In business today, content must be a key element in order to stay competitive. Not only do you need content, but it must be valuable and education-based for your ideal customer.

By now I’m guessing you’ve realized that every organization must produce valuable, education-based content in order to compete in business today.

It’s what the market expects from you. It’s how you get found, build trust, and convert knowledge into business. Of course, it’s a lot of work, too. Because content creation has become one of the most time-consuming and demanding functions inside many organizations, I’m always looking for ways to help organizations create their content in the most efficient and effective ways.

Many firms have added content creation inside the marketing department and hired dedicated writers and content creators. While this is a logical step, I believe it misses content’s true power.

Your content must represent your organization’s voice beyond just the marketing department. In other words, content creation must be part of everyone’s job.

You can’t simply hire a marketing specialist and put him or her in charge of the blog. People from marketing, sales, customer service, even human resources, must take part in content creation if a firm is to tap the awesome power this idea brings. In many cases, people responsible for many of the customer-facing functions have more insight into what customers want and need than the marketing departments.

Content as Culture

Try holding internal content workshops or brainstorming sessions. These can be simple, quarterly, all-hands meetings where marketing and business strategy and near-term objectives are presented, and then every department brainstorms on relevant content they could contribute to support those objectives. Make it part of your company routine, and it will become a part of your culture.

Few things bring departments together like this kind of engagement and participation. Not everyone will be enthused by the notion of being asked to create content, but many will be thankful for the opportunity and feel empowered by the invitation to contribute.

When everyone in the organization is asked to drive and create content, the entire organization participates in the process of engaging customers and prospects to find new ideas and insights. It promotes cross-department collaboration, and gives your customers an insight into departments with which they may not typically engage. In essence, your content becomes a part of your culture, rather than simply being a marketing project.

Create an Editorial Calendar

When there are this many people working on a project, it may be difficult to manage. A content calendar, created during these content meetings, is a great way to keep everything running smoothly. Someone has to be in charge of the calendar and often that job will fall to marketing, but there’s no reason different departments can’t sponsor content based on monthly themes.

It’s also essential that marketing—or a task force charged with owning the editorial calendar—create training and guidelines for creating, posting, and sharing content.

With these elements, you can make content part of your business’s culture.

This article was originally published on Inc.