There's a lot of pressure for your brand to be a content creator these days. In fact, the way most people talk, I get the impression that by throwing any content up on your website, it's bound to drive results. This isn't true.
In fact, content creation without a content strategy is one of the biggest mistakes that you could make. It leads to tons of wasted time and money with little or no results. This is why we complete a content strategy for every client as a part of our inbound marketing work with them. And if inbound marketing doesn't make sense for that client, we'll success a different tactic to help them grow.
Kristina Halvorson from Brain Traffic reminded us why it's important to think strategically about content in her recent wrap-up of her talk from SXSW:
"Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of speaking at SXSW for the sixth (!) time. I was feeling some pressure to say something new and exciting (like, “AI is the future of content!” or “Customers will expect your content in virtual experiences!”) … but as I was working on my talk, I realized that my messages weren’t that different than what I’ve said in years past:
- The content marketing industry is, by and large, leading companies down a dark path.
- Content is more complicated than most people realize.
- Honest, open collaboration between siloed teams is absolutely necessary if we’re going to fix our broken content processes.
- If we don’t listen to our audiences—really listen to them—we will never win the loyalty and trust we so desperately crave."
If you check out her whole post, you can see her slides and an audio recording of her talk. It is well worth a listen.
And next time you consider creating content, make sure it fits into your overall strategy first. It will save you a lot of heartache and misspent money down the road.
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