How can you communicate the importance of content leadership?

One of the biggest complaints that buyers have when dealing with brands is that the buyer's journey is disjointed and full of seams, which often happens because there are multiple content sources acting independently. These seams make your brand look unprofessional and can even rub your prospects the wrong way. Content leadership is the best way to close those seams. And that is what must be communicated internally.

Chiming in to the previous insight by Jason, addressing mismatches in the buyer's journey is crucial. If you identify discrepancies—either internally or through customer feedback—take time to reassess and realign the journey. For instance, if analysis reveals drop-offs in the journey, reevaluate segments and goals. Modify the journey based on updated needs, ensuring a seamless experience. You can use Touch Point Analysis (assessing each touchpoint's effectiveness in guiding the customer towards conversion or desired action) or Customer Data Analysis (Leveraging customer data provides valuable insights into their behaviours, preferences, and pain points along the journey).

Everyone sees content differently depending on their knowledge and scope of work. For example, a designer would want to make incredible designs which distract the reader from the content. A developer would want what's easy to implement rather than what's relevant to the audience. SEO wants a large number of content rolled out for a set of similar keywords, making content repetitive. Some people hate long-form content, others short. Some want leads while others want awareness. Finding your voice as a content strategist is key here. Don't shy away from asking 'why' nor explaining 'why' with data. Create a holistic plan that involves different content types & topics that are relevant to the target audience, rather than personal opinions.

Visualise this shift—stories cease to captivate solely buyers; they now engage stakeholders, highlighting the pivotal role your content holds in steering the marketing strategy forward. Incorporating storytelling into your content leadership isn't merely about appealing to buyers; it's about involving stakeholders, showcasing the indispensable nature of your content within the broader marketing narrative. If you can convince your buyers why your product matters, you can convince your boss why your content matters.

Data should drive all content decisions. You obviously want to test and learn with content (especially on social and digital), however using metrics and key data points to inform not only your content strategy but your content production is crucial to ensuring success. Often times people don’t analyze the metrics fully and that results in inefficiencies, low conversion, and bad social media engagement.

If your content strategy requires a stakeholder to change, they'll probably need a damn good reason to change besides your opinion. That's why you bring data. The pudding is in the proof.

From my experience, I've learnt that what I perceived as common sense may not be the case to other stakeholders. Utilising data makes it easier to convey the idea, knowledge, and direction of your content strategy.

Content marketing and strategy are not broadly understood, which means it can be hard to inform and persuade stakeholders using content geek speak only. Frameworks and models can make it easier. They speak to different parts of the brain.

In my experience, any post should be accompanied by visuals, infographics, statistics, numbers, and catchy lines to draw attention to what you've written. I recommend using Canva, Infogram, or different AI tools that can generate visuals according to your criteria.

To engage the mind, start by appealing to the eyes. I often use three key visualization techniques: 1. Interactive dashboards amalgamate essential key performance metrics into visually appealing formats. 2. Word clouds or sentiment analysis help comprehend audience sentiment and trending topics. Word clouds highlight popular phrases, while sentiment analysis gauges overall content sentiment. 3. Funnel visualisations map user journeys, aiding in pinpointing bottlenecks for targeted optimisation and refining customer engagement to conversion pathways.

Good leaders make people feel like they're the only person in the entire world when they're talking to them. So content strategists should listen attentively when working with content stakeholders. They want to feel seen, heard, and respected. And you have to collaborate. Because if you don't, stakeholders will feel like you don't think they matter to a successful sale. That you think it's all about you. That'll get you frozen out of any organization real fast.