Your content marketing strategy doesn’t seem to be working so well as of late. It’s chaotic and doesn’t seem to be driving conversions. No one is engaging.
So, what’s going wrong?
Chances are, something is diluting your content strategy. Something is watering down the deep vibrant colors that you had planned to use to define your brand.
But what is it? If your content strategy feels disorganized and diluted, one of the following caused it.
You Didn’t Answer These Questions
Who?
You need to know who you audience is. This means knowing their needs, their wants, and what motivates them. What social platforms do they use? What marketing channels are the most effective in in influencing them. These are things that you learn through testing and the creation of buyer personas. The answers to this question are the backbone to a solid content strategy.
If you’re looking for a launching point, I wrote a post to get your started creating buyer personas.
What?
If you don’t define the type of content that your brand focuses on creating then your strategy will be disorganized and weak, like a bad cup of coffee. Define strong and rich content forms that will engage your audience and make it easier to convert them. You need to pick content and channels that compliment one another.
How?
Lay out a plan for your content strategy. Figure out who is responsible for creating what and when it will be due. The most effective way to do this is to create a content calendar with your team. Set publish/campaign launch dates and work backwards, leaving lots of room for error or issues in the creative process. It may often seem like overkill, but your team will produce better work if they have time to work out the kinks in the content you create.
You Have Too Many Stakeholders
One of the most common reasons that a content strategy gets diluted is that too many people have a say in what, when and how the content is sent out.
When you have the CEO, the VP, the creative director, the marketing director, and the sales manager all trying to exert their will over content creation, chances are they will not all have ideas that follow the strategy that you laid out above. If this sounds like an issue that you deal with at your organization, consider delegating the role of keeping on strategy to one individual. This should be someone who is working with the content the most closely, like the marketing manager.
Eliminating the outside forces that might get your brand off strategy might not always be possible, but having one person decide which ideas are good or bad will help.
You’re Too Rigid
Sometimes, if you make your content strategy too rigid, you risk making it ineffective. Be sure to design fluidity into your content strategy which allows you to be adaptive.
Adopting new forms of content and being open to adopting new ideas is critical. Otherwise, your content strategy can become dated and ineffective.
You’re Too Flexible
Much like having too many stakeholders, if you are too flexible in your content strategy, you risk losing sight of your vision.
Adopting new technologies, content types, and ideas are important, but do not adopt something just because it’s new and different.
Too many companies jump on the bandwagon and follow the latest trendy blog post idea or try to use the latest social media platform without considering whether it fits their strategy.
Perhaps a good method to approach adopting new technologies is to have a meeting and make a list of new ideas to adopt. In this meeting, vet the new ideas against your strategy and consider if your buyer personas will respond to the new content forms. Ponder if your buyers are responsive to new ideas and technologies or if they are more set in their ways.
You’re Inconsistent
No matter how amazing your content strategy is, it’s useless if you don’t follow it.
If you have a stylebook, ensure that everything you write follows it. If you have brand colors, make sure that your posts reflect that.
One of the most important examples of this is consistent timing. Your posts should come out at a consistent time each week or month or day. This means that your audience knows when to expect a fresh bit of content.
A solid content strategy is one that is clear and consistent. As your work to create content and launch marketing campaigns, be sure to take note of the factors above that might dilute your brands content beyond recognition. It’s easy to let your team or your brand in general get off track, be it because of external factors or internal.
How do you keep your content strategy on track? Do you have a method that keeps your content strategy agile? Share with us in the comments section.
