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Small Content Teams with Big Content Dreams
59 Plays6 years ago
We're talking about the challenges facing small content marketing teams. We'll chat about:
- Dealing with executives who “don’t get it” -- no support, no budget, no sanity.
- Being overly ambitious. Everything’s important and huge!
- Not being ambitious enough. “We’re too small. We’re too boring.”
- Winging it. “I’ll figure out next week’s post . . . next week.”
- Ignoring visuals/video--or worse, doing it yourself when you don't know what you're doing!
- Not promoting and distributing content.
- Trying to do it all yourself..
Additional Resources
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Marketing Mix Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Marketing Mix Podcast with Alaina and Stacey. Each week we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your own marketing strategy. We'll share what we know as well as advice from industry experts, some of whom will join us from time to time here on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hey guys, it's Stacey Jackson and hello. Hello. I'm Elena Jackson. We're the co-founders of Jackson marketing. We are also sisters in case you didn't know that already. And we are bringing you episode number four of the marketing mix. So Stacey, tell me what today's topic is going to be about today.
Challenges of Content Marketing for Small Teams
00:00:39
Speaker
We're talking small content teams with big content dreams, or in some cases limited content dreams, but you know that throughout the rhymes. So.
00:00:50
Speaker
I just want to leave with that cool rhyme first. But we're going to talk about small content teams with big and limited dreams and maybe some thoughts around how they can address those.
00:01:01
Speaker
Okay, so you and I previously worked together at a small to mid-size company, a technology company, and you were over the marketing department in that company. So you have a very good insight into what
00:01:20
Speaker
small content teams kind of deal with on a regular basis and especially in the b2b world so Maybe this will be a really good conversation that we can dig into and find out some Or talk through some things that would be helpful to others. Yeah, definitely my small content team consisted of three people It was me when I looked in the mirror it was myself and then it was a third person and sometimes we had help from other staff members on
00:01:49
Speaker
content creation and idea generation, but it was challenging. We'll also, Elaina, both of us, be able to cover some ideas or some struggles that we've seen smaller content in clients face too. Yeah. Yeah. We deal with that on a regular basis too. Why don't we take a quick break to hear about today's sponsor and then get to chatting.
Educating Executives on Content Marketing Value
00:02:14
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:02:19
Speaker
All right, and we're back. So Stacey, let's talk through some of the things that small teams might face in the B2B world of content marketing. Okay. One of the first and foremost things that I think a lot of us face as content marketers on smaller teams is maybe we're dealing with executives who don't necessarily get it when it comes to content marketing. So there's no support.
00:02:45
Speaker
or there's no budget, and that leaves you with no sanity. I've experienced some of that myself. The executive team pretty much got it at the company I was at before, but some of those no-budget things were reality there for me. With clients, we've seen those executives that
00:03:05
Speaker
Don't always get it and that can be a struggle and it can be frustrating for those marketing leaders who are in those smaller companies where maybe there's not a vice president marketing and you're a lower level person reporting up to a.
00:03:20
Speaker
VPS sales or the CEO. Alaina, what recommendations would you have based on some of the things we've heard or seen? Well, I think that some of the things you have to be able to do is paint a picture for the executive team and to help them understand a little bit more of what's needed because a lot of times if they aren't familiar with what everything that marketing has to do, then they'll just think, well, you can write a blog and it's going to be on page one of Google or something simple like that.
00:03:49
Speaker
And they don't understand maybe all of the different pieces that go into the content plan. And I think that that's where you have to really paint a picture for them and maybe even bring some example case studies and things like that to help them have a better understanding of it. I think too, just thinking of a recent conversation with someone with an executive who didn't necessarily get
00:04:16
Speaker
what content marketing is and what it can do. This executive had talked to the marketing director about, well, I heard on a podcast that inbound marketing or content marketing doesn't work. What I said to the marketing director is say, well, what is a podcast? Exactly. That is a piece of content and you were influenced by it.
00:04:43
Speaker
maybe help them see those, you know, parallels or, Oh, I, meaning me, the executive, I'm interacting with content and didn't even think about it. Right. That's a good point. So maybe these are things that do make sense for our
Balancing Content Ambitions
00:04:59
Speaker
company. I think that it gets confusing to people outside of marketing to think about marketing is only a blog or social media.
00:05:08
Speaker
But marketing goes across the spectrum, like you said, with podcasts, with video, with blogs, with ebooks, with pillar pages, infographics, all kinds of stuff. Or another scenario where we were pitching to a potential customer and
00:05:25
Speaker
They didn't get why they should care about their corporate Facebook page since their B2B. We pointed out, hey, there's some people making some complaints on the page. While maybe you don't think it's a route for marketing, you got to be there to answer those people and their concerns and show prospective customers that you're listening and interested
00:05:46
Speaker
when people have a problem. Right. It does make a difference and to make sure that your audience knows that your listening is key. So another thing that I've noticed a lot of smaller companies or smaller content teams facing is they're either overly ambitious or they're not ambitious enough. And when you're overly ambitious, sometimes everything is important. Everything is huge and everything has to be done right now. And then like we've talked about before, then nothing gets done in those cases.
00:06:13
Speaker
Then there's the opposite where you're not ambitious enough and you get in the mindset of we're too small, we're too boring. We can't really do anything that is going to get anybody's attention. So in those situations, what's the best way to kind of go about attacking those and getting those mindsets changed?
00:06:30
Speaker
Well, this is really two sides of the same coin, but it's two different problems. When you think about how to approach it, the easier one might be starting with the we're too small or we're too boring. You're never too small. The internet has made an equal playing field for everyone.
00:06:45
Speaker
But with that said, it is a crowded space for content marketers and you've got to be smart about what you're saying and where you're saying it and how you're promoting it. So you're not too small and you're not too boring because if you have customers that are willing to pay for your product, they're obviously not bored by you, right? They have problems that you solve for them or they have questions that you answer them. Yeah, somebody's going to be interested.
00:07:12
Speaker
Count yourself short, you know, you you have something that's of interest and maybe it'd be boring to the regular joe or jane off the street, but To that widget specialist. They really really get jazzed about whatever new widget Specs you've got or you know knowledge you have about trends in the widget industry, right? So let's go back to the
00:07:34
Speaker
everything's important everything's huge alina what are some ways to help people you know get around that problem because we've seen it we've even had that problem ourselves sometimes we would get in a you know fluster and say oh this is important this is important so what recommendations because you're usually the voice of reason here.
00:07:52
Speaker
about how to take a step back and really prioritize. Yeah, so for me, like you said, I am typically the one that's more project management kind of a person. And I like to know what needs to be kind of outlined and focused on right now, what's the most important. And I only want to focus on this today. I think that that's one of the biggest things that you can do when you're putting yourself in a position of everything's important.
00:08:21
Speaker
because then
Leadership and Delegation in Marketing Teams
00:08:22
Speaker
you feel like you have to get everything done and you have to get it done now. You have to take a step back and say, okay, I've got to prioritize these items. Maybe you need to go back to your executive team and say, look, you want all this done, what's most important? You tell me what's most important so that I can figure out what I need to do. I'm going to also tell you what I think is most important, then let's talk through what the right priority is for our company.
00:08:48
Speaker
but I think you've got to take a step back and prioritize. That's the only way you're going to get things done and get them done correctly. I think another problem that we sometimes see with the everything's important or everything's huge kind of customer is that sometimes there's a person who's been elevated through the ranks and they were really good at things that they did on the production or more tactical side, the content creation part.
00:09:17
Speaker
Then they get in a leadership role and they want to keep doing these things that they were really good at and not delegate them to someone else, which I totally get. I love to write. I would hate the idea of delegating all the writing for our company of someone else.
00:09:33
Speaker
But if you want to be the leader, sometimes you have to delegate. So I think that's also a problem that some people have in these everything's important kind of roles when a team is starting to grow and you've been granted the ability to add a person or two, but you're having a hard time giving.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I can totally get that you want to be in there and doing it. And a lot of people get into the mindset, I'm the leader. I should know everything and be able to always jump in and do things like that. But I think that you hurt yourself and your team when you can't take a step back and you can't get out of the weeds because then you're not looking at the big picture for your team.
00:10:12
Speaker
And you're not giving your new team members that might be junior to you a chance to grow and learn your skills. You got to be able to let others have the opportunity to excel. Definitely. So as far as other things that
Planning Content Strategy Aligned with Corporate Goals
00:10:29
Speaker
small content teams sometimes face. I think it kind of goes along with being overly ambitious sometimes, but it can also go along with the we're too small, we're too boring. It's just winging it. Oh yeah, I'll figure out next week's post next week. Probably the morning it's due. So how do you think people can give themselves a kick in the pants on that winging it problem, Elena? Well,
00:10:52
Speaker
We have had a little bit of that problem in the past Or just a problem where we don't plan things out and then things get pushed but not for our clients Right, right. Sorry for our business not our clients it's it can be hard when you don't have a plan put together and you don't stick to that plan and when you're winging it and
00:11:16
Speaker
you don't really have any direction that you're going in. You're just willy-nilly doing it when it comes up and that's not a strategy. You're just kind of doing it and you got to get out of that because it's not doing you or your company any favors.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, you need to really, if you're not clear for whatever reason on what the corporate goals are and the strategy for the year overall, go make an appointment with an executive or your direct manager and talk about those things and say, okay, I understand what the company is trying to accomplish and here's what I'm proposing we do.
00:11:51
Speaker
to support those goals. What do you think? Maybe you don't have a huge budget, but you should at least take a little time to plan out a content calendar that will support whatever initiatives that the sales team and the company are trying to achieve in that next year, at least the next six months, if you can plan out topics. You don't have to plan out the exact titles because you'll want some wiggle room to address trends or news as it comes up, but you
00:12:17
Speaker
you really have to make sure you're doing what sales needs to help fill the funnel, what the company needs to help build the brand.
Sales and Marketing Alignment to Achieve Business Goals
00:12:24
Speaker
Otherwise, winging it, you may be winging your way out of that job. Exactly. We've all heard the talk about sales and marketing alignment, and everybody's probably sick and tired of hearing about that, but it's so true. You've got to get your sales and marketing aligned because
00:12:40
Speaker
The two go hand in hand. They work together. You need to know what sales goals are so that you can get your marketing plan aligned with what the sales goals are because you want to be able to measure what's happening and look back and say, okay, these things worked. These things didn't. Let's move forward. We're doing the ones that worked well and expand on those. It gives you a plan and it gives you a goal and something to strive towards.
00:13:05
Speaker
All right, so I think we've beat that one to death.
Managing Visuals and Graphics in Content Marketing
00:13:08
Speaker
So let's move on to the next one. So the next thing that I think a lot of smaller companies deal with the struggles of video and visuals and graphics, all those things that maybe they think it's just a one man team or we're just two people or we're just a small team. I don't have a person on my team that can handle this. And so they just kind of ignore it. Like it doesn't even exist. We're just going to do this.
00:13:33
Speaker
worse they design it all with word art and clip art and word or power point. Let's not even do that. Yeah. I, I mean using clip art and stuff like that might've been cool in the eighties or whenever it was that it first came out, but that is not what you want to do today. If you want to get the notice of a perspective buyer's attention, you know, that's most likely they will look at that and be like,
00:14:00
Speaker
I think I'm going to take off or I'm going to go somewhere else. I'm going to check out your competitors, especially if you're a technology company. You're a technology company. Your brand that everyone is seeing needs to match the fact that you're a technology company.
00:14:15
Speaker
And if your site or your visuals look like crap, then people are going to assume that your interface on your software, whatever it is you're developing is going to be crummy too. Exactly. So don't ignore the visuals and the video and the things like that just because maybe you don't have a graphic designer on your payroll because there are different companies out there that you can use that have subscriptions or just you can purchase things for one time or even using something simple like Canva to create
00:14:44
Speaker
some images to go along with your social posts and things like that to give some visuals and bring your content to life a little bit. Definitely. And let's just run through a few things because we don't want people to suffer from bad graphics. So you could outsource some design work.
00:15:02
Speaker
If you don't have a huge budget to something like Design Pickle, crazy name, but real company, you could, if you need to do it yourself, work in Canva, like Elena said, or try a tool that we just discovered called Relay That that is awesome. It really does a lot of cool stuff for you. And then if you do have the budget, consider either hiring a designer or getting a freelancer you enjoy working with or hiring an agency that has design resources that you can use
00:15:30
Speaker
When you need it. Yeah, exactly. You're not stuck. Um, there are different ways that you can get around Using these and maybe you just maybe you just do an infographic every quarter or something like that simple And then you're not constantly paying a subscription or something like that Find ways to use these resources in a way that will catapult your brand
00:15:52
Speaker
As far as video goes, probably don't want to try to do a homemade demo video. You want it to be slick, nice and cool. So maybe spring for the videographer there. But as far as social video, get out that camera, get on your webcam, have a good time with the people at your office, do some video trade shows. That's something that most any company that has people with a modern smartphone or a great
00:16:19
Speaker
Uh web cam can do yeah and Back to what you were saying about a demo video. I have actually seen people do things where they take their phone and video Oh, no their computer. Don't do something like that Don't do that. Please. Okay, just please don't do that
00:16:39
Speaker
Get something like Camtasia where you can screen capture your screen or Snagit has a video recorder. Just find a tool that works. Just don't use your cell phone to video your screen. Don't just rely on the footage you get from Camtasia or Snagit. Get someone with some expertise to help you. If you're not sure how to do it, hire somebody to do a voiceover for it.
00:17:05
Speaker
Find some royalty-free music clips that you can add in for some audio interests. Add some different graphics to layer it. Just make it look slick. It doesn't have to be like George Lucas or somebody did it for you, but make it look good. If you can't do it yourself, think really hard about budgeting
Effective Content Promotion Strategies
00:17:27
Speaker
for that.
00:17:27
Speaker
Videographer or animator right and then once you get those things put together you've got your your visuals and things like that you want to promote them and a lot of the time a smaller company and I get it the time it takes to do promotion and do your create your content and do
00:17:48
Speaker
You're paid advertising and all these things if you're a small team you kind of Feel like you you don't have enough time to do everything and so a lot of times your social and your distribution of your content gets kind of neglected that
00:18:05
Speaker
sucks really because you're not getting your information out there for your audience to see, for your perspective clients to see. And so you are missing out on so many opportunities for the right person to see your content. So go ahead. Creating content alone is not enough anymore. In fact, you should probably spend more time creating really awesome pieces of content, but fewer pieces and
00:18:33
Speaker
the lion's share of your time promoting those awesome pieces or breaking it up using, uh, curators content, marking pyramid format, or the big rock content format. Take that really high value, high energy content and repurpose it and promote
00:18:53
Speaker
the devil out of it. Promote it, promote it, promote it. Yeah. And don't just phone it in where you have it just automated process where it just does it for you and it just does a single, the title of whatever it is that you're sharing. I mean, that's okay sometimes, but for the most part on your company brand, you want to not sound like a robot and not sound like it's completely automated. You want it to
00:19:18
Speaker
sound like somebody is actually taking the time to put these things out there and that that will give your perspective buyers the idea that, oh, well, you actually care about what you're giving me on here. So I'm going to expect the same thing when I come and work with you. And when it comes to promoting, there might be different skill sets, promoting and distributing your content.
00:19:45
Speaker
Maybe you don't have the skills set on staff for social media marketing to do it effectively. Outsource it. Well, maybe you don't have the skill set to do appropriate SEO. Outsource it. There's no reason that you have to know how to do everything and it's kind of
00:20:05
Speaker
ridiculous for anybody to expect one person to know how to do every single digital marketing thing well, because digital marketing is changing so much that just rely on some specialists when you need to, to help you get the word out. Yeah, so just remember that you don't have to do it all on your own if you're a
Conclusion and Connecting with the Hosts
00:20:27
Speaker
one-man team.
00:20:27
Speaker
Like Stacy was saying, you can outsource, get some freelancers, get a company that offers different services and partner with them. You've got all different kinds of opportunities so that you can be successful even if you're small. All right, guys, that's what we have for you today.
00:20:45
Speaker
Don't forget, you can always connect with us on Twitter. You can follow Stacey at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X. And you can follow me at Alayna underscore Jax. A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X. Or you can look us up on LinkedIn and connect with us there. Or you can even leave us a voicemail on anchor.fm. All right. That's it for today, folks. We'll see you next week. Bye.
00:21:15
Speaker
The Marketing Mix is hosted by Stacey Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.