What’s a Content Studio?
A studio — that sounds kind of creative, right? Well yes, ours is. Just don’t expect to find us wearing a paint-splattered smock with a brush gripped between our teeth as we channel our inner-Van Gogh. That might be fun to do, but it’s not us. Not during working hours, at any rate.
We are makers, however. Our Content Studio is a unit that unites Salween Group’s content strategists, copywriters, video producers and graphic artists as a cohesive team making multimedia content for brands. So, while there’s certainly plenty of creativity going on here, everything we produce is backed by journalistic rigour, intelligence, critical thinking, and expertise in the art of storytelling. And most importantly, we understand how this all fits together with the science of data and analytics. This means we are positioned to develop an integrated approach to all forms of content across the agency.
Essentially, the Content Studio is an in-house multimedia resource that collaborates with clients to understand their needs and translate that into smart, impactful content for a variety of channels that solves business challenges.
But why? Because there’s tremendous value in great content — for any business or organisation, it sells your expertise, your credibility, your trustworthiness and your values to your audience. It can motivate and educate your employees, new talent and other stakeholders. That’s a lot of good stuff boosting your bottom line, in other words.
Our Content Studio’s talents lie in achieving results by creating content that resonates — content that educates or entertains the target audience or demonstrates thought leadership. From evergreen website content to tactical campaigns, thought leadership to social media snippets, and press releases to CEO speeches, we have it covered.
Winning in this landscape means cutting through all the noise and producing stuff people really want to spend time reading or viewing. How do we do that? Read on to learn more about our core skills.
An Eye for a Story
In the crowded space that is content and digital marketing, we differentiate ourselves through the quality of our in-house editorial knowledge. Our Content Studio’s journalism pedigree has taught us how to spot a good news story and hot trends. We keep our finger on the pulse of media, culture, lifestyle and the political atmosphere to understand what content has the best chance of getting consumed today.
For us, authentic storytelling has the most power to engage, which means treating audiences with respect. Today’s consumers – especially the millennials and younger generations who have grown up with the Internet — are increasingly savvy and can see through a weak or inauthentic message in a fraction of a second, swiping it away and moving on to find something more snackable. Getting someone to pause for a moment demands giving something worthy of their precious time.
The Content Studio team is focused on ideation and creation with great speed, finesse and quality. This starts with the ability to string words into stories that inspire and empower, copywriting, editing or ghostwriting copy that is on point and creative.
Science also has a part to play here. We use SEO tools such as SEMrush — part of Salween Group’s comprehensive martech stack — to help our content get discovered online by the right audiences. We’re careful how we use SEO as littering articles repeatedly with keywords will turn off audiences and undo all the good work. Done right, however, this is when content becomes a valuable traffic driver as part of a brand’s marketing campaign.
Bringing Clarity to the Complex
Working with clients in the fintech and capital investment sectors, we embrace the challenge of making the biggest impact with the most technically complex subject matter. Building knowledge informs the direction of the content and provides context within the writing style.
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to content creation, we know that every industry is unique and requires a nuanced approach
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to content creation, we know that every industry is unique and requires a nuanced approach. This calls for good old-fashioned research. We read. A lot. We’ll ask questions that matter to get to the root of a brief, to both save time and make sure we hit your right thought leadership or product press release selling point spot on.
As mentioned earlier, we have in-house content creation expertise and plenty of it. But sometimes we need to supplement this with external resources, either because we’re overloaded with work (we’re not complaining!) or we have a piece of content that demands specialist knowledge. In such cases, we go to our bank of freelance content writers. This is never a case of outsourcing work to the lowest bidder or commissioning anonymous contributors we’ve never tested before. We only use hand-picked, experienced professionals whom we trust. They are experts in their respective fields or local markets. This is important: after all, what we create is just as important as how we publish, promote and amplify our clients’ content.
Hard-working Content
We consider a brand’s website to be its most important digital marketing asset, so getting the copy and content right here is essential. This is your brand’s shop window, after all. Fresh, engaging content on a new or refreshed website can be used to engage users from the awareness stage through to the consideration stage. In terms of content production, we’re able to go beyond the traditional text-and-photo blog paradigm and create infographics, video, and motion graphics, and add on features such as case studies and testimonials to white papers. We’ve successfully done this for many B2C consumer brands and B2B clients.
We often deploy tactical landing pages as a key lead generation tool for online campaigns. Crafting the messaging is key, and a core skill of the Content Studio. Good landing page copy brings clarity to a complex product, explaining its benefits and how it solves a business problem without sounding hard-sell. We work hard to get the tone of voice and language just right to target specific verticals or personas.
And finally…
Perhaps the most important skill of all in the Content Studio is the ability to see content through the eyes of the audience that will consume it. There’s no short-cut to this. It simply requires a depth of experience — an understanding of what’s worked well in the past — as well as intuition about what may or may not resonate tomorrow. While not quite in the Van Gogh mould, you could say a touch of the visionary comes in handy in the Content Studio after all.
Like to know more about how our Content Studio can help your business? Drop us a line now to arrange a chat.
