Nicole Bump On The Future Of Work In The Content Marketing Space
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant shift in how people work, including in the content marketing space. This involves increased use of remote work settings, increased reliance on technology, changes to content marketing strategies, and changes to content production and distribution.
In conversation with Mohammed Sajjad, Senior Sales & Marketing Director at Pepper Content, Nicole Bump, Fractional Content Director at Bump Inbound, talks about the future of work in content marketing.
Here are some excerpts.
1. Could you please introduce yourself?
I started my career as an in-house content marketer. I've been doing content marketing before it was even a thing, and I have spent a lot of time building a content presence online and in in-house content marketing teams.
I have been a full-time content marketer for three years, and everything has been going well. There's a lot of demand for it in the market. I started with writing but quickly realized that many brands need help deciding what they will produce from a content perspective and strategizing to meet their goals. I also offer content strategy and editorial planning services. I recently launched a course on content strategy with some of my colleagues.
2. What's the most exciting and tiring part of your job?
Seeing my work move the needle for a client is the most exciting part. Those are my big wins that drive me to keep going.
The most tiring thing is the lack of understanding of content in the B2B space. We live in a world of content, and it's a lot of education. You don't want to be overtly selling yourself. Your content should be valuable and selective, but many businesses don't understand that, especially outside the marketing function.
They (clients) expect that all marketing will immediately generate leads, and that's just not the end game. Yes, we need to be doing lead generation in some cases, but in others, it's more about building an audience or priming the funnel.
3. What's more important, quality or quantity?
There's always the dichotomy of quality versus quantity, and I think it's false. You need quantity all the time, but there's no point in creating something if it's not going to be of good quality. To some extent, you must regularly produce if you want decent results. The term regular might not be the same for every company. You might create a stellar piece of original content once a quarter and then chunk it up in a bunch of different ways throughout the quarter, and that might be good for you. But you need to be committed to content in a long-term sense.
4. For you, to create content, do you believe more in in-house teams versus pushing out to freelancers or even remote members?
I think either way works. If you have the resources, time, and capabilities to produce all of your content in-house, that's great. Especially when you're in-house, you know the business, your services, and the strengths and perspectives of your executives. But content production does take a certain skill set, time, energy, and brain power.
Many businesses can benefit from an agency or freelancer if they don't have everything they need to produce high-quality content in-house regularly.
5. In the content marketing space, what is the future of work? Is it mostly remote, freelance, or talent driven?
It's largely going to be gig-based. The remote work model gives the writer a lot of flexibility and freedom to earn. It's not only attractive from the freelancer's perspective but also from a business perspective because it gives you access to good talent and expertise in certain niches while also providing them flexibility around their monetary commitments.
You can have a great freelancer or contractor on staff without having to pay benefits or hire a full-time employee on the books. Especially when the economy is turbulent, and people are getting laid off, freelancing contracts are attractive to businesses while simultaneously being good opportunities for writers.
The future of scaling content teams is being able to take advantage of talented freelancers that are out there.
6. What's the secret sauce behind the content marketing success you have seen so far?
It can be hard to consistently provide what your audience is looking for. So make sure you understand your audience, their challenges, and their needs. Find the Venn diagram of the overlap between what your business wants to talk about and what your audience wants to hear. It depends on good audience research, and that's a little bit lacking in the industry overall.
Doing the research and creating really valuable assets allows you to put that work in once, repurpose it, and have a good presence over an extended period.