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What type of content should you use?
If you’re aiming to add business content to your website, want to help bankers have more insightful conversations, and fill up your social media pipeline, it’s likely you’re considering one of these three sources of content:
Custom content, where each piece is written (usually) by a content agency (sometimes in-house) based on a brief. It’s often primarily for SEO (as that’s what the agency said), matching search key words with text, and tends to be topical such as a current trend, insight or recent event.
Business Content Library, where content is already written that’s ‘evergreen’, such as business planning and cash flow articles and templates. These financial literacy topics are always ‘on’ and don’t change much year to year. The content is still written for SEO, just not for something that happened last week or will happen next month.
AI such as ChatBPT, where someone enters a topic request into an AI tool, which then creates an article or checklist. The content is sourced from all online content, so though it tends to be generic and still needs someone to check the text, it’s fast and quick (and probably free, except for editing).
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It’s valid to source your content from all three.
You don’t need to choose one over the other. Here’s why.
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It’s necessary to differentiate from the competition, and one-off content that addresses a particular competitive advantage or angle will help.
Case studies are a good example, like interviewing Cheryl Gentry from Glow Global Events on the WebsterBank website. Maybe it’s collaboration announcements, such as NAB and Lighter Capital, or HarborOne and Clover point of sale. There will also be events and webinars from experts, like ASB’s Backing Business series.
Providing custom content that addresses recent issues is also relevant, for example in a blog, such as the rise (or decline) of interest rates, fluctuating currencies, international news, disasters, local events and all the other stories that have recency importance.
But, custom content:
- Is expensive (agencies will charge per hour). Custom calculators and tools are prohibitively so.
- Takes time (decide a topic, write a brief, create, edit, proof). Marketing teams are often flat out and don’t have capacity to deal with content.
- Is date stamped (after it’s written, at some stage it will be out-of-date).
It makes sense to subscribe to a business library that covers the main financial literacy topics. A cash flow template does not need to be custom created, as the formula is the same everywhere: ‘money in minus money out’. Customized yes: re-branded, your logo, contact details, calls to action and next steps should be unique.
Most of the business content you need tofill up a resource center should be practical content that business customers want to find, every day. Good examples are TD’s Small Business Resource Center, the Dupaco Credit Union Resource Center, or First Commonwealth’s Small Business Resources. Each has a different curriculum to appeal to their custom segments.
A business content library can also offer tools, templates and calculators that don’t need to be reinvented, such as break-even or loan calculators, interactive checklists, business planning content, and simple Excel templates customers can download and use offline. A good example are the Tools and Templates from HarborOne.
A business content library will be a fraction of the cost of commissioning custom content.
Most will know that AI is revolutionizing content. Type into ChatGPT ‘write a 400-word blog on how to start a business’, and you’ll get a blog that is good enough to post. It will cover the main points, such as idea generation, market research, write a business plan, register your business, get funding etc.
It’s fast, free, you can churn out content every day and the advice is usually sound. For example, one of the results from start a business is:
Create a Marketing Strategy: Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy to reach your target audience. This may include online marketing, social media, content marketing, and traditional advertising methods.
But it doesn’t tell you how. Or provide a marketing plan template you can fill in. Or align to a webinar or event you’re running.
If you drill further and ask ChatGPT ‘Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy for social media’, it will trot out similar text and advice, with short sentences and paragraphs. Eventually it all starts to look like the same thing.
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Use all three
Custom Content
Business content library
AI
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