I created my first website back in 1996, so it’s been quite a while. Fast forward a few years and my wife and I started T&S Online Marketing in 2003. We’ve seen a lot of changes since then! In 2003, digital marketing was primarily having a website.
As different platforms and tools came along, I looked for a strategic partner to help our clients with that. I was teaching classes for clients that wanted to do it themselves and even taught one MySpace class. But our clients really wanted us to help them directly, so we ended up entering that space around 2010.
We quickly discovered that helping clients with social media, email newsletters, blogging, and even showing up better in search engines like Google—a.k.a. SEO—meant that we were creating a lot of content. Really, regardless of what tool or platform you’re using for digital marketing or sales, what you’re doing is creating content. Sending emails, posting on social media, it’s all content so people can find you online.
So now a lot of what we do is create content on behalf of our clients. There are a number of different reasons clients have us help with that. Sometimes they just hate creating it themselves. Others don’t have time to do it. Others believe they’re not good at it. Still others want more strategy and psychology behind it, so they hire an expert.
Goals and being strategic with content
Content is typically not the goal! It’s a means to an end. So it’s important to determine why you actually want to create content.
Often the goal is to show up better in search engines or to demonstrate expertise to potential clients. Other times it’s a tool that the sales team can send to strategic partners and leads.
After you’ve determined if content will actually help you achieve your goals, you can decide what your overall message will be, what types of content you should be sharing, and even what platforms you should be active on.
Consistency with your content
Once you’ve started, it’s important to be consistent. I personally hate consistency. I actually like randomness and chaos in my life. I thrive in it! But I learned long ago that consistency is important in many areas, whether it’s sales, eating right, exercising, or digital marketing.
First, the algorithms love consistency. In the digital world, algorithms determine where you show up, how you show up, how often people see you, and even when they see you. That’s all determined by algorithms on sites like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The more consistently you share content there, the better you’re going to be ranked by those algorithms and the easier it will be for people to find you.
It also turns out that people love consistency. Trust is built up over time through being consistent. And you can lose a lot of trust quickly by being inconsistent. You’ve probably seen a national brand do just that.
Being consistent is something that a lot of people find painful. It’s not fun! But to be successful you have to do some things on a consistent basis that you just don’t enjoy.
So whether you’re creating the content yourself or hiring an outside expert to help you with it, make sure it actually ties back into your goals and that you are consistent in putting it out there.