What are some of the common content management pitfalls and how can you avoid them?

One glaring issue that I've seen with some organizations is wanting content to go viral. What they don't realize is that "going viral" or getting 500k sales through their website isn't a strategy: those are goals. Those goals can be reached in a few ways: building a consistent brand, creating a succinct and well-thought-out strategy with detailed content calendars, and information architecture designed to lead users on the best, clearest path forward. This allows you to know what users need before they do. In content, reputation building, A/B testing, and measured development are vital. Putting in the work at the beginning gives your program a great base to build off of.

There isn't really a standalone content strategy. There's only a business strategy. As a content manager, work to understand the business goals, then create a content infrastructure that helps the business meet those goals. Advertise your brand where your ideal customers are and make sure there's a journey that turns them into actual customers. When things work, do more until they don't. Then try something new and repeat. I've made the mistake of creating slide deck after slide deck detailing what I thought was an unstoppable strategy. What I should've been doing was creating content to move the business forward, every day.

Without a strategy and set goals - you’ll never got to the finish line! Case in point - if you don’t know how much increased web traffic you want, you could spent $5 or $5k per day. Both would be right. One would cost you. ?? Goal setting is important in all aspects of business. In social media your goals need to be aligned with the stakeholders business goals!

There are five pillars of making an effective strategy. 1. Objectives: What do you hope to achieve with your content? 2. Target Audience: Who are you aiming to reach and engage? 3. Content Pillars: What main topics or themes will you consistently address? 4. Consistent brand voice 5. Evaluation Metrics

Sporadic content production can harm your brand's visibility and audience engagement. Consistency in publishing helps in building a loyal audience and improving SEO rankings. Create a content calendar to plan and schedule your content production. This ensures a consistent flow of content and helps in managing resources effectively. It also allows for timely coverage of relevant topics and events.

^^^ who still does this?! There is no excuse for poorly written content, spelling mistakes and awful grammar. Tools, tools, tools. Use them! And for those hiring content creators - you get what you pay for! ??

Most thought leadership content campaigns intended for brand amplification can get 'preachy' at times with the true essence of the message lost in the narrative. Instead, success and transformation stories of technology, products & services that are told with a 'personal touch' bring forth the value delivered and resonate better with readers.

I regularly come across a lot of content creators putting valueless and low quality content on social media. This comes from a thinking that producing and uploading content in huge quantity will maximize their chances of going "viral". However, it does the opposite for algorithms have become smarter than ever. Any unscrupulous attempt to somehow escape hardwork is a call for more trouble!

Optimize content for each specific social media platform you publish too. This means - don’t spent time and money on content creation to then ‘automate’ the publishing! It will flop! A human needs to schedule your content at the right time, to the right platform, using the right copy, tags and mentions!

Once you have a strategy in place, you need to understand how you're going to track its performance. With proper KPIs in place, you can get a better sense of what is working and what's not. For example, for whitepaper projects, we track both landing page visits and the number of leads that come through. This helps us to work out if we need to improve the page copy to achieve a higher conversion rate. It also helps us understand if the topic really speaks to client's audience and encourages them to hand over their details.

Collaboration is a big part of my process, but it's not just limited to me and my team. When we're working on big content projects, we bring our clients into our project management system so they're kept in the loop at all times. We have a round of in-house reviews with our writers, editors, and technical experts then we work with the client to ensure the correct people have a chance to review the content. This might be experts on the client side, a legal review, and another round of edits from the marketing team. With this level of collaboration, however, it's important to understand who is involved and at what stage in order to avoid bottlenecks.

Ignoring feedback is another big content management mistake. Not addressing user feedback can make them feel unheard and can mean missed opportunities for improvement. It's critical to encourage and monitor feedback and be prepared to make adjustments based on it.

No automation. Or rather smart automation. Yep, it may take some time to come up with the best automation for you, but as soon as you do, there is no turning back. I really wish everyone to find automation that works for their content.