Reasons abound when you don’t want to do something: “I haven’t the time.” “The team is just me.” “Our audience needs new content.”
But are those the real reasons? Or are they excuses to thwart your fears of the unfamiliar, the unexpected, and the unknown?
If it’s the latter, try some of these techniques to get over the uncomfortable and tackle these five things in your content marketing program:
1. Talk to your ideal customers
Why you fear it: I admit it. This is my fear because it takes time to schedule interviews with members of your target market. Their feedback can be scary, too. Your ideal customers may not say what you expect, but that’s exactly why you should get to know their needs, challenges, and jobs to be done better. Without a detailed and well-researched buyer persona, your content can miss the mark regarding relevance and engagement.
Actionable steps to do it:
- Engage the entire marketing team to document a detailed buyer persona that aligns with your content strategy.
- Analyze your organization’s existing customer base and market research to understand the ideal customer.
- Converse with members of the target market to understand their pain points, learn more about their needs, and explore the jobs they must do. Schedule interviews for detailed conversations or send surveys for quick replies.
- Incorporate the research into a comprehensive buyer persona document, which details their pains and challenges, goals and motivations, jobs to be done, preferred channels and content types, and other relevant points of interest.
2. Pause new content and refresh existing content
Why you fear it: Many marketers are concerned about spending less time creating new content and more time editing content they already published. That shift goes against what they have been taught about frequent publishing.
I’ve never had this fear. From my first year in the content space, I refreshed content as often as I got the chance. I wrote two original articles a month and then analyzed past articles and edited them accordingly. This approach improved rankings and reader engagement.
Actionable steps:
- Evaluate each content asset’s key metrics, such as traffic, engagement, conversion rates, and search rankings. Identify the top-performing content, which is typically only a handful or so in a large content library.
- Use SEO tools to reevaluate your targeted keywords to see if interest has changed or if the term has a new meaning in searches.
- Establish criteria for prioritizing which content to refresh (e.g., high potential keywords, evergreen topics, content with outdated information).
- Update the content assets by making any necessary changes and enhancing their quality.
TIP: Run these content audits and refreshes regularly. Short on time? Set the expectation of updating one content asset a week whether it’s done internally or outsourced.
3. Ask industry peers for honest feedback
Why you fear it: No one likes to hear negative comments about their work, particularly if it’s harsh. It can be discouraging or damage your confidence. Impostor syndrome, time constraints, or a lack of peers can trouble many marketers. Some worry that seeking feedback could expose their weaknesses or reveal ideas their peers could use.
Actionable steps:
- Realize that the content marketing community is vast and supportive.
- Build a network of your industry peers. Attend in-person networking events, participate in online forums, and join relevant social media groups on LinkedIn or Facebook.
- Talk to the peers you meet. Publish a group message or reach out directly to the people you know. Chat informally or schedule a call to discuss a pressing challenge or something cool you just learned about.
4. Run your content through a plagiarism checker
Why you fear it: You think your ideas and phrasing are unique and don’t want to discover someone who has already published something similar. You don’t want to make the writers, partners, and other internal and external collaborators think you doubt them. But with so much information overload, likely someone’s already thought of what you’re about to publish — maybe even using the exact words.
Checking for plagiarism should be mandatory if you’re working with writers, partners, and other external collaborators. Plagiarized content can severely damage a brand’s reputation, leading to a loss of trust among audiences and potential legal issues. There are also legal implications to keep in mind alongside a potential penalty from Google.
Actionable steps:
- Accept that plagiarism is a dangerous possibility that could damage your trust with the audience, get a penalty from Google, or lead to a lawsuit.
- Use plagiarism checker tools like Copyscape or Grammarly to ensure that your content is unique. Microsoft built a “similarity” check into Word’s editor tools.
- Review the assessment to determine if the text requires rephrasing and new citations or is sufficient because “plagiarism” is really the use of common knowledge phrases, idioms, etc.
TIP: Use plagiarism checkers on your published content to learn if other websites have copied it entirely or published snippets.
5. Turn to internal teams for help
Why you fear it: You don’t want to bother their developers or customer support reps. You think your requests will not be supported or understood. You also may work for an employer where interdepartmental aid isn’t part of the organizational structure.
Actionable steps:
- Specify what your needs are and identify which ones require input from internal teams. Do you need technical insights, customer feedback, or creative ideas? Which team members have the expertise relevant to your needs, such as developers, customer support reps, or designers?
- Make an articulated request. Explain why it’s important and how their input can make a difference, the latter of which can motivate them to do it.
- Make their process easier and communicate deadlines. For example, provide a developer writing an article for your tech blog with a rough outline of the core ideas. Edit their work so they can prioritize getting down their thoughts.
- Organize interdepartmental meetings and brainstorming sessions to foster collaboration. Consider projects that require input from various teams so everyone feels valued and involved.
Conquer your fear with new techniques
These strategies might seem daunting, but doing what you’re afraid to do can significantly improve your content marketing. You can ensure that your brand distributes original content that reflects a deep understanding of your audience. You will gain from prioritizing quality over content and reap the value of feedback from industry peers and input from your internal teams.
Which fear will you tackle next?
All tools mentioned in this article were suggested by the author. If you’d like to suggest a tool, share the article on social media with a comment.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute