Adapting Your Content Marketing to the Realities of 2023

Lots of discussions lately on whether content marketing still delivers results. Yes, it works, but it's far more difficult to meaningfully stand out with content.

Content marketing has long been commoditized. As per usual when an approach resonates, businesses and we as marketers squeeze all the value out of it.

Here’s what to consider doing in order to make an impact with content today:

• Don’t skimp on quality. While this doesn’t sound new, spending any time on low-hanging fruit like defining common terms in your industry, creating a 500-word fluff piece only focused on ranking, or covering the same topics as everyone else from an angle that’s been widely addressed is a complete waste of time. Instead focus on elevating the quality by including original research, expert opinions, new data, and covering complicated subject matter with the right amount of depth. Often, it’ll be useful to publish fewer resources so you have the bandwidth to improve the quality of each edition.

• Increase your speed. This one is tricky. I don’t mean publish as quickly as possible all the time at the expense of focusing on quality or accuracy. But it’s important that some of the content you produce is reactive to the current happenings of your industry or culture more broadly. If you wait a week or in some cases even a few days, you’ve missed the moment to chime in with useful information that could have thoughtfully involved you in a relevant conversation. Do what you can to tighten up the production, approval, and distribution process so you can get better at reacting in real-time.

• Address the tension. “You emphatically do not want to tell a beginning-to-end tale describing how results meet expectations. This is boring and banal. Instead, you want to display the struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness.” An excerpt from screenwriting coach Robert Mckee in the HRB article: “Storytelling That Moves People”. This stood out to me as too often you'll see content structured around introducing the topic, acknowledging the problem, and offering the proposed solution. That approach usually feels too good to be true, and your readers/viewers recognize that many topics are not that simple to solve. Address the tension more comprehensively, drawing attention to what you don't know or what you're still working to resolve, to help make your content more trustworthy and relatable.

• Truly commit to consistency. It’s a key factor in how you gain trust. This is a challenging one. In order to win with content you’ll need to share valuable insights on a regular basis at a similar cadence on the same channels to build familiarity. Whether you’re publishing a YouTube video weekly or TikTok’s daily, set a schedule that enables you to keep your company top of mind amongst the right people but always with worthwhile information.

• Define your perspective, and communicate it often. More than ever, get clear on what your opinion is as a company, what values you have, and the why behind your business. This is one of the lanes you can uniquely command compared to today’s stiff competition. You need to get the facts right, but adding your unique take to a resource is what makes it memorable.

• Be more unexpected. A lot of content is starting to blend together and look the same. Instead, include a unique hook, dispel an industry myth, invest in a surprising partnership, experiment with a different format, or highlight an unexplored topic. This is an area where we can all spend more time in order to improve the likelihood of the right people reviewing our content.

• Shift to where the attention is. Certain content formats on select channels can help you reach more people at scale in less time. When it comes to social media, it’s possible to tap into an unprecedented amount of organic reach on TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube at the moment. This won’t be the case long-term as every platform changes. But be mindful of where attention is shifting so you can effectively distribute your content to the right folks.

• Prioritize people. Feature leaders, employees, customers, and even yourself within your content. No one wants to hear from a company. Instead, we resonate with other people, and that’s more important than ever to highlight across your content. Whether interviewing these folks, encouraging them to create their own content, or boosting customer-created content, put your people front and center.

What do you think? Did I get anything wrong from your vantage point? Am I missing anything that’s working when it comes to content marketing? Love to know how you’ve adapted your content to continue to win over recent months.

P.S. Smart marketing folks like Megan Morreale, Tracey Wallace, and Joe Lazauskas have accurately identified how we got here and shared lots of smart ways on how we should move forward. I recommend reading their recent insights:

Megan Morreale ---- "Content marketers need to clean up the mess we made or AI is gonna wipe us off the map."

Tracey Wallace ---- "Content Marketing in the Age of Anxiety"

Joe Lazer (Lazauskas) ---- "It's Time to Banish the Low Rise-Jeans of Content Marketing"

For more insights on making an impact with content, watch my LinkedIn Learning course on Content Marketing Foundations as a starting point.