Content... everyone’s talking about it, but it’s pretty elusive for a lot of brands. They often think they don’t have anything, but it’s more likely they don’t know what they’re looking for or they think what they have isn’t good enough.

Brands can take a lot of different approaches to content from aggregating content that’s valuable to customers created by others, which makes the brand a resource for valuable content. Brands can also create original content, which requires a publisher mindset. The right approach depends on the business’ objectives and strategy, which should tie directly to the audience.

Original content allows brands to offer something that no one else can. A brand has exclusive access to itself, and it can open that access up to its most passionate advocates to keep them excited about the brand and what it does. It’s not about straight-up selling. It’s telling a bigger story about what the brand is and how it fits into consumers lives.

A great example is how Red Bull uses extreme sports content to entertain their audience while communicating to them Red Bull’s value proposition with subtlety.

Use the Tools at Your Fingertips

A brand has one key asset that they often don’t consider or are too scared to leverage—employees. Employees can be invaluable content producers. They’re often ‘in the trenches’ with consumers and know what they care about because they deal with them each and every day.

Tools also come in the form of literal tools. Instagram just released an update that allows both employees and the tool to be leveraged at the same time.

iOS users can now post photos directly to brand Pages seamlessly from the Instagram app (here’s how). Instagram is a fantastic content creation tool that allows users to make the mundane interesting.

Use it to post behind-the-scenes footage, brand events, product previews and so on. It allows the brand to pull back the curtain and do more than just tell consumers what they’re up to but also show them in an interesting way.

Brands could potentially identify a handful of employees who have to apply and get trained to have admin access to the Facebook Page and can share Instagram content. Rules will have to be put in place, but social media should ultimately live across the organization, and once trained, these employees become content creators making the brand’s efforts more scalable.

That’s just one example, but brands need to get creative when it comes to content generation and not over think it to the point of being stagnant. It starts with identifying objectives and strategies beforehand. Once there, do some digging. Talk to people across the organization who either have content or have the potential to help create it. Then identify the tools used to create it and determine a plan to bring the pieces together.