Content at Scale is a content marketing strategy that allows B2B companies to save time and scale their businesses. Traditional content creation is effective for specific purposes, yet poses a degree of friction in editing and feedback. The knock-on effect is that clients can’t produce and publish content as frequently as needed, slowing the rate at which they can position their brand in front of their ideal client.

Content at Scale allows B2B companies to catalyze their content marketing strategy and position their brand in front of their ideal clients sooner. All the while spending less time in its production. Isaac Castejón, Castleberry Media’s CEO, explains how Content at Scale works, and who it works for.

Q/: What exactly is Content at Scale and what is the main idea behind it? 

Isaac: One of the things we've noticed with several clients is that it takes a long time for them to review the content we produce. We understood that if our clients are too busy to review the content consistently and publish it consistently, they're one of the main ones being affected. So, we asked ourselves how can we fix that problem? And that's where our content at scale came in.

Basically, this service is a way to produce content at scale with very little feedback from the client. And the way it works is:

1. First, we analyze our client´s audiences. We use an algorithm and a service where we analyze audiences for B2B companies, and we're able to detect what they read, what they share, and what they're talking about online. 
2. With that information we build a report that shows the trends and how things are moving for their industry, their clients, and their audience. 
3. We sit down with our clients once a month to tell them what's happening with their audience, and the kind of content we recommend. 
4. The client then approves which contents we will move on to produce. But those contents are not necessarily created from scratch; they are actually interviews or roundtable discussions we are going to have with our client. 
5. We schedule the interview with the client, and we bring an expert from our side. We ask some questions and record that session. That session might be 45 minutes to an hour. And then we use that as the basis for all the different types of content we do after that. 
6. Once we have the “mother recording”, from that, we can extract a wealth of content. It can be a combination of small clips of that same video, a podcast, a blog article, five smaller pieces of content or microcontent, carousel posts with extracts of different pieces of pertinent information. All posted separately.
   

What this does is it takes the workload off of our clients back, gives it to us, and we execute. And it also allows for a lot of content to be produced from that one pillar piece.From those big formats, we can extract a lot of value, a lot of different contents, and then give our clients a lot more exposure on social networks and different platforms. 

And the reason we came up with it is we wanted to make sure our clients were able to produce a large amount of content. With this strategy of content scale, our clients set up the meeting, it's their own words, it's 100% accurate, it's what they want to be saying.

Q/: Are these interviews conducted virtually or in person? 

Isaac: Our suggestion, just based on speed of execution, is to do it virtually. We use special software that ensures the sound and visual quality. It's easy to set up for the client. It’s a case of logging in and doing the interview. 

Q/:  How is this process of documentation carried out? What things can be documented?

Isaac: Well, I think if the company is willing to do this, to open up about what's going on internally, we actually think that could be a really powerful strategy. And so if you're opening up, you can record or document anything that will give value to the audience. 

Obviously, you have to look out for what's not legal for the company to share and remove it. But I think overall it works really well if the company is open to recording more than just the interviews or roundtables, because then you're actually showing lots of different variations of content. 

Q/: How much effort and time does this really require from the client? 

Isaac: We've seen that the burden is actually quite small. As I mentioned before, we do the initial meeting, bringing the data from what the audience is talking about, so the research is done. And because we’ve done the research, we have the questions ready. Then it's just coordinating with their expert to sit down for 45 minutes to an hour and talk. 

Normally it's the marketing person that hires us and that works with us directly. That person doesn't have to go to all the meetings that we set up with the different experts within their company. They can just set them up. We show up with our expert with the questions, run the interview, and then we take it from there. 

We publish directly. We don't ask for permission. We don't ask for feedback. We send reports and let them know what’s going on, of course. Remember, their expert is the one talking, so it's their voice. We polish and edit, but in general, it's their words. It's really very beneficial for the client because they're posting all the time. They're always having a presence on the different platforms, but their effort is actually quite minimal.

Q/: What if they need to approve something associated with design, for example? 

Isaac: At the beginning of the relationship with the client, we'll do all the artwork required for us to be able to post. We'll give the client three or five different options of arts for each piece of content, for them to take two or three. The arts are pre-approved by the client. It's going to have the brand and its colors, but with each month and the different interviews we're doing, we'll just change out the titles or pertinent variables.

There are, of course, nuances. A few things are based on trust as the relationship with the client develops. For example, the copy outs. Some will want to review the first month, some clients a little longer. But we work to get to that place of trust quickly so that Content at Scale can really come into play. 

Q/: What other contents would you think might also be created out of this documentation and what are the particularities of each content? 

Isaac: Choosing the best formats and the best platforms really depends on the client and their audience. So we want to make sure we're marketing where the audience actually is. That is number one for choosing the platforms. 

In terms of formats, you can also run a study to understand what are the best formats for your audience as well. However, Content at Scale really works well with video, audio, and then that gets turned into text. We do the full spectrum of different applications with content and different formats, but it really is a video first or audio first execution. Video and audio are a big part of what's driving conversions in 2023. 

Q/: What are the main advantages of Content at Scale and how are they more beneficial than other methods of content generation?

Isaac: The main benefits are:

1. Producing content — at scale. The exposure of the brand is significantly higher. 
2. Speed. This allows us to execute quite quickly because there aren't a lot of approvals back and forth. 
3. Accuracy. When we're interviewing that specific expert on their side, that person knows what he or she is saying and we're actually using their own words to do the content. Nothing gets lost in translation because it's their own words. 

This eventually turns into more sales because your message is getting across, your brand is getting positioned. This is how we see lots of B2B brands growing in the future. It's producing a lot of content that's actually very valuable for their audience. 

Q/: Should companies eliminate content creation, or how can they combine these two initiatives? 

Isaac: They have different purposes, but we suggest companies to do both. The reason is Content at Scale gives you a lot of exposure. It's content that adds a lot of value, obviously, because you're interviewing experts. When you do content creation, you have a lot more control specifically over certain aspects of the content. So for example, if we want to do content that is very SEO friendly, then we need to do content creation. 

With Content at Scale, it's very difficult to ask their expert to include specific keywords, for example. With content creation, we do our SEO analysis and can control this aspect more efficiently. And it also helps if the company doesn’t have an expert that can speak intelligently on a particular topic. But again, it’s slower.

Q/: What would you say is the average frequency of publication that Content at Scale allows a company to do? 

Isaac: I think the right answer to how often a company should publish is as often as humanly possible. What companies need to watch out for is not stepping into sales mode because they'll fall into the spam strategy. And nobody likes that. 

If you're actually producing content of value, then the more times you publish and the more times you're there in front of the audience, the better. 

Let's remember marketing is a combination of exposure and messaging. And when you tie those two together, your brand will grow, your business will grow. If you're missing one of the two, if your messaging is just buy from me, then you'll lose the game. In summary, the answer is as much as possible as long as it is content of value. 

Q/: What are some of the challenges of Content at Scale? 

Isaac: Some of the challenges are: 

• Having good communicators on the interviews. The client needs to have a few people that can actually communicate verbally well on their team. 
• Scheduling the meetings when people are busy. Companies still need buy-in from the rest of the organization. That can sometimes be a challenge because people are busy. They don't see the value. They don't want to be interrupted. But if you are able to nail down those two things, this is actually a really positive strategy because it allows you to execute. 
• Commitment: If there's no commitment from the client to execute this whole project, then it won't work. 

Q/: Is there any particular type of company or industry that can benefit the most from Content at Scale?

Isaac: This primarily works really well for B2B. The internal runnings of a B2B company will actually be of interest to people in the industry and to clients. For B2C it can be difficult. For example, if we were to interview the head of marketing for Kellogg's, would that be interesting to the end consumer? Maybe. I mean, we'd have to figure out a way for that content to actually be interesting to the end consumer that's buying Kellogg's at the supermarket. 

But for B2B companies, it feels a lot more natural to be talking about the industry and what's going on and all these different things. It works for 99% of industries that are B2B and clients. For B2C, we have to take it on a case-by-case basis. 

In terms of industries, Content at Scale is pretty industry agnostic. It'll work for probably most of them, if not all of them. 

Q/: What does the client need to get started?

Isaac: The main thing is that the company understands that this is the way the brand is going to grow. This is one of the main levers they can pull. 

Technically speaking, they need a website and distribution channels such as social media channels open. If they want to approach a specific audience and we determine the audience is on TikTok, we might need to open up TikTok for them. But in general, it's usually a blog, website with a blog, social media channels that are open. The willingness to do all this is basically the main ingredient. 

Q/: How do you measure the results?

Isaac: For the blog post, we might measure:

• A timeline page. 
• Number of organic visits.
• How many visitors we were able to bring into that blog post in particular. 

For the videos and everything else that gets published on social media, which is the bulk of it, we measure:

• Engagement levels.
• Whether or not a new client came in based on those pieces of content. 
• How much time the people were able to view the content. 
• Whether or not the videos got seen or not. 

All this on a month-by-month basis. We don't try to pin the success to one particular content that we do. We understand that this is a long-term strategy and that all those pieces of content will add up to an overall result. We do measure individual success, but overall it’s a holistic analysis. That’s the key to the strategy.

In the video below, you can find the complete interview:

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