Don’t Ever Make This Crucial Marketing Mistake For Your Small Business
I think everyone can now say that content marketing is extremely powerful when done correctly. It can be tremendous when a brand is looking to build loyalty and differentiate yourself from other brands.
No matter how popular content marketing is becoming, it seems that consistency is becoming a major problem. Not the issue is not creating content, it is not the attempt t fine tune your audience, nor is finding the best platform for the content. It issue is simply not being consistent with your content.
Most marketers and brands tend to put out content only when it suits them. If they are working on a campaign or when they have a major event is when only when they find it convenient to pump out quality content.
Even when you feel that there isn't any meaningful reason to put out content, you should always revert back to the benefits that content provide. Also, even in "down times", content can always be utilized.
Your marketing strategy has to be in place for brand in order for it to work right. Once you have your strategy, then you aim for your goal. You cannot throw multiple things together hoping something sticks. Having a strategy helps to keep things consistent.
Why Consistency?
A lot of times, I see that some marketers usually will provide content whenever they feel the need to. Maybe you feel the need to address something that your brand need right then and there; so the content is provided at that instant. Then, it is posted on social media with the hopes of your target market sharing it for others to see. The thing is, because the content put together on a whim, it becomes a gamble that your audience would embrace the message.
There has to be an emotional connection between the content you provide and your audience. It becomes a hit or miss that anyone could have put out. Your audience can and will notice that the content was not really aimed to them. Especially when the content is not consistent. the discord is even more evident.
When you are pushing your content, you approach it as if you are building a large pyramid. Just think how big the pyramids are and how long it took the Egyptians to build those structures. They were consistent and they laid down a lot of blocks, especially when building the foundation. You have to the same approach, steady pushing valuable content in order to build a large foundation or following.
This is How to Build Great Consistency in Your Content Strategy
In the pyramid example, you see why you have to be consistent to build a large base. Continuously giving your target market great quality content within a consistent message puts you in a position to interact with you audience more readily. Below will be a few tips to help you stay consistent with your content.
1. Develop a Unified Tone
The first step to develop a consistent strategy, you must first have one tone. This allows your audience to know that whatever message you put out, it is coming from your brand. It should not matter if you are talking about the hot topics in your industry or if you are talking about pros and cons of a particular product. Your target market should know that message is coming from your brand's voice.
Your voice should carry a tone that sets you apart from your competition. There is a lot of noise that your audience has to decipher from to hear your voice. Are you going to funny, intellectual, or formal?
Well it depends on your audience. Know your target market and match their personality when developing content. If you audience love sports, them incorporate sports in your content; it just has to be authentic. You know how awkward it is when trying to fit in a group and you attempt to speak their "language". It comes off inauthentic and fake. Find middle ground with your tone and you will get the attention of your audience. Use this connection when developing to ensure you are developing a single tone for your content.
2. Schedule Content Using an Editorial Calendar
We have noticed that some marketer just tend to do the "spray and pray" approach: randomly put content out and pray it sticks with their audience. It is possibly to get some results from that method, but a lot of time and money will be wasted. We aim to be more efficient than that. One way to be more effective is to pay more attention to scheduling when you will put your content out.
A popular way to do this is by using an editorial calendar. This allows you to have more of strategic schedule to follow without the guesswork. Editorial calendars are for those that struggle with consistency. It is also great for planning campaigns and planning content to posted and shared. You can easily edit your plans as needed.
Credit: Content Marketing Institute
Your content in your editorial calendar can be measured, and those metrics should used in conjunction with your marketing strategy. Every detail that you want to include in the calendar, such as, lead generation, SEO, new ideas, product enhancements, or a modification of your strategy to be implemented within current strategy.
3. Team Collaboration
Some of you may be handling the content creation all by yourself. There is nothing wrong with creating all the content by yourself, but that only last for so long. You may start to run out of ideas or your content may become stale.
You should collaborate with your team or someone who is an expert in the subject matter you are looking to content in. You should get fresh ideas and approaches to creating content that differs from your own approach. This should be a joint effort. Your marketing team, accounting team, and writers should all work together with you. Ideas should bounce amongst you all constantly.
When putting the content out, you could all that collaborated or you could simply just take the information they provided and enhance the main contributor. By having a great team that works well together, you can and will be able to put out more high, quality content at a more faster rate.
Of course, every brand has their own needs and they all have their own approaches to content strategies. What works for one marketer may not work for the next. Create your own tone for your brand, utilize the editorial calendar, and collaborate with your team to become more consistent with your content.
