Picture yourself going into a new store; your brisk Sunday afternoon walk briefly interrupted by a hand-painted sign and warm overhead lighting. The door jingles slightly as you cross the threshold and you begin to walk around. You see an employee standing behind the register, make eye contact, then they look away as if they hadn’t seen you. A bit uncomfortable, you turn around and walk out probably never to return.
We have all had experiences like this before: being unacknowledged. Every time we encounter a new company, we enter with a certain set of expectations and if they are not met we often do not return. Even if the negative experience was a fluke, our perception, inevitably, becomes altered.
Don’t make this mistake with your business!
Greet your audience with your content. Welcome them into your space and give them the opportunity to browse on their own, but always be there for answers and guides when they need it.
Your consistency will begin to set a precedent for your brand. It becomes reliable, strong, and formidable. Being consistent builds healthy and trusting relationships, something every business needs for success. But how do you build consistency in your content?
What Is Your Story?
Content creation is an art– something that takes time, discipline, and patience in order to flourish. For your content marketing strategy to be consistent, it must be true to your brand. Consistency is more than just posting every Wednesday, it should also be present in the quality of the knowledge you share. This is not to downplay consistency in creating (and sharing) the content you create. You should have an active stream of content for your business that has a purpose and vision behind it.
If your blog is centered on food and cooking, you probably wouldn’t spend multiple weeks writing about the aerodynamics of tennis. This does not mean that as a business you cannot experiment, it just means that your audience expects certain behaviors from you– ones that stay true to your business.
Stay consistent in your brand values and communicate them within every piece of content that you create. From social media posts to blogging to whitepapers, each of these forms of communication help build your business and should all be filled with the values you have set for it. Adhering to your unique brand voice will ensure that the content you create accurately reflects who you are and what you do. This will lead not only to brand recognition, but more importantly brand trust. By delivering quality content in a consistent manner, your audience will start to see you as a thought-leader in your field.
Pop Quiz!
What does it mean to be consistent with your content?
- Deliver content on a scheduled basis.
- Infuse your content with your company values.
- Write all of your content in your brand voice.
- Produce content that aligns with your business speciality.
- All of the above.
If you chose E, then you are correct! Each of these components play an active role in making your content consistent.
Who Is Your Audience?
You spent a lot of time brainstorming your ideal customer. Your buyer personas helped create your business and your content will be there for them to engage with to keep it growing.
It is crucial to know who your content will reach and what they want to read about. Anticipate what your audience needs from your content and welcome feedback in order to better tailor your content for them.
The best way to do this is to gauge your audience’s engagement with your content. Take a look at specific posts and see how they fared with your audience. Which ones had more activity? Examine them to find any storytelling devices that made the post particularly effective and try to employ those tactics in future posts.
Consistent content caters to the audience it is intended for. Be sure that in your content planning sessions, you explicitly state the takeaway for your audience. This will help you deliver consistent content that speaks directly to your audience.
How Is Your Audience Addressed?
So you have a great strategy in place. Your content is wonderful: it adheres to your company values and properly addresses your audience. Now you have to get it to them.
Where does your audience read your content most?
- Your website
- Your newsletters
Knowing where your audience is looking will also help with your consistency. If all of your main stakeholders are Linkedin gurus, be sure to amp up your content strategy on that platform.
Creating quality content consistently is not only difficult to say 5 times fast, it is also difficult to apply in a long-term way. Being consistent requires many factors which is why you should not create content off-the-cuff. Creating content requires active planning and a strong relationship with an editorial calendar to make sure that your content delivers the message your want to the people who it will affect the most.
