How to Create a More Consistent Content Strategy

Published on January 6, 2022

“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison

Widely regarded as the father of modern electricity, Thomas Edison was a relentlessly prolific inventor, and is considered to be one of the most important engineers in American history. So it’s a little bit reassuring to read that such a significant figure sometimes struggled with his productivity and creative output.

We know how it feels to be burnt out, tired, or otherwise unproductive – and we’re willing to bet that you sometimes feel the same way. Like there aren’t enough hours in the day? That no matter how much you accomplish, you’ll never actually manage to polish off your “to-do” list?

Whenever feelings like these creep up, it can be easy to retreat from what needs to be done, and instead fall back on that old, reliable stand-by – procrastination.

“Why force it, if the creative juices just aren’t flowing?” you ask.

“Isn’t it better to wait,” you may well reason, “until I feel that big, creative second wind?”

These feelings are completely natural. But when it comes to your content marketing efforts, they could be dangerous.

The Importance of a Consistent Content Marketing Strategy

You see, when it comes to content, consistency is key. Whether you’re creating and distributing content on your own website, via social media, or through email, it’s important that you are posting regularly and taking time to interact and create value for your followers.

Today, a barren blog or social media profile can easily read as untrustworthy to your potential clients, who expect brands to be more plugged-in and engaged online than ever before. Today’s internet user is incredibly savvy, and incredibly particular about what they see, and when they see it.

On social media platforms, for instance, 21% of Facebook users say they unfollow brands that they view as repetitive or boring. On Twitter, your potential customers expect a high degree of interactivity, and 78% of people who reach out to your brand on the platform expect a response within just one hour.

The same goes for the content published to your own site’s blog, or sent out to your fans via an email newsletter. For one thing, regularly adding content to your website and refreshing old pages can help improve your SEO efforts, since search engines will perceive your site to be active and audience-focused. You’ll also never develop consumer loyalty if you fail to keep up appearances, so to speak, and your prospective clients will gladly take their business to a brand that seems to recognize them and their needs with compelling, up-to-date multimedia content.

The bottom line? Your users expect a level of dedication to content marketing today, and you risk alienating them if you appear to be shrugging it off.

Oh, and one bonus tip before we move on: While we’re primarily using the word “consistency” to refer to frequency and time, it also refers to keeping things uniform and even. That also totally applies to your content marketing! Just as users will be turned off by a brand that fails to regularly maintain its output on a publishing channel, so will they question the quality and trustworthiness of a brand that doesn’t have a clear voice and striking, identifiable visual branding running throughout all of its content. Check out our guide to effective visual branding – including color scheme, logo, font choices, and more – here.  

Improving the Consistency of Your Content Marketing

So, how can you go about making sure that your business remains trustworthy, active, and receptive to new audience members – and the financial opportunities they offer? Here are three quick steps for refocusing on the frequency and consistency of your content marketing efforts:

1.) Document a Strategy
86% of B2C and 89% of B2B brands claim to already have a content marketing process in place. But many, you may be surprised to learn, don’t actually go so far as to document their strategy. You’re more likely to de-prioritize content creation and distribution if you keep it in your head. Instead, make sure that you integrate content marketing into your workflow, using whatever task management system works best for you. The sooner you break your biggest content marketing goals down into actionable steps, the sooner you can get them finished – and improve your consistency.

2.) Make Distribution a Priority
Before you even generate a piece of content, you should have a plan in place for how you want audiences to access and engage with it. Are you going to share it to social media? Promote it via email? Set it up for long-term SEO success?

All of these tactics are valid, but all of them will take work – social media scheduling, email newsletter generation, and on-page SEO planning all come to mind. As John Hall so aptly puts it over at Hubspot:

“Your content distribution plan should take as much priority as your content development process - content that you sit on or passively distribute won’t accomplish much.”

3.) Build Up Your Content Marketing Team
For small businesses, it can be difficult to fold the many aspects of content marketing of content marketing into your daily routine, particularly when you’ve got so many other vital things to accomplish day in and day out. When business owners or employees are on their own, they tend to let content slip through the cracks – even as they recognize its vital importance to a brand’s growth in 2020.

The good news? With Geek Chicago, you don’t need to be on your own. Our team believes in the utility of Marketing as a Service (or MaaS). Put simply, we believe that, when it comes to marketing, you have time for what you have time for – and we’ll cover the rest!

What that means is that whether you’re looking for assistance with content writing, image generation, SEO, editorial calendar maintenance, or social media/email distribution, we can help. We know what it takes to make a cutting edge content marketing strategy work, and we’d be happy to set you down the right path to sustainable success.

Looking to start reeling in new audiences and creating valuable impressions for your brand? Drop us a line today to keep the conversation going!