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How Great Content Builds a Strong Company Culture

At this point, we all know that content can help companies build relationships with customers. It’s why content marketing has been exploding for the past few years, and it’s why content marketing spend is expected to double by 2019.

But what’s not as ubiquitous is the effect that content can have on company culture. That’s partly because it’s tough to measure. Proving content ROI is hard enough—by comparison, proving content’s positive impact on company culture is much more challenging from a quantitative perspective. But that doesn’t mean content’s potential to transform and shape culture formation should be undervalued.

That point was brought up again and again at this year’s Contently Summit, held on November 5, when three top marketers—Gianni Giacomelli, CMO of Genpact; Ann Hynek, VP of digital content marketing strategy at BlackRock; and Brian Becker, executive director and head of content at JPMorgan Chase—tackled the complex topic of adopting a “content-first” attitude across the enterprise.

(Full disclosure: BlackRock, Genpact, and JPMorgan Chase are all Contently clients.)

Giacomelli, for one, thinks content is integral to fostering the right company culture. “Content has an incredibly strong grip on culture formation,” he said. “The moment we started having strong stories, the CEOs, the CFOs, the investors… [They] loved it.”

It’s the kind of approach that media companies, whose product is storytelling, live every day. When a marketing team is working together to produce high-quality content that is unique and actually helpful to customers—rather than interruptive—everyone from the CEO on down can be proud of their marketing efforts.

As Giacomelli explained, marketers have been moving toward producing material that is a two-way street with customers—in other words, providing value to them in exchange for their attention. Not only does this dynamic improve relationships with customers, it also means that marketers are creating work that doesn’t rely on tricking or annoying its intended target.

“At the end of the day, content isn’t something just for our customers,” he said. “If you write the right content, people that work for you will feel proud to work for you.”

Becker knows this firsthand since JPMC produced “From the Ground Up,” a five-part in-depth series on Brownsville, New York, that won the Contently Award for “Best Content Marketing Award for an Enterprise Brand.”

Becker believes that hiring people with content-first perspectives can really overhaul a company’s marketing efforts. “The great thing about bringing in people with different backgrounds than would naturally exist in [marketing teams] is the unique perspectives they have, the unique relationships they have, and their ability to tell stories,” he said.

To learn more, check out the video of the panel below.

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