I’ve outlined elsewhere some considerations and pieces to put in place before launching a blog or content marketing strategy, but it’s also worth spending some time thinking about the hypothetical obstacles that could stymie your new effort. Naturally, that list could be endless, but here are two big potential deal-killers (in no particular order) to anticipate and address before getting too far down the content-creation road.
First, you must involve the right stakeholders in the content marketing strategy discussions from the start, and they must buy in to the vision and be willing to actively support the initiative once it’s launched. The magnitude of this obstacle will vary with the size of the organization—smaller firms with fewer decision-makers and stakeholders may not face this challenge at all, for example. But larger firms, with multiple layers of management and therefore with various interests and stakes in a potential content marketing strategy, are particularly vulnerable.
A non-negotiable prerequisite to launching a content marketing strategy is getting in front of all relevant stakeholders—senior managers and executives who will start seeing the content once it’s published, sales managers whose teams will be using the content, subject matter experts who will be helping generate, or at least approving, the content, and so on—and ensure they understand the whole project. This doesn’t have to happen all at once—though getting everyone in the same room at the same time can help build consensus. However many people you speak with at a time, do make sure you hear from everyone—don’t let any silent dissenters slide under the radar.
The focus of these discussions should be clarifying for everyone the aim, the audience, who will be driving the brainstorming and content-creation processes, who will approve ideas and how, how the content is intended to be distributed, used, and so on. (And, arguably more importantly, the reverse of all of those—what the aim isn’t, who the audience isn’t, what content won’t include or look like, etc.) With all of that out in the open, it’s critical all stakeholders buy in to the vision. Passivity isn’t your friend here—particularly with a stakeholder whose support or involvement will make or break the strategy’s success. In other words, if a key sales manager is just lukewarm on the vision—not openly opposed, but not particularly keen to help commit to its success, either—you may be sunk before you launch.
Admittedly, getting an enthusiastic, supportive endorsement from all the stakeholders can be incredibly time-consuming, but it’s time well-spent because without it, you’re not likely to get too far before someone asks, “What are we doing again? Why? Who approved all of this? We don’t want to publish this stuff!”
Second, you must have a clear decider. Everyone needs to know where the buck stops. Without an explicitly identified decider, it’s only a matter of time before content-creation slows or outright halts because it’s not clear who is deciding what will be published and what won’t. The decider also must not be internally undermined but, on the contrary, should be actively supported by the stakeholders. If a stakeholder disagrees with a particular decision, any discussion about it with the decider should ideally happen off-line—i.e., out of sight of everyone else reporting to the decider from a content standpoint. Undermining your decider is a recipe for paralyzing them on future decisions, signaling to the others involved in content creation that your decider doesn’t truly have the authority to make strategy and content calls, and, ultimately, stymying your content-creation process.
I rarely write in absolutes, and there are myriad ways a content-creation strategy can go off the rails, but these are two deal-breakers which I believe will ensure it never even leaves the station. No matter how much time it takes to overcome these obstacles, it is well-spent if you want your content marketing strategy to achieve its longer-term goals.
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