What No Content Marketing Thought-Leader or Consultant Wants You to Know
If you've ever been to a good marketing conference, you probably know what it's like to walk away from an event feeling inspired to change the world...or at least your company. For many marketers who are in charge of social, email, blogging and the like, it's easy to get caught up in all of the hype.
But before you kick down the door of your office and start filling everyone's ears with the ideals you've just heard at the conference or meeting, here's a bit of cold, hard truth for you: It's not going to happen. You are not going to convince the C-Suite to triple your budget, convince your colleagues to each start blogging once a day, convince the owners of the other marketing channels to cross-promote your content, and convince your IT and marketing operations to implement an expensive marketing automation software for you to pump your content onto. No, this is the real world, and it doesn't work like that.
I can't count how many times I've walked away from a meeting with a client hearing them all charged up about building personas or a detailed content calendar and using them in their strategy. The reality is that of the list of 5 things they were going to do, only one was accomplished by our next meeting. The same is probably true for you.
You are not likely to change the face of marketing for your company in one fell swoop, but you can start small and work from there. Pick just one piece of your content marketing dream and pursue it. Execute like there's no tomorrow and document your successes to prove the impact. If your goal is to create a content calendar, then start with a list of your prospects' top 10 questions, and create a content map around them. Iterate on that idea until your team can build and utilize content calendars like it's second nature to them. Then, move on to the next thing.
The "divide and conquer" strategy is nothing new, but it is often forgotten when it comes to content marketing. Bite-sized wins will accumulate over time and lead to more siginificant wins (C-suite buy-in anyone?). Now stop dreaming and get to work on that first priority.
