Lack of process is the kryptonite to any content marketing strategy
I’ve seen it happen time and time again. People develop a great content strategy then nothing seems to work out. They’re not achieving their goals and the whole effort starts to lose steam. The whole content strategy they spent so much time on fails. And people decide “content marketing doesn’t work for my business.”
And do you know the biggest reason why this happens?
Lack of process.
I’m not saying you should skip over developing a content strategy or that it’s not important. A content strategy is essential to any successful content marketing effort. It’s why working on an initial or refined content strategy is phase 1 of my Content Marketing Production Engine program.
But it’s just phase 1 of 4. The strategy is just the first step—not the whole picture.
A lot of people approach content marketing feeling like starting a blog or newsletter or podcast is really easy. Thousands of people are doing it, I can too.
Yes, and no.
The truth is, the people who do the best content marketing also have the best content marketing processes. They know to keep going you need to:
- constantly refill the idea well
- know how to vet ideas into yes, no, and maybe
- know to move a piece through the writing, editing, and approving process
- where to publish
- when to publish
- how to promote the content
Example: Publishing a monthly newsletter
If you want to start a newsletter for customers and prospects and want to include:
- a few links to industry news
- a short tip on using your product or getting the most out of your service
- product news and updates
- 2-3 recent blog posts
You’ll need someone to:
- stay on top of the news and save interesting articles for later—where you can find them and search for topics
- get tips and insight from customer success
- know when product is releasing updates and what the update does
- write blog posts on a regular basis
Getting your first newsletter out the door is easy. It’s the months after that become a challenge. To publish a regular newsletter you need a process for getting everything you need well ahead of publication time. If you’re doing a monthly newsletter, you’re always working a month ahead. You’re creating the content you’ll need ahead of time so it’s ready. You should have several months worth of tips and tricks drafted up. You should know when blog posts are going to be ready, and what they are about, so you can connect tips, industry news, and product news with the posts.
And this is why you need a process, calendar, and frameworks to be successful. You might be able to wing it for a couple months, but inevitably, there will come a month when your publishing date is a week away (or tomorrow) and you haven’t even thought about the newsletter.
I can help you set up a process so newsletters (for blog posts, podcasts, or webinars) are planned out in advance and everything you need will fall into place.
That’s the power of a Content Marketing Production Engine.
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