Marketers, we are in the midst of the biggest crisis the world has faced in decades and you need to be prepared. If your target audience is the C-suite, the content you had planned may no longer be fit for purpose, as these execs focus on their new strategies and responses to the ongoing situation for the next few quarters. To make sure your message cuts through the noise and reaches these business leaders, you must be addressing the specific issues they are now faced with.

So, how can this be achieved? First, you must consider how you can adapt your content to make it relevant to your audience in these times. The campaigns you had prepared previously might not be as effective at capturing the attention of the CIO when they are wrangling with issues which will determine the future of their business. Your team needs to adopt a publishing mindset and approach - so you can put out time-specific, relevant and genuinely useful content.

How can CIOs ensure all workers are aware and prepared for new cyberthreats, especially those arising from remote working?

At Raconteur, we have spent 12 years talking to the C-suite about the issues that matter to them. We harness the expertise and creativity of our in-house teams, and commission tier-one journalists to turn our ideas into stories that are engaging, pertinent and practical. We also use a range of search engine optimisation and social listening tools to further understand audience needs. Now, we would like to use this expertise to help you.

In this guide you will find all you need to create content designed to make CIOs sit up and listen. We will share the techniques, tips and tools we use, including a step-by-step guide to running your own commissioning meeting, as well as briefs for ready-made content ideas. All you will need to do is...write them up.

Is the coronavirus outbreak the perfect time to push through digital transformation initiatives which will future-proof your business, or will tightened budgets halt this once-in-a-career opportunity? How can CIOs ensure all workers are aware and prepared for new cyberthreats, especially those arising from remote working? And what can IT leaders do to make sure they have the essential tools in their tech stack to ensure business continuity? These are just some of the things keeping CIOs awake at night, and answering these questions could be your way to get a foot in the door.

Great ideas are like gold dust, and at Raconteur we've spent years mastering our content alchemy. While there is no easy fix, we have developed a methodology for coming up with great content ideas at speed and scale. Here's our five-step process that, when followed correctly, will dramatically increase your chances of striking gold.

1 Do your research

The very first step in creating great content ideas should always be to find out what your audience wants. You might think that you already have a good understanding of this, but with the amount of change that industries are experiencing at the moment it's safe to assume that the priorities of your audience have changed too. Therefore, it might be necessary to re-profile your audience to understand their new challenges and what they really need insight on.

To do this, we recommend doing some form of market research, for example a quantitative survey or conducting qualitative interviews with your current customers. Not everyone will have the time or the budget to commission a huge piece of research, but even a short survey or conversation with members of your target audience will provide you with so much insight to fuel your content ideas.

Once you have this, you should look at what is being written about right now and what 'whitespace' your brand's content could potentially fill. At Raconteur, we have an in-house editorial team who collaborate with our network of tier-one journalists regularly to analyse the content landscape and come up with unique ideas... but we understand not everyone is quite so lucky.

However, there are a number of tools and techniques anyone can use to aid your content ideation process. We use a combination of SEO tool SEMRush (though Ahrefs would work just as well), social listening tool Pulsar and search query aggregator Answer the Public, to get the best insights into what the online reader is looking for. You can also examine what relevant publications are writing about and look for new, unique angles to take. 

2 Get the right people in the room

The secret to creating great content is diversity of thought, so make sure you have a range of people in your commissioning meeting. Identify the creatives in your organisation and get hold of those who actually speak to your target audience, such as salespeople or account managers. Make sure each member fulfils a particular “role”. Ideally you’ll need someone with a commercial hat on thinking about articles from those angles; you’ll need at least one Devil’s advocate ensuring ideas stand up to scrutiny; and you’ll need a managing editor to oversee. Finally, if you can get hold of someone in the job role you’re targeting – bingo! Going after CFOs? Ask your head of finance to attend. Setting your sights on CEOs? Try your managing director or equivalent. The insights they provide will be invaluable.

3 Discuss everything

Commissioning meetings are built on dialogue and collaboration, so make sure you create an open forum where everyone feels comfortable speaking. There is no such thing as a “bad” idea – with enough discussion you can find new angles which will transform even the most unpromising concepts. Remember, “good” ideas can become great ideas with a little brainstorming; no idea should arrive on the table fully formed. The real key to achieving great ideas is asking the right questions. What information gap is this filling? What should my target reader take away from this article? Is this really something that they are worried about or interested in? Never be afraid to question generally held assumptions.

4 Play with formats

Anyone can publish a series of articles, but you are vying for very limited attention, so you have to be creative. Switch in listicles (‘top fives’, for example), for-and-against features and roundtable discussions to keep your readers engaged. If you have the in-house abilities, make the most of your design or creative team and break pieces up with lovely illustrations and high-quality, highly relevant photographs, rather than relying on stock imagery. Support each article with additional datasets or pull-stats to help hammer your point home.

5 Briefing is everything

Whether you’re writing the piece yourself or are commissioning an external journalist, having a brief to follow will ensure that the output matches expectations. Make sure to outline the key questions you want the article to answer, have an idea of the ‘tone of voice’ you wish to achieve and, if commissioning externally, include links to inspiration articles or background research you might have done. The clearer and more comprehensive your brief, the better your finished piece will be. 

With some help from our head of operations, and applying the five steps to great content, we identified the following editorial ideas to grab the CIO’s attention. These are ‘oven-ready’ (to borrow from Boris) but we’d recommend that you spend some time to nuance them to reflect your own unique perspective. Any questions on the best way to do this, feel free to drop us a line.

Strategy

1. Doubling down on digital transformation as a result of the pandemic 

Suggested format: Feature

Recommended word count: 700 

Key question: Will coronavirus give digital transformation the kickstart it needs?

Now is not the time for businesses to pause their digital transformation efforts by waiting out Covid-19. Now is the time to invest aggressively to ensure firms are agile, resilient and competitive, and it is the CIOs that will be at the core of this drive. This exploratory article could discuss why this is the moment for CIOs to win the argument about digital transformation. Is this a once-in-a-career opportunity for CIOs the world over?

• Sitting alongside this piece could be a short sidebar on four to five key things that could supercharge companies’ digital transformation efforts amid the pandemic, looking at things such as cloud computing, automation, outsourced tech and data science.

2. How to discuss investment at a time of cost-cutting 

Suggested format: Mini case studies

Recommended word count: 800 (split into different quotes)

Key question: How do CIOs get buy-in when budgets are shrinking?

Enterprise technology is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ business expense, but a crucial part of what a company runs effectively. But at a time where all items on a P&L statement are split into either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’ categories, the cost, suitability and return on investment of every facet of IT will increasingly come into question. Using advice from respected leaders of successful IT departments, this practical article will discuss the ways in which CIOs can approach the negotiating table, ensuring they come equipped with enough firepower to fight their corner.

3. What I wish I’d known 

Suggested format: Listicle

Recommended word count: 10 x 80

Key question: What do CIOs wish they knew before the lockdown?

Drawing on the successes and pitfalls of well-known CIOs during the pandemic crisis, this creative, future-looking feature will explore the key advice that IT leaders would give others in a similar situation. What were the biggest mistakes made, and what learnings would they share with their former selves if they could rewind the clock?

Technology

1. Choosing the right tech stack for you 

Suggested format: Guide

Recommended word count: 700 (split into sections)

Key question: What does your lockdown tech stack look like?

Tech has been, and will continue to be, a key differentiator when it comes to how well a company can persevere through times of disruption, meaning CIOs need to be at the top of the table when it comes to leading through this crisis. But what does your lockdown tech stack look like? Are you equipped to move from a physical workplace to a virtual one? This practical guide will give readers a run-through of the essential tools right now, looking at the pros and cons of various remote-working apps and unified communication technologies, according to IT leaders and adopters.

Workplace

1. CIOs: the architects of the future workplace 

Suggested format: Illustrated feature

Recommended word count: 1000 (split into sections)

Key question: What will the future workplace look like?

The work-from-home era has ushered in a new wave of unified communication technologies, and CIOs have been at the core of this shift, choosing the right technologies, smoothing out adoption challenges and ensuring workforces are cyber-resilient. So what will workplaces be like when we eventually transition back to office life? This illustrated piece will explore the CIO’s role in designing how future workplaces run efficiently and smoothly. From VR/AR to holographic meeting rooms, the adoption of futuristic technologies has been accelerated by pandemic. But which technologies will have a real, concrete impact on workplace productivity, and which will be exposed as no more than a fad?

Workforce

1. Developing a cyber-aware culture 

Suggested format: Feature

Recommended word count: 700

Key question: How can you embed a resilient cyber-aware culture?

Developing and strengthening a cyber-resilient organisation will be key to surviving the move to working from home, but managing a workforce remotely adds another level of complexity for CIOs. What are key challenges in embedding a cyber-aware culture in the current climate? 

Security

1. The rise of new WFH threats 

Suggested format: Feature + box-out of emerging threats

Recommended word count: 600 + 200

Key question: How can CIOs keep their businesses safe in the remote-working era?

‘Zoom-bombing’, phishing, malware. The coronavirus pandemic has opened the door to a wide range of cyber threats as millions of employees work from home - some for the first time ever. As organisations transition to being based from their workers’ homes, how can they safeguard their operations from these new threats? And what role does the CIO have to keep their businesses cyber-resilient and data-secure?

So there you go, content marketing success in a box. What are you waiting for? We wish it was that easy.

Whilst these tips, tricks and editorial ideas can deliver you some quick wins and some much-needed traction with your target audience, we recognise that marketing is not quite so simple. In the long term, sustained C-suite engagement requires a plan that aligns marketing activities with business goals, alongside the capability to create high-quality content at scale,  and the mechanisms to get it in front of the people that matter at speed. 

At Raconteur, we work with leading B2B brands to shape their marketing strategy and create, activate and optimise content to deliver results. Get in touch to see how we can help you turn great ideas into real customer action.

Find out more about Raconteur Agency:

raconteur.net/agency

agency@raconteur.net