Cultivating content is an essential part of any marketing strategy. This is the collection, creation, organization, and dissemination of content to be utilized within your marketing plan.
Just like a small business, our office also needs to cultivate content. We usually start with organization and building a content calendar. We begin with the easy days (like holidays) and create content out of our office that will parallel with seasons, holidays, or important events in our community. Then we build off of that, utilizing events/workshops that we are hosting to create marketing content.
In addition, you can use RSS feeds to help supplement your content. RSS feeds allow you to specify categories or topics for which you are interested in receiving information. Then you can pull out the best pieces to help inform your target audience (your clients, employees,etc.). For instance, the New York Times has an RSS feed.
When cultivating content, it is key to determine how you will be pushing messages out. Think of a newspaper, for instance. When you pick up a newspaper, there are different sections (similar to RSS feed categories) and all of the content in that section has a specific reader in mind (your target audience). The aim here, is that your target audience be interested in as much information in that category as possible. And that you report on that information well, so that eventually you will be looked on as an expert in that category.
Your readers will continue to look to you as a source for information, potentially recommend your paper to a friend, and then you have a larger readership, which means more newspaper sales, which means that you can sell your ad space for more money, and voila, you have reached your goal of increasing sales! All by cultivating content well.