I know it’s been pretty quiet around these parts, but our world seems to be calming down a bit and we’re ready to get back in the blogging saddle. Over the past year, we’ve been busy launching a software start-up (DivvyHQ.com), consulting with a steady stream of both local and national clients, speaking all over the country and trying to keep up with a bunch of kids all under the age of 6. To put it lightly, the Allure New Media camp has been anything but quiet. But that’s no excuse.

Our Biggest Marketing Challenge

Jayme and I just returned from Content Marketing World 2012. During the opening keynote at the show, Joe Pulizzi shared some new data regarding the biggest challenges that marketers face today. The biggest challenge that marketers face today, #1 on the list, is producing enough content to feed their marketing, online and social media channels. I feel that. For us and most small businesses, it’s easy to point the finger at “there just aren’t enough hours in the day.” But at CMWorld, Jayme and I gave a presentation on how to adjust your internal team structure and processes so that you start to act and consistently deliver more like traditional publishers. Think about that…Traditional publishers create high quality content every day. Why can’t we at least kick something solid out once a week? Three reasons:

1. We aren’t planning correctly - You’ve all heard it…”Failure to plan is a plan to fail.” Proper planning breeds success and it’s amazing how many of us fail to plan consistently. In our presentation, we talk about planning like a publisher. Make it a regular part of your week (or day). Have an agenda. Make sure your team knows what they need to bring to the planning table. Make all this a habit.
2. We don’t have a production schedule or consistent workflow process - Publishers know exactly the amount and types of content they need to create on any given day/week/month. Then they have people and processes in place to get it done. We should do the same (on a smaller scale). If you need to come up with one blog post, 5 tweets, 3 Facebook posts and one new Instagram photo per week (just an example), then make sure you and/or your team knows the schedule and who is going to be responsible for what. This is not rocket science people.
3. We aren’t making it a priority – This is probably the biggest issue and it’s also the toughest hurdle to overcome. If you publish a new piece of content and suddenly the cash register dings, it’s easy to shift one’s priorities. Most of the time, content marketing doesn’t work that fast. But it does work. I’ve witnessed first hand over the last year, both with Divvy and Allure clients, just how much of an asset content can become. It pays long-term dividends that you may not realize for over a year. I’ll provide examples of this in future posts. Those who make content marketing a priority over the long term will reap the benefits for years to come.

If I were you, I’d sure hope my competitors haven’t made it a priority yet. But they’ll figure it out soon. 

Our New Plan – Practice What We Preach

As for us…we’re making consistent content production a priority. We’re going to plan regularly (we have a great content planning tool that helps). We’re going to make the time and execute our workflow. You’ll see new stuff coming from us both on this blog and also on the Divvy blog (which has been our focus for the past year). The Allure blog is going to focus heavily on the how-tos of content strategy, content marketing, social media marketing and all the tips, tricks and tools in between. If you’d like to stay informed of new content, please sign up to receive our content via email (email subscription form in the right column).

See? That wasn’t so hard. This is a comfy saddle.