For months you’ve been painstakingly pulling together interviews from senior leadership, creating graphics to showcase financial data and weaving a compelling story to give a picture of a company for an annual report. The hard copy version is on its way to the printers. And the digital version has been passed along to the developers to be posted online.
Now what?
Sure, celebrate the end of a well-executed project. But what can you do after that? The material you’ve compiled need not stay bound within the annual report’s pages.
Instead, the annual report can become a treasure trove of material and inspiration to use as part of the brand’s content marketing. You can use stories, data and imagery within the report across the brand’s communications channels and beyond, reinforcing objectives with your audiences.
The ideas below will help you get started in strategically repurposing one of the company’s capstone communications, and may help drive more compelling annual reports.
Content Marketing in Context
Understanding the nature of content marketing can help you strategize how to reuse annual report content. While content marketing is making a buzz in today’s marketing and business circles, it isn’t a new idea. It’s a refocusing on the importance of engaging a specific audience to drive behavior. Knowing your audience and what type of content appeals to it matters. Create that content and give the audience a way to engage with it as part of a long-term strategy. That’s content marketing.
Perhaps one reason why content marketing has been taking center stage is that interacting with brand audiences has become more nuanced. Today’s consumers are bombarded with content—there’s so much material available that brand messaging can easily become diluted. Content marketing can guide a company’s efforts in reengaging audiences by becoming a strategic content producer.
The content educates readers and makes them more aware. It’s a soft sell that, over time and through consistent content efforts, can blossom into customer loyalty, enhanced and positive brand awareness and increased brand visibility.
Letters from the CEO Become Posts
The annual report’s central messaging usually appears in its beginning pages in the form of a letter from the CEO, general manager or business owner to stakeholders. The CEO will cover items like the brand’s mission and how it made good on that vision throughout the year. There’s often a nod to what the CEO anticipates the company will be working toward in the coming year.
Go through the letter and identify as many distinct points as possible. Perhaps the CEO highlighted an ongoing community initiative or an industry trend the company is championing. These brief mentions can turn into a blog post or series of posts for the company website along the lines of “Company CEO weighs in on industry trends,” or “CEO explains company commitment to local communities.” Expand on the mention to develop a Q&A or interview story to feature on the blog.
Once those blogs are written, consider including a link to them on the company’s social media channels. Evaluate each social channel to determine whether the content is appropriate for the audience. LinkedIn, for example, includes company-centric content, whereas the company Facebook page may be more focused on consumer-facing audiences.
Even better, you can capitalize more on these blog posts by turning them into media pitches. Send a blog link to members of the media and alert them that your CEO is available for interviews on the topic. You might turn one of the posts into a bylined editorial from the company CEO to submit to regional and national newspapers.
Profile Sidebars as Social Media
An associate who goes above and beyond for a customer; the volunteer efforts of a mid-level manager; a child whose life was saved by one of the company’s products or services. Many annual reports highlight the brand’s ethos through stories featuring employees or those who directly benefited from their actions. You can ensure those stories receive more play.
Turn that volunteer’s profile into a Facebook post on the company’s page. Include a picture and a brief description snatched from the annual report. Or you might plot several of these types of posts on LinkedIn and link them for consumers (and for your own tracking purposes) with a consumer-friendly hashtag.
Don’t forget to follow the post’s engagement, offering feedback to those who comment. Keep in mind that you will most likely need to put paid support behind your Facebook or LinkedIn effort so it receives added attention. What’s helpful with these social media platforms is the ad buys are affordable for any budget and offer a highly targeted audience.
Company Stats as Infographics
Is there something new happening with company operations? What about product innovations? Comb through the annual report for interesting tidbits that can be communicated through an infographic.
An infographic can distill a range of information into an engaging image. So take the listing of company stores, where they’re located and how much square footage that represents for the company. Turn that data into an infographic. Employee figures also can be represented in an infographic to draw more interest not only from a stakeholder audience but also from prospects. These infographics can be shared on the company’s website and LinkedIn pages.
Reach out to customers through infographics by highlighting the history of a product. For instance, if the company launched a product featured in the annual report, showcase it in an infographic with the evolution of its design. Consider which of the company’s audiences might benefit from receiving the information, and then share it on platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Add interest to sell sheets or even the product pages on the company corporate site by including the infographic.
Bucking the social media momentum, email newsletters remain a powerful tool to reach company audiences, whether donors, employees, stakeholders, customers or prospects.
Mine the annual report for content that fits into existing company newsletters. If the company created a technology, expand on the topic for a newsletter or perhaps do a Q&A with the product designer on its development. Any kind of company initiative, new program or service line can be swiped from the report and used in a newsletter.
Even the list of employees may offer potential content. Did the company add additional executives? Write Q&As for the corporate site profiling new hires. From that information, work with executives to come up with white paper topics that can be passed along through the company website and shared via LinkedIn and email blasts.
Another central element to any annual report is financial data and statistics. Admittedly, numbers don’t immediately elicit interest from anyone other than diehard investors (and maybe a few closet data junkies). But many annual reports now showcase data in more visually driven formats than simply a list of figures. Once-dull pie charts and line graphs are being reimagined, whether it’s by adding more color or images, or in the digital version by providing animated formats so viewers can interact with the data.
Follow the lead in communicating data in a new way by reviewing the figures to see what stories they may hold that you can pitch to trade journals. Is a rise in company revenue related to one service line while another is falling? Tie that into an industry trend to query a business journal. Are operating costs increasing? Use the numbers to align with a content piece on how to effectively manage operating expenses for an industry publication or website.
Beyond financial data, what other statistical information does the company report that can become part of a larger industry story? Once you start brainstorming ideas based on an annual report, you’re bound to come up with other ways to use the material through the company’s communications.
Circle back with content originators. Is there additional material they can provide? Since these people were good sources, perhaps you can work with them all year, instead of just on the annual report.
SIDEBAR
Use Content Marketing To Create An Annual Report
What’s the best time to think about what to include in an annual report? Before the year begins, says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute.
Strategize with leadership to define company objectives for the year. What problem are they trying to solve through communications, and who is the audience they’re trying to reach? Work from there to create a plan to develop content that offers value to that audience. And use the company’s social channels to spread that message. “An annual report often is seen as a separate company communication,” Pulizzi says. “But what you can do is start to develop an editorial calendar to work from all year long, and those pieces and parts can become the annual report. That way you have a built-in audience and you’re offering it regular communications. That way the annual report becomes a celebration and a culmination of the year.”
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