4 Actions for IE Firms Needing Rapid Written Content

About a year ago, I wrote a two-part series of posts entitled “In marketing, move quickly.”

How can you move quickly?

If you’re an Inland Empire business that needs rapid written content creation, I’ll tell you how Bredemarket can help you create that content.

Why move quickly?

On the 99.9% chance that you didn’t read my two posts on this topic, here’s a brief TL;DR on what I (and others) said.

• If you don’t move quickly, you may miss your opportunity.
• The first post mentioned a company (whom I didn’t name) that hired an international marketing company in December 2021, but that hadn’t created any customer-facing content by March 2022.
• The first post also mentioned a bank that put a customer-facing email test togehter in eight weeks.
• Oh, and John DeLorean took eight years to get his car out, which didn’t help with his financing issues.
• On the positive side, the second post described how one company moved quickly. Rather than waiting for a centralized content creator to distribute content, Intuit provided guidelines so that its employees could extend the reach of Intuit’s content through their own social media posts.
• The second post also noted that quick generation of content is appreciated by customers, vendors, and partners.

How can you move quickly?

So let’s say you’re an Inland Empire business who needs to create between 400 and 600 words of content quickly, such as the text for a brochure, a blog post, or a LinkedIn or Facebook post.

How can you get it out quickly?

How can you avoid waiting eight weeks, or three months, or eight years for your customers to see your content?

Here are four actions you can take to get your content out.

1. Specify your content needs.
2. Ensure you are available.
3. Ensure your content creator is available.
4. Book your content creator.

I’ll describe these four actions below.

One: Specify your content needs

If you rush to create content without thinking through your needs, your content won’t be that effective. Take some time up front to plan what your content will be.

Ask yourself critical questions about your content.

Don’t know what to ask? I’ve written an e-book entitled “Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.” You can skim through it here.

The six questions (hint: you’ve already seen two of them in the first two parts of this post):

1. Why?
2. How?
3. What?
4. Goal?
5. Benefits?
6. Target Audience?

When Bredemarket meets with a customer, I ask more than these six questions, but they’re the most important ones.

If you can answer these questions, either on your own or with the help of your content creator, then you’ll have a roadmap that allows you to create the content together.

Two: Ensure you are available

Note the word “together” in the paragraph above.

After you meet with your content creator, your part of the task isn’t done. Or shouldn’t be.

When Bredemarket creates content for a customer, there are points within the process where the customer reviews the content and makes suggestions. Normally when I create between 400 and 600 words of content using the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, there are two review cycles. Here’s how I explain them:

• Bredemarket iteratively provides two review copies of the draft content within three days per review. (The number of review cycles and review time must agree with any due dates.) The draft content advances your goal, communicates your benefits, and speaks to your target audience in your preferred tone of voice. Relevant examples and key words/hashtags are included.
• You return comments on each review copy within three days. For longer content, you may provide the draft formatted copy for the final review.

Why? (If you read my e-book, you know the “why” question is important.)

Maybe I have questions that popped up while I was drafting the content. Maybe something occurs to you after you see the draft content. Whatever the reason, these review cycles provide opportunities to improve the content as I develop it.

But to get your feedback, you have to be available. The standard process gives you three days to return your comments, although of course you can return them faster. But if you don’t return your comments for weeks or months…well, that kind of kills the idea of getting the content out quickly.

Of course, in some cases delays are unavoidable. One of my customers was dependent on a third party to complete his part of the review, but the third party was not delivering. In that case, there was nothing the customer could do, and that content was delayed.

One critical question: what if you need your content very quickly?

• Now if you add up all the times in the Bredemarket 400 process, your total comes to fourteen days: one day for the review, three days for me to create the first draft, three days for your review, three days for my second draft, three days for your second review, and one day for the final copy.
• If you need it in one week rather than two weeks, then we jointly need to figure out a faster cadence of reviews. I can adjust the schedule to meet your due dates.
• But you have to be available for the reviews.
• And as I note below, I have to be available for the creation.

So when you’re planning to have Bredemarket or another content creator generate something for you, remember that you’ll need to spend a little bit of time on reviews.

Three: Ensure your content creator is available

You know how I said that the Bredemarket 400 process gives you three days to review each content iteration? Well, at the same time it gives me three days to draft (and redraft) the content.

Can I, or the content creator you select, hold up our end of the process?

Right now I’m going to tell you something that has happened since I wrote those two “In marketing, move quickly” posts in March 2022. In May 2022, I accepted a full-time position with an identity company, and therefore no longer spend full time on Bredemarket activities.

Therefore, if you need to meet with me Monday to Friday between 8 am and 5 pm (Pacific), I can’t meet you. I have my day job to worry about.

I have regular office hours on Saturday mornings when I can meet with you, and I can arrange to be available on weekday evenings or early weekday mornings. And of course I can draft your content and incorporate your suggestions at those times also, outside of regular business hours.

But if you need a content creator that is available during regular (Inland Empire) business hours, then you’ll need to select someone else.

Just make sure that the content creator you select is available when you need them.

Four: Book your content creator

When you’re ready to move, move. If you don’t start the process of creating your critical content, by definition you’ll never finish it.

So take the next step and find someone who will create your content. There are a number of content creators who serve Inland Empire businesses.

But if you want to use the Ontario, California content marketing expert, contact me at Bredemarket and I’ll arrange a meeting. Be prepared for me to ask you a few questions.

• Send me an email at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
• Or go to calendly.com/bredemarket to book a Saturday morning meeting with me.
• Or go to bredemarket.com/contact/ to use my contact form.