What Makes Content Strategy Effective?

In this episode, we interview Anshuman Jaiswal, VP of Growth Strategy and Operations at Nextupel. With over 20 years of experience, including leading roles at Infosys and AT Kearney, Anshuman shares his journey and insights into crafting impactful content strategies.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• How to balance quality, volume, and speed in content creation.
• Key metrics to measure the success of your content.
• The role of AI tools like ChatGPT in streamlining workflows.
• Tips for aligning content strategy across departments.
• Practical advice for transitioning from tactical to strategic content roles.

Get ready to elevate your approach to content marketing with actionable insights from a proven leader.

Transcript

Anshuman (00:02)
it's a difficult terrain I would say because you always question the ROI on content and there are basic metrics you know number of clicks, number of views on the content that you have produced but you have to look at more in a balanced fashion to see okay how many clicks I'm generating, how many views I'm generating if you are posting on social media

with somebody from your ICP going and liking that content. How many reshares and reposts do I have? publishing externally, you know, you would see folks liking it, commenting on it. So you'll see the engagement. So engagement metrics is really important. That means it is speaking with the audience. And the ultimate goal would be, hey, you are writing content for some purpose.

Ben (01:11)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Anshuman. Anshuman, how are you doing today?

Anshuman (01:17)
Great Ben, thank you for having your podcast.

Ben (01:20)
You bet. Well, before we dive into the subject and it's going to be a fun conversation really because you've seen all of the different sides of content when it comes to producing it, to managing it, to distributing and all of the strategy. So it's going to be really fun. But before we dive into it, Antriman, if you could give us some background about who you are, your career, and then we always love to ask, what do you love about content and marketing?

Anshuman (01:47)
So Ben, I work as VP of growth strategy and operations at Nextupel. We are inventory and order management software and services firm. I have over 20 years of experience working in a number of companies such as Infosys, Willet Packard. And in the last 12 years before joining Nextupel, I was working as associate partner for 12 years at ATKarney. It's a management consulting firm, wherein I used to drive

digital transformation projects for a number of CPG and retail clients. So in past life, prior to Nextupil, have done almost like 100 white papers in last 10 years. And at Nextupil, our mission is to bring the best of the content to educate, make our retailers aware about what are the arts of possible.

OVC possibility in terms of getting best out of their inventory and other management systems and content has a big role to play.

Ben (02:48)
I love that. love that. Well, today we're going to have the fun conversation really talking about content strategy and all of the different components and sides of content marketing. So to kick it off, Anshuman, when you're talking about all of these white papers that you created, you know, that's a lot of content written. What are some lessons that you've learned from producing that much content and kind of that repetition?

What works, what doesn't work? What are some insights that you have from that?

Anshuman (03:19)
Yeah, so Ben, I'm talking about, you know, pre-chart GPT and post-chart GPT era, right, if I can divide it that way. Pre-chart GPT, I mean, you did not have the tool available which can compose and write it for you. So it was a lot harder to, from the perspective of producing the content, editing it, proofreading it, publishing it, all of that stuff. That has become lot easier if you have an idea.

Ben (03:27)
Yep.

Anshuman (03:47)
You Chat GPT to kind of compose it, embellish it, and take it to the world. What is true in both the eras is it needs to be unique. Your content needs to be personalized to the audience. The content needs to be appealing to whosoever is reading. Because there's no depth of content. There's so much of information and lot of noise. So how do you, I think the challenge continues to be, how do you create

unique content, personalized content that appeals to the audience that it is meant for. And that is where I always ask our teams to kind of divide our content into two halves. That's the base content. You don't have, you you just need to describe a function or a feature or a product. And you just don't need to over engineer or boil the ocean. But there is a wow kind of content wherein

you need to ensure that your unique point of view, unique, not necessarily me too, is out there and consumed by people whom it is meant for. And that is where folks need to really spend time in terms of figuring out whether it is a wow content or not. How do I go about capturing the eyeballs? And that is really important to segment the content and make sure that it is personalized enough.

Ben (05:03)
I love that. So as you transitioned throughout your career from someone who was creating the content, really boots on the ground, really working on creating content and have gone throughout your career and have gone to a leadership and a strategic standpoint, you're probably not spending that much time actually writing the content anymore, but it's about training and educating and managing the team and giving them the strategy.

How does someone go through that pathway? How do they start to think about content from a strategic level instead of just the tactical, need to get this done level? What were some lessons you learned along the way as you made that transition?

Anshuman (05:41)
Yeah, I think that's a good point. I would first start with figuring out as an organization, you don't have to write too much because there's a value in volume, but there's a value in quality as well. So what is the right balance between volume, velocity, and quality? I think you need to first create that. Second aspect would be work backwards from the not star.

So what is this content supposed to do? Is it going to drive search engine optimization? Is it going to drive education for the customer? Is it meant as a tool for customer success? What is it meant for? So you kind of, you you have to segment your content and work with your engineering teams, product teams, sales team, marketing teams to make sure that there's a good alignment in terms of what we are aspiring for.

Otherwise you might create too much content, effort wasted or too little content, which is not necessarily meeting the needs of marketing and demand gen. So you need to create a lot of cross-functional alignment as well. And what I have seen working is, know, idea of tag teaming. You and I can, you know, can be assigned to write an article.

And that is, you know, we have each other's shoulders to kind of, you know, talk, talk through, or, know, use each other's, as, you know, ideation touch point to kind of, you know, come out with best of the content that you are producing. So instead of leaving it in one individual's hand, maybe create a pairs so that, you know, they can brainstorm, ideate, use tools at their disposal to write best of the content that they can.

in the time you have while managing the volume requirements, velocity requirements, as well as quality requirements of your content strategy.

Ben (07:33)
I love that. And I love the alignment between the different departments. And I love how as a leader, you are establishing the goals and the objectives to say content isn't just there for the sake of content. It's there to accomplish some sort of An objective to help you get to your end destination you're all row in the right direction as a company.

When you look at it though, how do you measure the success of your content? Often it's really difficult. We don't have all of the metrics. know, there's all these debates about gating or not gating and all of that kind of stuff. How do you personally look at success metrics and know if content is working or if it's not?

Anshuman (08:13)
Yeah, good question Ben. I think

it's a difficult terrain I would say because you always question the ROI on content and there are basic metrics you know number of clicks, number of views on the content that you have produced but you have to look at more in a balanced fashion to see okay how many clicks I'm generating, how many views I'm generating if you are posting on social media

with somebody from your ICP going and liking that content. How many reshares and reposts do I have? publishing externally, you know, you would see folks liking it, commenting on it. So you'll see the engagement. So engagement metrics is really important. That means it is speaking with the audience. And the ultimate goal would be, hey, you are writing content for some purpose.

And content is a great asset for B2B setting, B2B software, B2B SaaS companies. Ultimately, if somebody says, hey, I downloaded your white paper and it resonated with me and I would love to have a conversation with you. That kind of lead gen or demand gen is the ultimate nirvana of why would you write content. Or in the customer sector setting, say, hey, I...

I don't need any of your product guides. I downloaded your API documents and implementation guide, and I'm self-sufficient. Awesome, guys. You have done a great job in explaining how your product actually works. So some of those proof points or aha moments you have to capture as well to see if content strategy is working. But I would say it's an iterative process. It's a long-term process. There's no shortcuts in.

refining and attaining the object from your content strategy.

Ben (09:49)
I love that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love how you're looking at it on a per piece of content basis. What's the objective? What are we measuring? Earlier on, you mentioned chat GPT. You talked about how you had that experience before chat GPT, and now you have this experience after. How are you coaching your team to use AI?

but also in an authentic way, like you mentioned as well, having a unique point of view, bringing unique value to the conversation and the content. How are you leveraging and how do you kind of find the balancing point between content written by a human and content written by AI such as chat GPT?

Anshuman (10:27)
Yeah, I think ChartGPT is an awesome tool to do all the grant work that you have to do. Proofread it, spell check, typographical errors, compose it, edit it, proofread it. All of that can be done by ChartGPT very easily. And that's the time for content producers to really focus on the ideas. What is the wow idea that you are taking to the market?

or what is that unique point of view that one needs to read about. And so I encourage teams to really focus on that. You don't have to really focus on grammar and all of that stuff too much or how severe it is composed. Just focus on the ideas and use tools like chat, GPT, or Gemini to kind of help you compose, refine, edit.

iterate on the content piece. So that's how I encourage teams so that you can maintain the uniqueness and quality of the content while also conserving the effort and time that otherwise you would spend if you don't use tools like ChatCBD. So that's how I encourage teams to use tools and not, you don't have to avoid tools, but you have to use tools in a...

in authentic ways as you mentioned Ben.

Ben (11:41)
Yeah, I like that. So these episodes are short. And so we only have one more question before we run out of time. When you're looking at around the internal alignment, and I loved how you talked about that piece, how are you encouraging on like a tactical level, internal alignment between departments both inside the marketing organization and externally?

Does that, is that a cadence of meetings, emails, touch points? What's typically some of that information that tends to work well with that kind of a situation?

Anshuman (12:14)
Yeah, it could be multi-pronged then in terms of how you achieve the alignment. First of all, each organization is different. The nature of organization also drives what you do if you are in professional services business or consultancies. It's all about coming out with the next idea.

Content production and unique content production is in the DNA of the organization. You would be assigned content as part of your MBO. While in other organizationalistic software, you have to produce certain content which is stable stakes, your implementation guides, your deployment guides, your education guides. But you'll have thought leadership as well, whether it is blogs, videos, et cetera.

And it requires a lot of time and energy and effort from the leadership, from product engineering, sales marketing teams. But bringing, I would say bringing the alignment holistically on an annual quarterly basis so that folks are moving the right direction. And then on tactical basis, at whatever be the cadence that works for the team, whether it is monthly, bi-weekly, make sure that you have the check-in so that you are

producing the content that you aspire for. You are producing at the right volume levels that you wanted to aspire for. You are essentially checking on the objectives with whether the content that has produced is meeting or not. So that you are pivoting as needed if needed. And it also meeting the objectives of SCO and other items as well.

Ben (13:45)
Perfect. Well, Anshuman again, thank you so much for the insights. I love how you strategically look at content, get everyone involved, really holistically look at the analytics and the objectives. I think this is really good advice for anyone that is in a leadership position or even individuals that want to move into content strategy, content marketing leadership, things of that nature. Super good insights.

If anyone wants to continue the conversation and reach out where and how can they find you online?

Anshuman (14:16)
You can find me online on LinkedIn. You would easily be able to search me with my name Anshumanan Graswal at Nextupel. I'm available on Twitter as well. You can easily find by my name. just reach out and go to my website nextupel.com. If you are interested in anything pertaining to inventory and order management, just go there, access the content, drop me a line.

love to be in the conversation.

Ben (14:42)
I love it. love it. Well Anshuman, again, thank you so much for the time and all of your insights today. Have a wonderful day.

Anshuman (14:49)
Thank you Ben, thanks a lot, have a good one.