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The 2021 Content Management and Strategy Survey reveals glimpses of optimism. But there are lingering challenges for businesses as changes to the way people live, work, and take products to market accelerate. [Read more](
By Robert Rose [Trends and Research] More of this week's best stuff: - [This SEO Refresher Can Make Your Content More Attractive to Google]( by Precious Oboidhe [Distribution and Promotion]
- [8 Expert Tips to Help You Personalize Your Content and Segment Your Audiences]( by Ann Gynn [High-Level Strategy]
- [20 Words Journalists Loathe (and More of This Week's Content Marketing Stories)]( by Content Marketing Institute Team [Trends and Research]
- [See More Content Optimization Stories]( Love It or Hate It â Send It Our Way
Have you seen an exciting, unique, puzzling, or eyebrow-raising content example, idea, or trend this week? Fill out [this short form]( to share it (and your opinion about it) with your fellow Content Marketing Institute readers. Weâll credit you as the source (and include your commentary) if we include your submission in an upcoming Friday article. Â A Note From Robert Rose Plan Your Bottle Episode While watching Friends: The Reunion last week, I was struck by something one of the showâs creators said about budgeting. Friends is one of the most successful television sitcoms of all time. From 1994 to 2004, the show never left the list of [top 10 most-watched]( television programs. It was also one of the most expensive television series of all time. By the last two seasons, each of [the six main actors earned]( more than $1 million per episode. The show has more than justified that expense since then. Some estimate Friends earns around $1 billion a year from syndication, merchandising, streaming, and other deals. What does this have to do with content marketing? During the reunion show, creator Marta Kaufman talked about how they planned âbottle episodesâ each season to manage the showâs budget. Bottle episodes are shot on one stage or location without guest stars or anything that would increase costs. The idea is to spend less on these to save for more extravagant storytelling in other episodes. Put simply â even on a show with abundant resources, the creators planned for the fact that not every episode had the same budget to work with. This idea resonated with me because of a recent conversation Iâd had with a content marketer. Iâm always amazed by how many businesses manage their marketing budgets by dividing the annual or quarterly budget by the number of months in that period. Often, that math continues down to the asset creation level. This content marketer told me he was asked to create six white papers in a quarter. So he did the math and assigned an equal amount to each project. I asked him why heâd done it this way. He said he wasnât sure what each paper would entail or where heâd source them. He planned to try to get each one created just under budget in case he needed to pay more for any that followed. This pattern continued until the end of the quarter, when he could then decide to pay for a more extensive paper or spend the leftover money on something different. This is not the optimal way to manage content or budgets. Itâs harder to create extraordinary content if you let the budget dictate which stories you can tell. A better way is to plan your stories first â then figure out which ones need bigger budgets and which can still be great with less to spend. Once you know the budget you have to work with for the year or quarter, use it as a tool for content planning. Which of your âbig rockâ content pieces need to be expensive, multi-set, special guest star episodes? Which will be bottle episodes? But donât misunderstand the Friends creatorâs point. Yes, the team had to consider the budget during the annual planning process. Yet some of the Friends bottle episodes ended up being among the best episodes of the series. Spending less on these episodes didnât mean the team could slack off in terms of creativity â if anything, they had to get more creative. You donât always need a big budget to create extraordinary content. But sometimes you do. Deciding which stories should get it is a vital part of the creation process. Itâs your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose
Chief Strategy Advisor
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