Agile is the ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent environment.
This definition is from the software world. It also utterly describes marketing's reality.
No surprise that the 'agile' approach is gaining marketing ground, a move away from waterfall planning to fast iterative improvements. At its heart, it replaces a features led ‘push’ approach with an insight led, customer responsive approach. It also challenges us to focus, start and stop fast.
'Agile' is rich with sports metaphors (scrum, sprint). Other 'agile marketing’ terms are especially interesting when applied to content - lean, iterate, stand up, user story.
Sometimes I feel like the ball, not the player....
But why should 'agile' impact content? Because in B2B, content remains a major element within marketing. Unless the content is ‘agile’ it actually gets in the marketing team's way. Time is wasted on the wrong material.
With our current approach to content creation, where content demands heavy resource investment and is increasingly viewed as 'spam', we may suspect we are ‘carrying’ content as a player: that it's not really pulling the weight it should in the marketing effort. Yet pressured to create more content, how can we make sure our content really is 'fit'?
In October 2015 Ben Harper published Think Lean to Win at Content Marketing on CMI's blog. The thrust was to focus brain-time on creating the right stories by building in early learning from ‘live’ proto content.
This is where an agile content approach begins: with the ability to create, learn from and improve content - live.
To work, tools need to be smart enough to make interactive content simple. We can focus the most valuable team resource - brain-time - on original content and insight when we know the editor tools automatically incorporate branding and optimise reading structure.
We can use smart creation tools to help assemble dynamic elements, push button fast.
By tracking reader interaction with the content in a way that mirrors how Stories were made, platforms can actively tell us what we need to improve. We can see which headlines and images are converting readers into deeper content. We can see which parts of the Story they chose to engage with. By structuring analytics around the reading experience - page by page, element by element - we receive direct feedback on what to shift. And with our creation and editing tools fast and ‘match fit’ we can immediately change the content: even when the ball's in play. Like a half time team talk, we can intervene and improve end results based on what we see happening live. It’s good to make 'mistakes'. That's how we learn! And with the right tools and processes, we can maximise performance whilst minimising pain.
To learn how Turtl can make your content more agile, please contact: Ben.McGill@turtl.co or call on+ 44 (0)7971 484373 https://uk.linkedin.com/in/benmcgill @turtlben