It’s summertime. Isn’t the livin’ supposed to be easy? When the weather’s fine, and you’re intent on wringing some fun out of every sunny day, there are ways to simplify your content marketing efforts.

Check out the following 3 ideas to make your content work harder for you this summer:

1. Identify your customers’ top 3 needs and address them. Printers know what sort of information or education their customers need. You know from your sales and service reps what’s giving customers the biggest headaches. What questions are customers asking repeatedly? What topics pique their interest?

Once you decide on these 3 needs, develop content that deals with each one. If you send a monthly email, shape a piece of content about each that’s appropriate for an email. Maybe it’s better suited for a little video, or an FAQ, or a blog post. Don’t worry about the length; simply address the problem and explain the solution. If you’ve identified the 3 common needs of most customers, your content will be relevant and valuable.

This takes care of email or blog content for the 3 summer months.

2. Showcase 3 products with photos. Identify 3 different products you’re most proud of – and which also represent the best work your company manufactures. Is it a high-end stationery package that uses blind embossing? Is it a multi-piece VDP campaign that proved especially successful for a customer? Is it a beautiful magazine you produced for a university client?

These 3 visual examples should be featured on your site, with the background story on how they came about, the challenges they presented, the solutions your team suggested and implemented, and a terrific quote from each client.

Visuals are key for most types of your content marketing, but especially for websites and social accounts like a company Facebook page.

Unless you’re a specialty printer who only handles one product, you’ll have a variety of examples to choose from. Do it. Variety reflects on your capabilities.

This takes care of some fresh website content for the 3 summer months.

3. Feature 3 employees in mini videos. Customers like knowing the people inside a printing company, especially the service reps and the production team. Have 3 people approach this video (2 minutes or so, that’s all) with the same intent. Here are 2 different suggestions for this: 1) What’s your favorite part about working for this company? 2) What’s your personal passion, outside of work?

My hunch is you’ll get at least 3 volunteers for this project. Showcasing employees using little videos is an excellent and effective piece of content for a printing company. It’s genuine, personal, and fun.

Upload them to YouTube and post these on your site. Share the links in your social feeds and add the links to digital email signatures.

This takes care of some fresh video content for the 3 summer months.

The fear of doing any type of new marketing can be paralyzing. Summertime is perfect for easing into new content marketing territory. These are just 3 little steps that are well suited to the season.

Tell you what. For anyone who takes me up on any of these suggestions, I’ll add links to your summertime content in my print tips. Just get in touch when you’ve published. Are you game?

© 2015 Margie Dana