The Content Culture at ShoutOUT Labs
The gap year after my A/Ls was when I got to know about ShoutOUT Labs, and my passion for writing made me take up the content creation there. Initially, it was just me writing an article per week and when the workload increased, there were times when the publishing wasn’t on time or when no article was published at all. We realized that this wasn’t going to do if we needed an effective content culture which could influence our audience. And it was then that we decided to switch to the current content culture.
There are two things that changed after this alteration -
- We were able to publish a quality article per week for the last 6 months continuously.
- Our audience increased and more positive feedback were received for our content.
And, as the year 2017 comes to a close, I thought of sharing with you some information about the content culture that is fostered in ShoutOUT Labs. If you are starting a business, or planning to grow your business and its marketing, I guess this article will give you an idea as to how an effective content culture can be developed in your business.
Content creation can take many forms: blog posts, videos, ebooks etc. ShoutOUT Labs have been creating content mainly for blog posts, and later in this year, we also started focusing on creating YouTube videos, image-posts and stories on Instagram, and our next plan is to create ebooks too. However, in this article, I will be focusing mostly on our blog hosted in medium.com as it is currently our main mode of content creation and it is with this blog that we started creating our own content culture at ShoutOUT Labs.
The content culture at ShoutOUT Labs has several unique features which have not only made our content culture strong and effective, but also interesting and of variety.
1. Everyone contributes and we don’t outsource
Yes, everyone at ShoutOUT Labs contribute to the blog. ShoutOUT Labs currently has seven employees, who include our CEO, VP Engineering, VP Technology, head of content creation, and each of the rest responsible for finance and accounting and marketing.
You might think that content creation is a responsibility of the marketing section, but nope! Content creation shouldn’t be reserved for the marketing section. Of course, the marketing team can handle the organizing and publishing activities etc. of content creation, but the creation of content should be by everyone in the organization.
And that’s exactly what we at ShoutOUT Labs do. Not just myself, but the rest of my co-workers including our two techies (who have attracted a lot of readers) write our own articles for our blog; we write about trending topics, topics relating to the area each of us works in, or topics that we think would interest our audience.
The output of this contribution of writers from a variety of fields of work is the variety of articles that constitute our blog. (And where there is variety there is taste to suit anyone).
I have created a calendar using Trello with the dates for each of us denoting when to start thinking about a topic, when to start writing, when to submit, when to review, and when to publish. The dates are set in a way that there is enough time for the writers to write the articles without having to do it in a hurry, and when they are done, the articles are brushed up and published.
2. There’s no strict format required to follow
What I’m trying to say here is that the employees from different areas of work are not required to stick to one single format. Monotony is anyway boring, right?
If you have been reading our blog posts, I’m sure you’ve noticed how different an article of mine would be from those of our techies, or those of our techies from those of the marketing sector. Our techies prefer an instructive format of writing while some of us would go for case studies, and I guess I usually stick to the usual form of blog writing (being the conventional person I am — Ouch!).
This is great because it lets everyone write in the style they are best at, instead of forcing them to stick to one formal style that would totally take away their creativity.
Besides, I personally believe that being totally formal in blog posts never does good, and therefore opt for a less formal style all the time.
This is also effective when it comes to attracting the audience because the reader finds variety of style which makes it interesting to read, and the less-formality of writing makes the articles engaging and keeps the ordinary reader attracted.
And this is how the blog of ShoutOUT Labs is maintained. It is no easy task, of course, but if carried out methodically, you’ll be able to have an awesome blog full of information, interesting facts and variety. Moreover, in designing your blog, you’ll be taking the first steps towards creating your own unique content culture, which will in no time lead to the creation of more types of content, as did ShoutOUT Labs.
