Leveraging a Content Bank for Consistent Brand Messaging

Leveraging a Content Bank for Consistent Brand Messaging: Boost Efficiency

Picture yourself on days when your bank isn’t working; you are asked to withdraw all the cash and keep it to yourself. It may take longer for the bank to reopen, and now you may get your salary in cash as well. Do you think you will be able to manage all the loose cash by yourself? Well, you may, but it will be a pain in your neck.

As financial banks play an instrumental role in our lives, content banks play a crucial role in the life of a content marketer/writer. Similar to how you save and secure your additional funds in the banks, you can keep your extra content safe in a content bank, which can be utilised in times of emergencies.

Imagine the relief of having a content bank to fall back on when you run out of ideas and have to post something unplanned. Content marketers know how difficult it can be to create an unplanned post; even writing a few words with captions can feel like climbing Mt. Everest. But with a content bank, you can create and store content in advance, ready to be used when needed. Having a content bank not only saves you from the stress of last-minute content creation but also helps you maintain consistency in brand messaging, giving you peace of mind and confidence in your content strategy.

While running your business, you must know the importance of consistent brand messaging. Whether you are sending messages through WhatsApp or emails, creating an offline newsletter, or posting social media content, there should be consistency in your brand voice and writing style. That is how you make a place in the lives of your consumers. A content bank helps you by keeping the content organised in one place. With the help of a content bank, you will have a stock of your brand content that can be leveraged while sending out messages to customers.

Let’s move ahead with our article that explores what a content bank is, how you can create one, what its benefits are, and how you can incorporate a content bank into your content marketing strategy. A content bank can be a central part of your strategy, helping you to plan and execute your content more effectively. Let’s dive in here.

What is a Content Bank?

A content bank is a place where you can store all the content pieces you create for your business. Creating content banks offers an efficient way to sort and organise your content. In a content bank, you can create different folders to segregate various types of content; for instance, you have a separate place for social media content, a folder for newsletters, a space for articles/blogs, and so on.

Here are the types of content you can store in a content bank:

• Written content: These are primarily long-form content pieces that keep your audience informed. Some of the examples are whitepapers, articles, blog posts, press releases, product descriptions, and so on.
• Visual content: You can use a content bank to organise your business’s visual content, such as product photos, animated videos, infographics, illustrations, etc.
• Social media content: The folder of social media will contain your Instagram posts and stories, LinkedIn content, tweets, Pinterest pins, and so on.
• Audio content: Your content bank can also store your audio content, such as podcasts, webinars, voiceovers, and interviews.

Benefits of Using a Content Bank

With all the content tucked in one place, it becomes easy to go back to the bank and reuse/repurpose your past content. This means the content bank will help you get more value out of a piece of content.

Additionally, you can use your content bank to store ideas and content pieces that were created at some point in time. Going back to the same content will help you re-create new content based on what is available at hand, thereby saving you time. Let us walk you through some of the substantial benefits of a content bank.

Ensures consistency in brand messaging

A content bank is a place where you can bank for your content needs. While it stores all your already-posted content, it gives you an idea of how future content should be created. Every brand or business should be consistent in sharing consumer content in terms of style and tone. Your brand’s personality determines the style of your brand messaging, and you must maintain your style and tone across all the customer touchpoints.

Thus, a content bank becomes a central repository, ensuring that all marketing materials adhere to your brand guidelines and messaging. Overall, it helps maintain a unified brand image across all platforms and touchpoints.

Saves time and resources

Undoubtedly, a content bank is an essential tool for busy marketers. Content marketers have a lot going on in their heads, and when it comes to creating an urgent piece of content, you can rely on your content bank. You can pick up an old piece of content, ask your content writers to repurpose it and post it on time.

As plenty of content is already available with your content bank, you do not need to spend more on creating new content. Repurposing old content is one of the best ways to save time, money, and effort for your content marketing team.

Improves content quality and relevance

Creating a content bank helps you maintain and further enhance the quality of your content. As you go back to the content repository to check and use the pieces, you will find more ways to repurpose the content and improve its quality.

Your content bank already stores all types of content in one place, so when you need to create new content, you know what type of content will work. Thus, the relevance of the content posted improves automatically.

Facilitates easier collaboration among team members

Your content bank facilitates easy collaboration among team members. For instance, you are a content marketer and have created a content bank for the brand you manage. Now when it is time to use the content already available, you can ask your team of writers, graphic designers, and content managers to check the content at once in the bank and make use of it at their ends.

They can discuss how to use the content while checking it on the same platform. Thus, a content bank allows for better coordination and knowledge sharing.

How to Create a Content Bank

We know that creating and gathering content takes time, but once you start organising it through a content bank, it will help you achieve success with your content marketing efforts.

Let us walk you through the steps to create a content bank.

Steps to identify and organise content

The first step is to identify the type of content that works for your brand. Not all brands use whitepapers and newsletters as part of their content marketing strategy, and such brands do not need to add content to the content bank.

Hence, you should determine the type of content that will work for your brand. Now that you have identified the type of content useful for your brand, it is time to add it and organise it.

You can assign your content writers, designers, and managers to create the required content and later organise it in the dashboard of your content bank tools.

Tools and software recommendations

Content banks save you time because they are automated tools that help you organise all your content in one place, digital. Here are some of the tools that will help you create a content bank for your brand.

• Trello: Trello is a project collaboration tool that helps you streamline all your content efforts. It has a free and a premium version and a dashboard to summarise your project data.
• Moodle: Moodle is one of the most used tools for creating content banks. It features an easy-to-use dashboard that lets you add, segregate, and organise your content in one place.
• Asana: Asana is a feature-rich content bank tool that helps businesses of all sizes create content banks according to their requirements.
• Notion: It is an effective yet robust tool for creating a content bank. It has all the features that you may need to create a content repository. It is a free tool available for all brands.

Implementing a Content Bank in Your Marketing Strategy

So, if you decide to integrate a content bank into your marketing strategy, you must craft a well-organized strategy. Sit with your team and ensure that the process goes smoothly, leading to properly stored content that is easy to access, adaptable, and effective across various marketing channels.

Here are a few ways using which you can integrate your content bank into your marketing strategy:

Integrating the content bank with various marketing channels

As an experienced marketer, you are well aware that each marketing channel’s content requirements vary. To cater to this difference in demand and successfully integrate content banks across all marketing channels, you must ensure you segregate content in the bank into different folders.

For instance, you must have different folders for blogs, email newsletters, video scripts, social media posts, etc. Monitor all the content stored in the bank and optimise it for style, tone, and format according to the platform.

Aligning content with brand guidelines

Content banks will be useful only when you create and add content according to your brand guidelines. To ensure consistency in your brand messaging, it is essential to create content across all platforms following the set guidelines.

You do need different types of content across various touchpoints, but it is essential that the tone of voice and style of writing remain the same. Every word that you write or video you create should resonate with your brand personality.

Case studies or examples of successful implementation

Content banks, when used right, can act as a game changer for your marketing strategy. Many brands have been using content banks to cater to their content requirements. Let us have a look at a few brands here:

Nike

Nike, the global sports giant, operates in multiple countries. Every region requires different content to suit the local market tempo. At the same time, Nike wanted to ensure that all the content resonates with its brand guidelines.

To solve the problem, Nike’s marketing team created a global content bank to keep all of its marketing materials, such as images, videos, and copy, in one place. It also established a centralised digital asset management system to help its local marketing teams access and customise content for its regional campaigns.

By integrating a global content bank into its marketing strategy, Nike could pull out and post relevant content according to regional dynamics while maintaining consistency in its branding and marketing efforts.

Coca-Cola

Another global brand we want to discuss is Coca-Cola. In 2020, the FMCG giant wanted to move from traditional advertising to a more tactile content marketing approach, aiming to engage with its customers on a deeper level.

Hence, the brand created a global content bank as part of its 2020 content marketing strategy. They created a cloud-based central content repository to add all types of content, such as articles, social media content, videos, infographics, and so on. While the content was stored as a digital asset, it was accessible across all the company’s operating regions.

With the help of this content bank, the company achieved its goals and objectives. As pre-crafted content was available on the cloud, the team could focus on user-generated content, adding a dash of storytelling to it. Their famous ‘Share a Coke’ campaign utilised content banks to bring personalised stories and became a huge success.

Tips for Effective Content Management

After understanding the concept of a content bank and its importance, let’s conclude our discussion by sharing some quick tips for effective content management.

Regular audits and updates

After you have added content to the bank, you cannot leave it as it is. It would be best if you always kept an eye on what is being added and removed. Take regular updates from the content bank and ensure that the content is being refreshed at regular intervals.

Utilising analytics to measure content performance

With plenty of data available, we can easily identify what kind of content is working for the brand and what is not. Leveraging reports and analytics, you can measure the performance of your content. With the reports in hand, you can ask your team to improve the content creation process and similarly make edits in the content bank.

Ensuring content is accessible and usable for the team

The content bank is created so that it is accessible to everyone. You must give access to the content bank to every marketing team so they can use it whenever required. Barring access to the content bank will not help. However, it would be best if you also prevented fraudulent activities that may harm the already saved content at the bank.

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

Parting Wisdom

Content banks aren’t a new concept, but they haven’t received enough support and popularity. The brands that have understood their value are using them and extracting benefits every day. After all, content banks make content creation a breeze.

If you want to leverage the features of a content bank and create content like a pro, you need to start adding all your content to a central repository. You can always reach out to us for help.

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