You need a solid content strategy for your business and probably someone to deliver it as well. Except you’re unsure if you need to hire a content strategy consultant or try to handle it yourself. Here are some signs that you need an outside set of eyes on your content to make it perform better.
1. You don’t have a content strategy
Your content all needs to fit together to tell the same story. Having one person looking at the social, another looking at the SEO, and a third person doing the newsletters can lead to a disjointed message. Plus, you’re unlikely to be getting the most out of the content you are producing.
Or, it’s more likely that you are that one person is doing all the content as well as the rest of your marketing. And actually, it’s all a bit too much so when it comes to dropping something, you drop the content. It can wait, can’t it? You’ve got more urgent things to do.
And you definitely don’t have time for that high-level thinking. You’re simply putting out what you can when you can and worrying about the rest later.
Getting a content strategy consultant will help you do more with your time. Whether that’s through creating a strategy that you can deliver with the time you have available or creating a strategy and delivering it with a trusted team.
And then you know that the content you put out will be working its little socks off.
2. You’ve got more lead magnets than leads
And it’s a hot mess. You have lead magnets coming out of your ears. Half of them are started but not finished. The ones that are finished, you’ve put them on your website but that’s it. None of them is promoted, tested or even bringing people into your world.
It’s also my sneaky suspicion that you didn’t do any market research before investing time into creating your lead magnets in the first place, either. That’s okay, no one ever does because we all treat freebies with that throw-away attitude that it’s not really worth anything because no one is paying for it.
That’s before we even start to dig into that podcast you created a few years ago, the blog, your newsletter and your social media content. All of it out in the world and not earning you money.
If any of the above sounds familiar, then you definitely need a content strategist to come in and give it a big clear-out. So that your customers, when they first hit your website, can find the content that they really need. And understand what they need to do next because if it’s confusing for you, it’s definitely confusing for them.
3. Content isn’t bringing in organic traffic
The most common problem businesses have is getting that organic traffic to come through from social media and SEO. You might even be investing in ads but you can see the organic traffic isn’t increasing.
Often, this happens because you’ve done the same thing for the past few campaigns. And it’s understandable. You’re busy with other parts of the business or marketing and doing the same thing is pretty easy. Almost looks after itself.
When it comes to organic traffic, you need to test, adapt and grow with it. That needs someone who has the focus to look at the data all the time. Someone who gets excited about spotting opportunities and testing creative ideas.
If your organic traffic is flat lining and you don’t have time to be looking at the data all the time, to be coming up with new creative campaigns and looking at how this fits into the wider plan, then it’s time to bring in a content strategy consultant.
They can identify what’s not working with your current organic content and what tweaks you can make. They’ll also look at what you have already that can get a bit of a polish up so maybe you don’t need to keep creating lots of content to increase that organic traffic.
One of my clients had an increase in their organic traffic after working with me and they were able to turn off their Google Ads. Pretty good savings of both time and money for them.
When you’re close to the content, you can’t often see what isn’t landing with your ideal customer. But give a Content Strategist the data and market research and they’ll be able to see the opportunities where you can make some tweaks.
4. You’re operating without a plan
You’ve tried every kind of content planning system going but nothing is sticking. So it’s a case of putting content out as and when you can rather than on a schedule.
When you hire a content strategy consultant, they will create a plan that works specifically for your business and make sure that it gets done. It’s a bit like having an editor for your own magazine. Content will be planned out in advance according to your business goals and the overall strategy.
Then all that content gets delivered. Either by your team or by the content strategy consultant. I’ve got options for delivering content myself or managing outsourced teams. One of my global clients freed up lots of their time by having me look after their content creators and they had the confidence that the content works as a coherent story for the brand and the sales objectives. Pretty good, right?
Or you get sucked into the nitty gritty of checking that what goes out reaches your exacting standards. This isn’t your job. You should be able to trust your team to put out content that doesn’t make you cringe.
Having a content strategy consultant on hand to make sure what goes out meets your idea of quality – and showcases your business in the best possible light – will help remove you from this process. Making it run like clockwork.
5. You never check your analytics
I know, they are boring. Spreadsheets and reports are dull. Except your analytics tell you everything you need to know about how well your content marketing is working.
A good content strategy consultant will check your analytics on a regular basis and come back to you with a monthly report that shows you:
- What’s working
- What isn’t
- And what new tests can be run
When someone has an eye on the data, you don’t miss out on opportunities such as a blog ranking number one for a search term but that page has nothing to say about how you can help.
Or lots of people have found you from a particular source. Only you don’t know about this so you can’t build your relationship with that source. Or maybe you’re spending a big chunk of your budget on social media but you don’t know if it’s even working.
Having someone there who spots these events and can adapt the strategy rather than react to an anomaly
6. You’ve got departments not linking up
Your social media isn’t linked to your SEO and that’s certainly not coordinating with your newsletters. And to top it off, you’ve got some partnerships running and offers that no one is promoting because no one thought to put it all together in a great big plan.
When all of your content works together to tell a cohesive story, it all works harder. This means that you don’t have to create as much.
But isn’t that just content repurposing?
Creating a coherent message across all your content goes much further than repurposing content. That’s only a small part of it. It’s about making sure everything you do is working towards your goal rather than confusing the people you want to reach.
Often this means keeping your content simple and making sure everyone working in the business is behind the ideas you’re trying to achieve with your content.
A content strategy consultant works with your whole team, right down to the admin (who often knows a lot more of what’s going on than you realise), to make sure that everything links up properly.
Plus, this saves a whole lot of time doubling up on work or doing things that don’t match up.
Is a content strategy different to a marketing strategy?
Content strategy will often fall into a wider marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy looks forward to seeing what you need to do for the business as a whole. Content strategy often looks at what you’ve got and how you can use it better so that you can do more with your time.
It’s very similar but content marketing is a skill and by focusing on this area with a specialist, you can get more out of what you’re doing. A content strategy consultant will look deeply into all the individual platforms you’re using, plus all of your email marketing, your website and SEO.
They might suggest new approaches that fit in with a wider marketing strategy. Or they might spot some glaring opportunities that simply need a few tweaks.
Ready to work with a Content Strategy Consultant?
Book a call with me here and let’s chat.