Are you managing most or all of the communications initiatives in your publicly traded company? While many companies hire specialists to work on communications strategy, content, investor relations and advertising, very often in the small-cap sector, the business simply doesn’t have that luxury. With less time comes less content, leading to fewer opportunities to connect with shareholders and investors. As both a startup and non-profit marketer, I have a lot in common with the busy IR Professional. Precious little time and resources. I am the content manager and strategist, manage Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages for 3 different organizations while also writing blog posts and newsletters single-handedly, and whatever else needs to be done.

With content deadlines dangling like the sword of Damocles, I learned how to create and deliver content efficiently. Here are my five quick content marketing ideas that will help you create great content in less time.

Content Marketing In The Context Of IR

Before I get into these great tips, I think it is important to give some context to what role Content Marketing plays in your overall IR strategy. Content Marketing is about creating value for your audience and your brand as well as how it can be leveraged to meet your overall communications and Investor Relations goals. For example, if your goal is to increase investor awareness of the company, your content should put emphasis on educating investors on near-term or long-term end market trends. If your company has an ambitious growth agenda, you should focus on content that makes capturing leads easier.

So before proceeding, it is important to take a minute and evaluate who you are, what your values as a brand are and most importantly who your audience is. Remember your Content Marketing goals should deliver information that educates and engages your audience throughout the investor journey. So Content Marketing is not a one-off activity. It is a process about demystifying any nuances of your organization’s business model.

Now that we have covered content marketing in the context of IR briefly, let’s go through some types of content that can be produced easily and quickly.

Visualized Quotes

People enjoy motivational and inspiring quotes they can relate to. Social Media users are fond photos and images. Putting quotes and images together works better than peanut butter and jam! You can combine quotes from a press release, your CEO speaking at past events or a quote from a news article and overlay them onto their photo. Best of all, creating visualized quotes is a breeze with tools such as QuotesCover and Phonto. Your quotes reinforce your brand voice visually and it can help you establish brand authority.

Micro-Infographics (Or Micrographics)

Producing well designed infographics can surely take up a lot of your time (which you don’t have). But what if you could condense data from longer form content into a single graph, chart and image? Consider creating micro-infographics (or Micrographics). For example, I created the image below using 2017 sales data from Nielsen Canada.

GrooveTechIt took me less than two minutes to create using a service called Canva – an application with hundreds of chart, graphic and image templates that you can customize to meet your needs. You can create micrographics from practically anything; from last quarters assay results if you are a mining company, to year over year revenue increases, or a breakthrough in vaccines you are working on if you are in the health and pharmaceutical sector. The point here is it is possible to create a simple, effective story from complex content in very little time.

Re-purpose or Remix Your Content

Take a moment and go over the content you have produced over the past 12 months. You will probably find a host of presentations, white papers, press releases and other marketing collateral you have produced over the year. That is a wealth of content you can turn into different media. You can turn your presentations into videos using Slidely, which you can then embed onto your website or share on social media platforms. Or you can go bite-sized with a 15 second video with Viewbix where you can create an interactive video in just three steps. If you prefer to work with text, your white papers and ebooks can be turned into a series of blog posts. The takeaway here is re-purposing or remixing your content library is your best friend.

Curate Content Like a DJ

I promise this is the final DJ reference in this blog post, but if you are really pressed for time, consider becoming a content curator. Like a good DJ, you can pick and post great content and share it with your audience. Consider taking advantage of a tool like buffer, a social media scheduling tool which allows you to share scheduled content on social media networks such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Here, you can share a mix of user generated content, advocates, business leaders any newsletters you have mailed out and general industry information with your audience to keep your brand engaged with them. The great thing about buffer is that it allows you to edit the content for each social network, so you can quickly customize your content for each social media channel.

Turn Investor Questions Into Content

As an IR professional, part of your time is spent answering questions from institutional and retail investors. As a matter of fact, I would bet you have likely automated some, if not all of the replies you send to investors. Every question is a content opportunity. Like a teacher, re-frame their messages as a story or illustration bringing your business model to life while getting your key message across. While every investor is different, they are all driven by the same goal – getting a financial return.

Final Thought

Running all aspects of the communications matrix leaves you with little time to produce quality content that will attract your ideal investor. That said, as a communications or IR professional you understand that publishing content strengthens the relationship between your brand and your readers. Content published consistently will pay you back with increased traffic, new leads and your chances of creating more online touch-points will help you with your message distribution. Have you used any of these ideas before? If you did, what were the outcomes? Please share your comments and experiences in the comments below.

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