Everyone appreciates great content. But when it comes to paying for excellence, the marketing industry is in a race to the bottom.
Before creating content for a website, you generally need to answer a few questions.
- Who is this for?
- What do we want this content to do?
The answers will dictate what kind of marketer you are.
Content written to be read is different. Because if it’s not read, the content can’t achieve its goals. You might ask: what do we want the content to achieve?
We write great content so that change can happen. That change is internal to the reader. That change might be how they think about your business. That change might be that the reader sees you as the expert and loves your cause or values. They start to desire your products, your expertise, your ideas. And unless the words get read, the change can’t happen. Your goal for the content you create matters. If you want them to skim and click, then the price of the content doesn’t matter. The cheaper, the better.
What goes into great content?
Answer: Blood, sweat and tears.
It’s never just a blog post for a business. It adds value to the web and adds value to the business. The problem is that for years, marketers have entered into a race to the bottom for content. What’s the minimum price we can get our content for? As a result, we see a lot of poor content. It’s the wrong way to think about content. Cheap content is rarely top quality. There’s a cost for great content. And it’s often heavy. Here’s why great content is built and not written.
And so, content writers are content builders, and every piece of content they create has layers of their blood, sweat and tears embedded within.
The architect’s road to great quality content
If great content is built and not written, it makes sense that skilled labor creates that content.
And skilled labor requires payment that reflects the time spent learning the trade.
The mental model for content should be, “we need to create great content. What does it cost to create great content?”
Breaking the content process down, great content requires:
- Keyword research
- Outlining
- Subject research
- Knowledge of grammar
- Writing skill
- Writing experience
- Image creation
- Post optimization
- Headline creation
- Editing
- Design
- Upload
How to establish the right content budget
Generally speaking, your content budget should come out of your brand marketing budget and can form part of your SEO retainer.
Think about your needs.
Do you need 45 articles to generate traction for your business, or just 12?
But that’s the question.
“What do I need to create for the change we seek to happen?”
You should then seek the budget to make this happen.
But what about individual articles? What should you spend?
This is the wrong question.
Instead, consider this.
- What are you prepared to pay for the change you seek to happen?
- What is an article that ranks online and showcases your business worth to you?
- What is it worth for a person to think positively about their business?
This is the figure you mentally start your inner negotiations with. From there, you need to find and assemble people who can help you build great content. SEO specialists, writers, content designers and editors. This might be one person. It might be an agency. It might be several skilled people. And if this sounds expensive, it’s because it’s going to be. This is why you must establish a significant budget for your content. Great content is the expensive bottle of wine on the supermarket shelf. You’re not buying it because you fancy a drink. You’re buying it because you want to feel the impact of quality wine. And if you want your content to have a significant impact on your prospects. You need to invest in the content assets that will have that impact.