Smarter is better. Across our offices we’re always striving to get better, learn more and stay ahead of the curve.
That’s why five of us (two in Toronto, three in Halifax) took on the task of enrolling in the Content Marketing Institute’s Content Marketing University. We spent hours watching online tutorials and doing assigned exercises.
While we work in the world of content strategy and marketing every single day, we all felt it was important to validate some of our processes and procedures and learn new tips and tricks from other experts in the field.
“The key takeaway of the CMI course for me was to ask why not as a way to challenge thinking, but as a way to get to the root of the idea,”says Anne Stevenson.
“Whether it be asking why to figure out what the purpose of your blog is or to clarify what you’re really trying to say in a piece of content, it can serve as a gut check and help you stay in line with your content strategy. Asking why helps you strip away the distracting details and get to the core of what’s really valuable to your audience.”
The rest of us share her opinion. We found the strong focus on the audience’s interests and the various ways to dig into those interests refreshing and inspiring. It’s easy to get caught up in a company’s inward-facing goals and opinions, but what we know will really move the dial is care for and attention to the end-user.
What can we produce that’s of real value? How can companies produce valuable content that’s also unique to them? These were the topics that shone for all of us.
Additionally, we found early modules focused on team structure and set-up to be helpful. We work with clients to help them determine how to tackle the task of creating content and being “Always On” from a marketing and communications perspective. We enjoyed this course’s easy way of laying out different options for team structure and ways to bring content marketing principles to life from a hub and spoke model.
We’re happy to have our shiny certificates in-hand and are feeling refreshed and ready to apply some of our new thinking to real life.
