Does Your Content Reflect Your Company Culture?

Do your content and company culture align? No matter what your company’s story and mission, your content should reflect those values.

American corporations are a rich tapestry of the cultures that formed them. Whether yours is a flag-waving, “made in the USA” brand (think Chick-Fil-A), an outspoken progressive company (Ben and Jerry’s), or a playful take on a serious topic (Liberty Mutual Insurance’s LiMu Emu), you need to define your corporate culture and make your content reflect that brand image.

Certainly, you’ll attract more satisfied employees if your values align with their own. As the Washington Post’s Laura Brinton points out, over 75% of prospective employees consider your brand’s culture before submitting their resumes.

And, as Brinton advises, having a robust company culture will help improve retention. After all, a great cultural fit will be happier on the job.

Happier employees, in turn, deliver stellar customer experiences. That factor alone will build your customer base.

However, as a 2020 5W study revealed, there’s another factor that should cause you to create content that aligns with your corporate culture. Most customers of all ages prefer to buy from companies whose values mirror their own. Those numbers rise dramatically among younger demographics.

But you’re not in business to sit around the boardroom contemplating the meaning of life. You’re in business to make money by delivering superior goods and services to your customers.

It would seem that there’s a growing trend of companies who are creating a culture in search of customers. You know, the “If you build it, they will come” philosophy.

Problem is, they won’t. Unless your goods, services, and advice meet their needs, they’ll move on to someone whose products do.

So, perhaps you should look at revolving your company culture around your customers’ values and needs. When you make that your mission, creating content that reflects your culture gets a whole lot easier.

You just need to create products and marketing content that meet your customers’ needs. Make that your mission, and you’ll have a better shot at turning more prospects into paying customers.

In your next content audit, focus your content analytics on tracking down the pieces that best drive conversions. Those pieces not only resonate with your audience but, more importantly, fatten your bottom line.

Look for commonalities among these pieces of content. Those similarities can form the foundation of a marketable company culture.

Next, look over your social followers’ comments and questions – especially those from paying customers. You’ll likely find some common threads there as well.

Your sales and support teams will also be a rich source of customer data. It’s well worth the effort to get their perspectives during content collaboration sessions. After all, they’re the ones fielding all the questions and feedback from prospects and customers.

If you’re using a digital asset management (DAM) system – and we recommend you do – use it to identify words, phrases, and ideas that your top-performing content shares. These commonalities will give you greater insight into your prospects’ and customers’ concerns.

Those concerns – and the content that addresses those concerns – are the points of positive interactions between your customers and your company. Creating a culture around those areas will help you produce content that resonates with your target market.

After you have gathered and analyzed your customer data, you’ll have everything you need to put your corporate culture’s unique characteristics in writing. Documenting these essentials makes it easier for your content teams to focus on communicating your culture to your prospects and customers.

Meet with your company’s leadership to discover what goals they want to achieve. Then, align your cultural pillars with those objectives.

The result will be a cultural foundation that meets your customers’ needs, reflects their values, and aligns with your corporate goals. Refine your draft and document it in your company’s style guide. Then, revolve all your content operations and governance around that foundation.

Going forward, keep your brand on target with content planning that aligns with your culture and your company’s goals. Staying on message gives your content a coherent vision that attracts new prospects, converts existing ones, and turns customers into brand advocates.

After all, if a piece of content helps your customer or prospect solve a perplexing problem, they’re going to be more likely to share that content with others who share similar needs. And, if that content resonates with their own cultural perspective, it creates an emotional comfort zone that builds enthusiasm around future content.

Many larger companies evolve their culture over the years. National and regional shifts in customer attitudes and behaviors happen, and companies adjust their own brand voice to better align with their customers’ values.

You probably have a massive repository of past content, much of which could use a new coat of verbal paint to reflect your current corporate culture. Chances are, you probably found some of that content during your content audit.

Now that you’ve defined your company culture and have a plan for aligning future content with it, it’s time to refresh some of that older content to engage with your current customer base. Start with your poorest-performing content and move on from there.

Growing your reach into new markets often requires you to expand your corporate vision to accommodate new customer segments and innovative ideas. More inclusive content can help you reach those new markets without leaving your loyal customers behind.

Content localization can help you expand your corporate culture to accommodate the customs, mannerisms, and language when you open new markets in other regions.

If you’re trying to reach new demographics within the US and Canada, expand your imagery and brand stories to include people in these groups as central characters along with your current target demographics.

Coke nailed that strategy with its 2018 Ramadan-themed ad featuring two young women – one wearing a hijab and obviously fasting, the other with her head uncovered and wearing casual sports attire.

As the heat of sunset was about to overcome the fasting one, the uncovered woman noticed the other’s discomfort and bought her a Coke to slake her thirst. As the sun lowered over the horizon, the two sipped their Cokes together, each gaining a new friend through a common bond.

Now, that’s how you expand your company culture while leaving no customer behind. When you build in content that reflects that philosophy, they will indeed come.

Revising all your content to reflect your corporate culture is a whole lot easier with DivvyHQ’s comprehensive content marketing platform. With its content strategy metadata management system, your teams can easily track down older content that needs revision – and tag new content with phrases that characterize your new cultural direction.

Add to that feature the capability to conduct all phases of content production in a central hub, and you’ve just hit the easy button. Even better, you can try it free for 14 days. Start your free trial today!