlist categorypage=”yes” excludeposts=this]