You Ask, I Answer: Content Marketing Management Mistakes?

In this episode, Ann asks, name one or two mistakes people make while managing a content marketing team. It depends on whether we're talking about content marketing specifically or we're just talking about managing specifically, because there's so many mistakes that you can make managing. Micromanaging, failing to manage appropriately, not setting goals, uh, not checking in with people, not providing support, uh, not paying them equitably. There's any number of ways that you could badly manage any given team. But in the context of content marketing specifically, uh, there are three major areas where things are going to go wrong, right?

Number one is uh not having good processes in place. And if you are just having people wing it, it's going to get very frustrating, and you're not going to deliver your best product. That's pretty straightforward. Number two is in choosing your content marketing format and platform, um, choosing badly, choosing badly, choosing platforms where your audience is not, choosing to distribute your content in a way that makes it difficult people for people to access your content, um, choosing platforms that are difficult for your team to work with, right? Yeah, you may have all these requirements uh for your internal business processes, but if your people hate working with that system, you're really handicapping yourself.

But the biggest mistake of all a content marketing strategy and plan that does not leverage people properly. What do we mean by this? Number one is if you have no idea what talents your team has, and you just kind of throw content marketing plans out there, you're gonna get less than their best work because everybody has different aptitudes, right? Some people like to talk, some people like to write, some people like to draw or paint or compose music or dance or whatever. There's people have all forms of different self-expression.

And if your content marketing management does not take into account all the different ways that people can be creative, you are handicapping those people in terms of their ability to create work that they enjoy doing because self-expression is always good, and more importantly, the quality of work you're gonna get out of them is not going to be as good. It's it's going to be mediocre because taking somebody who is naturally a visual person and making them write a 1500 blog post is a recipe for failure. Can they do it? Yes. Is it going to be as good as it could be?

No. Right? It's like taking somebody who is uh a world-class Japanese chef and putting them in a in a bakery. Are they going to be able to bake things? Yes, because they're they're superbly talented professionals in general.

But are you leveraging their talents for what they're best at? No, right? Having someone who can make amazing tepanyaki or sushi, cranking out croissant, it's just a mismatch. And that's something that I see happen a lot in content marketing. People are people are creating content marketing strategies and plans without taking into account what their team is good at.

They may not even know what they are good at. Um, so another key part of this is doing that skills assessment, doing a skills assessment regularly and understanding what the aptitudes of the people are that work on your content marketing team. And then as projects and products come up, you figuring out how do you leverage all these different disparate talents? Because everyone has some form of self-expression. Sometimes someone's self-expression just may not be a good fit for your content marketing strategy, right?

Maybe somebody is a really, really good sort of uh 360-degree video maker. Like they're superbly good at that. They can make very compelling virtual reality content. And your content strategy does not call for virtual reality and is not a good fit for your products and services. It doesn't, you haven't figured out how to unlock that value for your audience.

Having that person using their talents would be a mismatch for what your content marketing strategy is trying to accomplish. And so that's an example where you might not have the right people, right? You want to have the people who are can generate the output you want in the formats you want, working for you and making sure they're compensated appropriately so that they're doing their very best work. And at Trust Insights this year, I have had more fun making content than I ever have before because we're doing a lot of courses, right? We have a new Google Analytics course.

Go to TrustInsights.ai/slash G A4 course. And it's like five and a half hours of video, and I get to play around in premiere and doing my editing and transitions and all this fun stuff. It's fun, it's leveraging an aptitude that I have. And so if I had a manager who is saying, well, no, that's that's great that you can do video, but we're really trying to create just written word. I wouldn't be as happy.

Could I still create good content? Yes. Would it provide value to the audience? Yes. Is it what I love doing?

Not as much. So when it comes to managing a content marketing team, know what skills your people have and know what your strategy is and make sure that your strategy is aligned to your people. It is much easier to change your strategy to match your people than it is to try and force your people to match your strategy. You can change strategies. They're not written in stone, right?

They're not delivered on high from tablets from uh a deity of some kind. You made it up. You you made it up. Um and so you can change it just as easily. Put your people's skills first, put your audience's value second, and then put your corporate business goals third.

You do things in that order, you're gonna create great content that people love to make that will give value to the audience and will still achieve your goals, your uh your marketing goals. So, really good question. Thanks for asking. If you like this video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.