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2020 was … laborious. However in some methods, we obtained to see the perfect of what model advertising and marketing can do when it:
- places clients first
- stands up for causes
- leads organizational change
These accomplishments got here with many sleepless nights. When COVID hit, all of us needed to pivot and dash to surmount the massive, unusual obstacles put in entrance of us.
Now it’s a brand new daybreak. We’re nonetheless operating, however we’re again in a marathon. Personally, it’s generally laborious to recollect what long-term planning even felt like.
So, considering you is likely to be in the identical boat with setting your long-term imaginative and prescient at the beginning of the brand new 12 months, I assumed I’d share what we did right here at Skyword.
We went again to our Why.
For us, that meant revisiting our values assertion:
After we seemed again at this assertion, there was a little bit of a lightbulb second.
We needed to admit that—for some time—we have been too targeted on including horny options to our software program, fairly than refining the necessities. Sure, they have been options our clients stated they needed—however have been they finally aimed toward offering ease? Not all the time.
So, in 2021 we’re placing brutal focus again on that first a part of our values assertion: making it simple.
That is our new benchmark: Is that this new function/pricing mannequin/service method making it stupid-easy for our clients, our contributors, or our staff to create wonderful content material?
If not, it’s not a prime precedence.
Subsequent, we refined our imaginative and prescient. Given the place we sit as an organization—on the nexus of content material creation, technique, and operations—we put a highlight on creation and connectivity with regards to making our clients’ lives simpler transferring ahead.
Right here’s how we broke down every:
When It Involves Creation, We Need to Make High quality Simple
I say this as a result of many corporations make creating content material simpler: however high quality content material is one other story.
One of many largest errors I see entrepreneurs make is believing that high quality is just too laborious to realize with outdoors assist. I don’t essentially blame them. Is your life really simpler should you can create an task in a single click on, however it’s important to utterly re-work the content material you obtain afterwards?
For us, making high quality simple comes all the way down to know-how, expertise, and knowledgeable companies:
We’ll proceed to make content material collaboration simple within the Skyword360 platform in order that our clients have a systematized solution to ideate, create, distribute, and measure audience-driven content material.
We’ll proceed to develop our community of worldwide freelance expertise in order that clients get easy accessibility to their superb material consultants—whether or not meaning finance journalists, training physicians, 3D graphics designers, or videographers primarily based in Peru.
And we’ll proceed to make use of companies group members who deliver the strategic experience and considerate craftsmanship wanted to raise that expertise’s output:
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Content material strategists who use market intelligence to pinpoint the content material that may really sway an viewers
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Editors who know find out how to coax the precise voice and deep insights from content material creators
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Digital producers who know what a model means by “wow issue,” even when that model isn’t certain
A Skyword contributor not too long ago instructed me that, if she had to decide on, she’d choose a Skyword undertaking over every other company’s task due to the way in which our in-house editors work along with her, “on behalf of the model and on behalf of her craft.”
We try to be each content material creator’s first alternative and the perfect associate for entrepreneurs who want strategic steerage and model high quality advocates on their facet.
When It Involves Connectivity, Our Content material Creation Has to Match the Approach Individuals Work
Particularly, we’re constructing out our integrations with complementary martech software program. Why? We imagine high quality content material creation is just simple if it’s accessible.
That is much less horny, however oh-so-necessary, as a result of content material creation is all the time a part of an even bigger advertising and marketing ecosystem. And it’s not simple if you have already got Smartsheet or Semrush or Workfront and now should log in someplace else to create your content material.
We’ve even re-imagined how clients can join into our companies mannequin, in order that they’ll deploy our companies in the way in which that is smart for them, whether or not that’s to ship a steady stream of always-on content material, bursts of content material to assist key advertising and marketing moments, or a mixture of each. This makes it simpler for entrepreneurs to get the standard content material they want, once they want it, from Skyword.
“Simple” shouldn’t should imply sacrificing high quality, technique, or alternative.
On the Finish of the Day, Why Does Our ‘Why’ Matter?
It issues as a result of simple is about greater than comfort; it’s about giving entrepreneurs the time and freedom to steer model transformation.
Seeing this in motion is past superior. Chris Mumford, Western Governors College’s Sr. Advertising Content material Supervisor, not too long ago stated the truth that he might belief his Skyword group to ship high quality allowed him to cease micromanaging his model’s content material and begin rising his influence. In his phrases: “With the ability to spend extra time on technique has enabled me to get sign-off and really scale content material throughout extra of our college.”
We’re resolved to assist extra manufacturers, and their advertising and marketing leaders, succeed by way of significant, efficient buyer communication.
Admittedly, I’m speaking extra about Skyword right here than I often do, however I needed to share our personal course of and offer you a preview of a few of the areas I’ll be sharing my perspective on in upcoming newsletters.
Our renewed focus and the progress we’ve already made has me pumped to kick-off 2021 with our companions and clients. I would like the identical for you.
So, what’s the factor that your Why is telling you to place brutal concentrate on? What’s the benchmark that may assist you to line up your priorities for the longer-term?
I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Featured picture by RMatt Noble on Unsplash.
