Digital content. It’s not the most obvious or pressing thing to sit down and think about if you’re running a busy Cotswold hotel or even a digital agency, but formalising a content plan is an important first step towards achieving real results through your website, online booking system, e-newsletters or social platforms.

But what does that mean? Basically, it means sitting down and figuring out what you might be making, talking about, pitching for, playing in, cooking, visiting, offering in the next one, two, six, 12 months; then figuring out how much of that might be of interest to your market and finding interesting ways to create original content for your digital and social platforms to promote it all.

Here are a few pointers:

1. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Most of the time it starts with a piece of paper, a pen and a calendar.

2. Less is more. Nobody likes being spammed with too much content so go for quality over quantity and don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to do something every day.

3. The personal touch. Nobody knows your business better than you, so tell people what you’re up to. If you’re a hotel owner, blog about your new menu or post a photo gallery of your chef making this week’s special. That original content is gold dust and makes your social platforms tick along far better than a meaningless #motivationalmonday tweet that only you’re doing because you think you should.

4. Video content can deliver genuine value for money, but….. The assumption is that video content is going to be relatively expensive and, compared with writing a blog, it is. But if you plan it well, and know exactly what you want to get out of a day’s filming, you can create a year’s worth of content.

5. Think cross-platform. In an ideal world one small ‘content opportunity’ will create multiple strands, perhaps even each exclusive to a different platform (website, e-news, twitter, facebook, instagram etc) and so for a different audience. So, for example, if your head chef is in the kitchen making a brand new sauce, go in and film him introducing it for your instagram feed; and while you’re there take a photo of him in his chef’s hat for a blog post; and then take separate photos of the ingredients for a facebook gallery; and then ask him his top tip for sauces for an ‘exclusive’ tweet. Nothing will take long but you’re creating original content.

If I started to lose you at points 4 and 5, don’t worry. Not everyone is a content specialist and this is what we do.

We help with all of this by understanding your business, interpreting what you want to promote and then doing most of the work for you. You’d be amazed how affordable it can be to have genuinely good content that fuels your business. Get in touch and ask how we might be able to help.