Content is King, But Consistency Is Queen

Content, the way you communicate is still king.  While the methodology is changing, mostly from written word to video, it is still the single best way to communicate with clients and prospects.  As a high funnel, meaning customers in the future and not today, content specifically drives the engagement of clients and prospects by maintaining open lines throughout the relationship.  Using content through digital engagement is inexpensive.  The effectiveness of it can be hampered.  You see, while content is king, consistency is queen.

One of the biggest flaws of digital content engagement is the idea that doing it “occasionally” is an effective means of success.   The occasional nature of posting content leads to prospects and clients not having a solid means of communication.  That in turn causes them to not rely on your content therefore leaving the communication. In the simplest terms, sporting events are not held whenever it happens to strike someone to do it.  Imagine the lack of support your team would have to one week have a game on Monday at 3:00 a.m. while the next week having it on Thursday evening around 5:00 p.m.  That lack of consistency would make following difficult even for the most ardent fan.  

Such is the case with content.  Consistency gives people the ability to incorporate your content into their schedule.  While they may consume it at different times of the week/day, the fact that you are consistent to provide leads them to know that after X week/day/time, there will be something to consume.  Consistent content provides a place within a prospect/client life. With the aggressive competition for people’s time, it is absolutely vital to get in front and stay in front of people throughout their life to gain success.  

Consistency provides stability in an otherwise chaotic universe.  People are looking to you to find the information they have come to expect at a time/date they expect it.  Establishing the expectation is therefore critical to gaining attention. But maintaining that expectation, certainly to the highest level, is a challenge for companies that devote entire teams to it.  There must be a way.  

That leads to the tough question: how exactly do you manage to stay consistent in delivering content when your own professional life is so chaotic?

Create a calendar.  

There is no way to be successful if you do not have a plan.  This means a delivery timetable.  Understanding what it will take to deliver what is expected is a hit or miss in the beginning.  To eliminate that problem, you need to have a stock of evergreen materials. That gives you the ability to deploy content when it is too chaotic to deliver timely engagement. It also gives you a much-needed break to read what you thought would be important, evaluate its effectiveness while ensuring that readers are consistently provided their content.  

Spread the responsibility.  

One of the greatest detractors of successful content engagement is the idea that it is a single person’s responsibility.  While the distribution is, the creation should not be.  For a couple of good reasons such as a different voice or different perspective, additional people providing content freshens up the engagement while giving readers a wider understanding of what is being communicated. It also helps to spread the load of delivery throughout the organization.  Being able to give 15 people one content piece a year means being able to determine who provides the most effective information while limiting the amount placed on one single person within the organization.  

Discipline. 

When there is nothing else to do providing consistent content is really easy.  But honestly, who has nothing to do?  As a result, it really sits on the organization to make it a priority.  That means allowing time to be assigned.  Resource assignment is a sign to outside and inside that this is something the organization takes as a critical aspect of doing businesss.  It is a requirement that even in the busiest of times: big events, launches, grand openings, holidays, etc., that the organization has the ability to maintain the vision of what is important.  That consistency speaks volumes to prospects on your ability to see through difficult times. 

What it really comes down to is being able to say what is important.  This is the marketplace today.  People expect to be informed before and during the engagement process.  That means even if they are not purchasing, they want to know what is happening.  This long-term engagement places the organization top-of-mind in the prospect’s future leading to a better opportunity of moving prospects to clients and clients to life-long partners.  The single market of success for growing organization is the ability to communicate.  Just as a personal relationship requires it, so too does a professional one.  So, when you are working on the content king, don’t forget the consistency queen.