Emails, web copy, social posts.
Blogs, video scripts, sales collateral.
Pitch decks, taglines, thought leadership.
It never ends. In today’s world, the need for content creation is continuous. To build brand awareness, retain customers, and capture leads, organizations must produce a steady flow of written content that’s engaging enough to catch the eye of prospects—and keep current customers coming back.
Maintaining quality and brand consistency across the sheer volume of content can quickly become a huge challenge. This is where employing a centralized content source—like a cross-departmental copywriting team—is key.
Rather than expecting each department to source and manage their own writers—a path rife with risk and churn—adopting a “one-stop shop” approach to content creation keeps content aligned, consistent, and effective.
Siloed resources and the sinkhole of waste
When individual departments within an organization use separate resources to produce written content—by employing their own writing teams or individual freelancers—they trigger a sinkhole of waste in terms of money, resources, and time. Here are a few examples of what lies within this sinkhole:
- Inconsistent brand representations
- Squandered opportunities for synergy and alignment
- Expensive process overlaps and redundancies (such as training disparate teams of writers on the same brand guidelines)
- High-touch management
- Time-consuming sourcing and vetting
Luckily, there’s a better way. Here are the benefits of centralizing content creation through a cross-departmental content procurement solution:
Brand cohesion
When departments silo their content creation resources, it’s difficult to facilitate the collaboration and communication needed to maintain a consistent voice across all content. As a result, audiences may be thrown off by your lack of brand cohesion. Disjointed branding erodes trust—large shifts in tone or messaging can make your brand come off as flighty or disorganized. It also hurts your company’s ability to build brand awareness since your content isn’t always easily recognizable.
With a centralized content source, consistency is achievable. The cross-departmental team structure allows for true collaboration and alignment—writers share the same goals, are in close communication, and can check each other’s work as they go. Keeping your brand consistent helps you build trust with your audience. Readers come to identify your company, not just through your visuals, but through your words. You’re no longer a stranger but a recognizable, consistent source of helpful information.
Efficient use of resources
With a pool of strategic writers working across departments, a company can effortlessly scale content up or down as needed. Imagine a company that hires freelancers department by department. When a treasured freelancer leaves or even takes a vacation, content for that department comes to a halt. Managers must scramble to find someone new.
But even after the arduous task of sourcing and vetting a new freelancer or hire, managers may find themselves hand-holding the new writer through the content creation process, doing extensive edits, and perhaps even rewriting some pieces to help them get up to speed.
When there’s turnover within a centralized team, the new hire has a built-in group of mentors to show them the ropes. They learn by example and through collaboration—having their work meticulously checked by more seasoned writers who are already brand experts. Managers can say goodbye to rewrites and focus on managing.
Less risk
Each new writer or content source you hire comes with risk—especially if said source lacks internal checks and balances, such as a defined quality control process. As much as you can attempt to vet sources in advance, certain questions can only be answered through trial: Will the writer understand and adequately communicate your brand and goals? Will they be able to write a range of different types of content well? Will they stick around?
By centralizing content, you run a much lower risk of delayed or canceled initiatives—not to mention struggles with subpar quality. That’s because with a central team, content is never dependent upon a single writer, so unexpected departures or leaves won’t make you miss the right opportunities to launch a new campaign. Plus, because you have an entire team at your disposal, you don’t have to worry about a dip in quality or a learning curve, as you would when hiring a new freelancer. Everybody is up to speed and ready to hit the ground running.
Higher-quality content
The most effective content is strategically aligned. There’s a clear audience, a clear goal, and a clear voice and tone that persists across all channels of communication. This is easier said than done. Strategy isn’t something that can be accomplished by AI tools, which simply synthesize and spit out ideas that have already been put into the world. Nor can it be accomplished by siloed teams of writers with little opportunity for communication or collaboration.
Here’s an example: perhaps one campaign or message can reference, echo, play off, or reinforce another. When writers don’t communicate, they may not discover these opportunities. On the other hand, when they work as a cross-departmental team, synergy and inspiration abound, and the overall quality and effectiveness of work increases.
Furthermore, by working across departments, writers become experts in a range of different types of content—continually honing their skills and picking up new ones. In this one case, quality is quantity.
Find a content procurement solution that lasts.
With a versatile and collaborative team of writers, a 35-point QC process, and a centralized strategic approach, MarketSmiths has developed a discipline that produces consistent, on-brand content for our clients across diverse industries and formats. Contact the MarketSmiths team to get started today.
