If you want your company to even have a chance of getting its message out, you have to create great content. The definitions of what “great” and “content” mean have changed a lot over the years, but one thing hasn’t changed—it’s hard to keep content flowing after the first rush of excitement fades. Content marketing isn’t a “one and done” thing, it’s a “wash, rinse, repeat” thing.
I’ve watched a lot of great content marketing programs—mine included—fade, wither, and die because no one planned for how to keep the content engine running after it started down the road. Everyone thinks once you get the engine going it will keep going on its own, but it never does, you need to keep filling the engine up with fuel or it will stall, stop, and die on the side of the road.
I’ve seen this happen over and over again, and here are the five reasons content engines fail that I’ve seen most often—and what you can do about them (before and after the fact). These reasons apply just as much to podcasts, social media posts, and video, as they do to written content. There’s no difference in the type of content because it’s the process of creating and publishing it that matters—and that’s where things always go wrong.
If you’re expecting one of the five reasons to be “you didn’t have a plan,” you’re going to be disappointed (or relieved). I’ve worked at enough places to know that, of course there was a plan, there’s always a plan. The problem isn’t the plan itself, but all the things outside of and left out of the plan that get in the way of success.
Executive support wavers
This problem comes down to resources and attention. Without steadfast executive support, when another more urgent problem comes up, resources are pulled from that “content project” to something else. Even if it’s a “quick thing we need done right away” you’ll lose momentum—especially if you’re in the early days of getting your content engine flowing.
Your executive team has to understand content marketing is a long haul strategy. You can’t expect success in the first weeks or months; you might not even see real success for a year. Content marketing is a strategy that pays dividends after years of hard work and dedication. It takes constant effort and resourcing to be successful, and if you pull those resources away, the content program might not fail right away, but it will absolutely fail eventually.
Me too content strategy
I saw this happen a lot in the early days of business blogging. Everyone thought they should have a blog, and every business jumped on the blog bandwagon. I benefited from this, of course, having built the early part of my career on creating content for businesses to support their goals. Things quickly fell off because a lot of people were just doing it because everyone else was just doing it. There was no business driver to do it, or if there was, no one had really taken the time to figure it out. Most businesses have come back to having a blog of some kind, but that’s only because now a blog is considered a core part of marketing communications, and not something extra.
If you’re jumping onto the branded podcast, short form social videos, or AI-powered marketing bandwagon, and you’re doing it just because everyone else is doing it, it will not work out well. It’s just like what your mom said, “If everyone else jumped off a bridge would you too?”
A “me too” content strategy never works because it’s reactive. You’re not responding to a business need, you’re not responding to a customer need, you’re not responding to anything that has longevity. You’re just looking at what all your competitors are doing and reacting to it.
“We have to have a podcast,” “we have to have Tik Tok shorts,” “we have to have videos on YouTube,” these are hard to push back on when your executive leadership is telling you to do them. But the questions that needs to be asked are: “Do we?” and “Why?” If you don’t ask those questions up front, sooner or later the reasons for doing the podcast, the blog, the shorts, or videos will fall away to other priorities.
Without a “why” behind what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it until you do.
No quick wins
We all love quick wins that prove whatever new tactic we’re trying is working. It’s a thrill when you can send the news up the chain that “See our podcast is going to be a smash! Look at all these listeners and Sales already got a lead from our first episode!” However, that’s probably not going to happen.
It takes around a year for a branded podcast to get traction—even if you have a couple break out episodes. A thought leadership blog will take a few months of trial and error to find content that connects with your target audience. Part of having real buy-in from leadership is setting realistic expectations for both what success looks like and when they can expect to see results.
Aiming for some quick wins to prove out the idea is great, but set realistic expectations of what a “quick win” means is essential so no one is expecting being Apple’s Breakout Podcast of the Week with the first episode.
Focus on the output, not the input
When people kick off a content program, they typically spend a lot of time focusing on the output—the blog post, the podcast, the shorts—but not a lot of time on how will the work get done in the long term once the excitement fades. When everyone is excited about the new content program, it’s easy to get people to write a blog post, a newsletter aritcle, sit down and record a few podcast episodes. The problem is all those people are doing that off the side of their desks; it’s not their “real job.” So when push comes to shove, they will be told to focus on their job and not this side project (Executive support wavers), and that will tank your content program—fast.
If you want your content engine to keep running you need to find people whose job it is to:
- write blog posts and manage the blog
- manage the podcast including production, editing, promotion, and metrics
- create videos, post them, and track attention metrics
- manage social content, build a following, and get employees to share the content too
Yes, a marketing team can do all this, but if they are already stretched thin—and what marketing team isn’t—they will have to fall back to core tasks. If content generation isn’t one of them, it will get pushed to the back burner. Even if you have a powerful content engine cranking out great blog posts or newsletters, adding a podcast might be just too much for the team to handle. Turning your successful audio-first podcast to a video-first one, calls for a different skill set than you’re probably set up for and your team could buckle under the strain.
Which leads to the final reason—you don’t have the specialized talent you need to grow beyond the getting started phase.
No internal experts
This is part of the focusing on the output while forgetting the input problem. Most marketers I know are “T-shaped” marketers; they have a broad range of skills with a singular area of expertise. Just about every marketing department I’ve ever worked with can crank out blog posts, manage social, even do some videos, but chances are you don’t have a person who is an expert at one (or more) of those skills. We’ve all learned enough over the years—and generative AI has made this easier—to do things on the edges of our expertise, but we can’t do it for long before we’re out of our depth.
As your content program grows you need domain expertise to grow a podcast, to publish more blog posts, to take whatever you started and take it to the next level. Generalists get you going on the right track, but experts create growth.
There are many ways to fix this like contracting out, but the easiest way is to find a great T-shaped marketer with specific expertise and bring them onto your team. A solid person can lend a hand with any marketing activity, but they bring that something extra to your content development strategy. As your content empire grows—going from a blog and newsletter to podcasts and video—you can decide if you want to build out a content team or hire more t-shaped experts to help your larger marketing team grow. It doesn’t matter which path you choose, but in your content marketing plan you need to have a spot where you’ll know you need to hire an expert.
And this is where I come in
I have expertise in written content, podcasts, and video. I can help kick start your podcast or take an existing one and help it grow. I can build a content creating engine for written content that showcases your expertise and thought leadership.
Whether it’s a content calendar and a person responsible for making sure content goes out as planned, or a branded podcast program with industry experts, I have the tools in my toolbox to get it done.
I created a subject matter expert ghostwriting system that took the burden off internal experts to write content by shifting the hard work of writing to writers (and created bonus audio and video content as well).
I took a disorganized podcast production process involving multiple outside contractors and created a streamlined, in-house system that reduced production time by 30% giving me more time to focus on story and episode flow.
I’ve worked with product and sales teams to hone their value propositions and the personas they sell to so content hits the mark to relieve pains and create gains. Often discovering new personas, but also value propositions in the process.
I’m currently available for freelance, contract, part-time, and full-time roles for all stages and facets of content creation programs. If you’re interested in learning more about me, you can find me on LinkedIn or just reach me by email.