Here's What's Wrong with Content Marketing World (and What's Right for Your Content Strategy)

I’ve spoken at Content Marketing World (CMW) many times over the past several years (including a fancy-pants keynote address in 2015), and it’s always been a mixed bag for me. 

On the one hand, it’s amazing to see 4,000 people converge to share knowledge about a discipline that wasn’t really formalized until about 10 years ago. I always meet plenty of smart, energetic folks who are excited about creating great content for their customers. There are great parties, fun entertainment, and of course, plenty of rockstar keynotes to cheer for.

On the other hand, CMW is a little—OK, a lot—crazy-making for me. It’s basically ground zero for everything I think is wrong with content marketing as an industry. Which is a lot. So much. So very much. 

Here’s where I’m coming from.

In the early days, I wrote copy for websites. Not just marketing copy, but copy that helped people make decisions and complete tasks. So at my core, I am interested in the user experience. As a content strategist, I am hellbent on making all content more useful, usable, and relevant for our audiences—marketing content, help centers, corporate communications, product descriptions, all of it.

But according to 99% of CMW talks, “content” is for marketing, and “strategy” means editorial calendar plus promotional tactics. These are both wildly narrow viewpoints that ultimately do a huge disservice to marketers, because it allows them to ignore how their content is intricately connected to other kinds of content organization-wide (from newsletter sign-up confirmation emails, to call center scripts, to your 404 page!). This means content marketing happens in a vacuum, even though to online audiences, it’s just one quick stop on their journey toward purchasing decisions, taking action, and then deciding whether to remain a customer over time … all of which is fueled in part by intricately interconnected content.

Furthermore, while speakers were paying a ton of lip-service to “audience-centricity,” there were exactly zero sessions on how to conduct meaningful audience research (unless you count “Asking the Right Questions: How to Use Original Research for Valuable Content That Drives Business Results”—which was actually a panel on surveys sponsored by SurveyMonkey—or “How AI Automates Time-Consuming Research for Your Content Strategy” … which I do not). So that’s a little mindblowing.

Anyhow. 

Last week, I spoke at CMW again. My talk was called “How to Conquer Content Chaos,” and it’s one of the hardest talks I’ve ever written. I could have spent hours explaining to everyone why their content marketing programs are totally out of control; why they’re overwhelmed by one-off, last-minute requests; why leadership has such unrealistic expectations; and why their reams of analytics don’t really tell them anything useful. 

But let’s be real. No one wants to hear that crap. They just want to know what to do next.

What I have learned over the past many years of doing this work is that a content audit will not bring about meaningful change, nor will revising your documented content marketing strategy for the eightieth time. 

My wildly unsexy advice is to figure out what’s going on right now, then prioritize the conversations and activities that will help improve outcomes. That’s it. That’s what will help conquer your content marketing chaos.

So easy, am I right? No. No, it is not. It’s tough to carve out time to simply think and talk about stuff when there’s so much to do. It can take months of research and analysis to diagnose what’s causing problems. Trying to tease apart complex problems and align on a way forward can be daunting (and even sometimes depressing). And admitting that we’ve been doing things in a less-than-ideal way requires a certain amount of vulnerability. 

In my talk, I offer up four steps to get started on this journey toward clarity:

• First: Assess your team’s principles. Why are you really doing content marketing? Who is your content for? What outcomes are you hoping to achieve?
• Second: Map your content ecosystem. If you don’t know where you are now, you can’t chart a course to where you want to be. Even the process of identifying all the parts and pieces (and people!) of your content world can be incredibly useful and help bring teams together.
• Third: Prioritize critical issues. You can’t fix or change everything at once, and you can’t very well stop doing everything you’re already committed to. What are the most important initiatives you can undertake to advance your content marketing maturity? (Freebie: Talk to your audiences. The number one thing most clients are missing at the start of Brain Traffic engagements is meaningful audience research. This will put you way ahead of your competitors. Promise.)
• Fourth: Engage the business. Change means getting people on board. What larger, internal pain points can you sell to? How can you state your case for more resources for research and analysis?

These are first steps toward bringing order to your content chaos. They’re also steps that bear repeating basically forever. Set goals, analyze your situation, make a plan, implement, measure. Review goals, analyze … and on, and on.

So. Did people like my talk? Well, they certainly laughed at my jokes. (I am a delight.) My hope is that folks were able to momentarily take a step back from all the tactical advice about how to create and promote content, and consider the world in which that content lives. Because, ultimately, no blog is an island.

View and download my CMW talk, “How to Conquer Content Chaos” … and let me know what you think.

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Brain Traffic helps organizations conquer their content chaos every day. Get in touch if you need content consulting (or therapy) in your organization.

Or, come spend the day with me at an Intro to Content Strategy Workshop! I'll be in Seattle, Atlanta, and Philadelphia in the coming months. Registration is now open.