Small Budget, Meet Big Ideas: 5 Ways to Generate Consistently Good Content

Tips and tricks from a small-but-mighty marketing-consulting firm.

Every team wants to create quality content that sparks its audience's interest, ranks high in SEO, and showcases their product or service in a way that allows their brand to grow consistently. It’s no secret that content creation takes time and does not always come easily, but small-but-mighty teams are always finding ways to create new content without reinventing the wheel.

Repurpose What You’ve Got

Far too often, teams shy away from reusing some of their best content, but why? Doing so leaves value at the door. If you have content that has worked and generated conversations and interest in the past, don’t be afraid to use it again in a new way! Instead of letting timely and relevant content gather dust in your archives, repurpose it to glean just as much value as the first time around.

To do this, you’ll need to find a piece of content that has worked well for your team in the past. For instance, a great blog post can be repurposed by taking bits here and there to use on your different social-media accounts. Or, the main idea behind that blog post can be put to use in a new email campaign. 

Ultimately, the goal is to always generate content that can be showcased in different ways throughout your online presence. All it takes to extend the life of your content is one small-but-mighty idea stretched across all formats:

• YouTube or TikTok videos
• Podcasts
• Teaser campaigns
• Instagram Stories
• LinkedIn posts
• Lead-generation emails 

Start Whiteboarding

Yes, the tried-and-true whiteboarding technique. Hate it or love it, you can’t deny its effectiveness in churning out ideas. For those unfamiliar with the term, “whiteboarding” refers to creative brainstorming sessions around a whiteboard, whereon your team jots down every idea that comes to mind for a client. Ultimately, this creative practice is a classic for a reason: It works.

Teams need an easy, accessible outlet on which to let their ideas fly. While it may not be a literal whiteboard, encourage team members to add their ideas—whenever they might come to mind—to a shared space, such as a Google Doc. Your ideas will come from everywhere, and you never know when inspiration may hit. By providing an organized, easy-to-access space where team members can share their thoughts, you’re helping your team to zero in on their next great idea.

Plan Properly to Avoid Poor Performance (or Embarrassment)

When generating new content, it’s important to know when you plan to send out that email, post that ’gram, or publish that blog piece. Otherwise, you risk over-saturating the market and losing your post in the social clutter. 

Take, for example, a piece you’re writing for LinkedIn. You’ll want to post it at a time when people are most likely to actually see it. When is that? At lunchtime on Tuesdays. Therein lies your perfect scheduling time. Or, say you’re planning on blasting a new email campaign. When do most people want to read emails? Usually at the beginning of the day. And always make sure that your content is diversified. Re-posting the same blog piece, email, post over and over again you will lose the importance of what you are trying to say.

Small creative teams understand the importance of diversifying their content and setting intentional deadlines and schedules to keep their content fresh and revolving. Doing so gives you the flexibility to plan ahead and adjust for seasons, holidays, current affairs, and breaking news. 

Because none of us wants to be the company that accidentally posts inappropriate content due to no one keeping an eye on the schedule. 

Get In That Creative Mindset

Each person on our 1406 consulting team sets aside time each week for creative thought and content creation. Due to my role leading the creative strategy for all of our clients, I typically block out two to three hours per day just for creative planning. While that may sound like a lot, if you approach your day in blocks, set your schedule, and really stick to it, you’ll soon find your ambitious scheduling easy to follow and adapt to—and all to your benefit. 

Being creative, thoughtful, and innovative takes time and focus. You need to have a specific space dedicated to it, where your thought processes won’t be constantly interrupted with emails and phone calls. To avoid losing that new forward-thinking idea you just generated, or forgetting that perfect post for your client, block out your time, stick to it, and get creative. 

Don’t Fear the Templates

Gasp! Yes, I said it—templates. But before you write me off as old-fashioned, let me explain.

One of the biggest missteps a small business can make is a lack of consistency. While your team may be bursting at the seams with ideas, if you’re executing using different people, different voices, and different looks and feels, you’re creating big problems for yourself down the road

Next comes a lack of recognition of your brand. Disjointed content. No consistent brand voice. And, perhaps worst of all, a general distrust that your company even believes its own “why.”

The simple solution is to create and utilize templates customized to your brand guidelines. Doing so is not only easy, but also provides a much-needed marketing structure to ensure cohesive, on-brand content across all formats. 

Bringing 1406 on to create templates and brand guidelines for your team is the smart choice. However, at the minimum, you should absolutely begin using something that everyone on your team can utilize that will direct your content toward consistency. Making that small initial investment will be the start to big things for your brand.

Final Thoughts

As a small-business owner, it is vital you take content creation seriously. Your audience is depending on you to put out quality content that they can use, and it’s not going to happen on accident. If you want to master content creation like the small but mighty, successful teams do, you have to think outside of the box, be intentional, and focus on the creative process.