4 Tips to Amp Up Your Content Strategy (And Avoid Burnout)

Consumers are overwhelmed with information on a daily basis. Globally, content creators publish more than 6 million articles and blog posts, share 500 million tweets, and upload 720,000 hours of video to YouTube every day. No wonder burnout, the state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress, is taking over across industries. Creating valuable content can make us feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands.

Of marketers surveyed in B2B Content Marketing’s 2022 Report:

• 83% measure the success of their content based on website engagement (69%), conversions (67%), website traffic (65%), email engagement (64%), or social media analytics (51%).
• 59% of companies reported having 1-5 employees dedicated to content marketing.
• Only 40% of B2B organizations reported having a documented content marketing strategy. That number jumps to 62% among the most successful content marketers.
• The five most common content marketing challenges in 2021 were…
  1. Creating content that appeals to multi-level roles within a target audience (44%)
  2. Accessing subject matter experts to create content (42%)
  3. Internal communication between teams/silos (38%)
  4. Creating valuable content instead of sales-oriented messaging (36%)
  5. And differentiating our products/services from competitors (35%)

But a successful content strategy doesn’t mean pumping out excessive emails or upgrading to multiple blogs a week. In fact, it’s possible to scale down production while amping up a distribution strategy. Keep reading for four tips to amp up your content strategy while avoiding burnout from churning out more and more blogs, social posts, emails, and everything in between.

1)  Create the right content

Know who you’re writing for and how well you know them. The best content is bred from frustration — pain points your potential buyers encounter directly, or those found in the industries they work in. Build out buyer personas for your target audience and, if you haven’t done so already, answer questions like:

• What position do they hold?
• What are their day-to-day responsibilities?
• How do they use resources? Are they missing any?
• What do they need to accomplish?

Once you know more about your buyer, identify what kind of content to create for them. This will likely depend on your goals. For example, are you looking for a lead gen opportunity or to gain visibility and trust with this audience? Different mediums will accomplish different goals. Frequently used mediums can include videos, whitepapers, infographics, blogs, or social media posts.

2)  Energize your distribution strategy (or at least have one)

By now your team has spent hours creating, editing, and properly linking your content, so what next? You can’t just rely on social media to do the work for you. After all, the average lifespan of a Tweet is 18 minutes. Instead, share strategically and leverage other channels like LinkedIn groups, newsletters, sales outreach, social media direct messaging, and guest-contributed articles to amp up distribution. Below is an example of how Winmo can take one Winmo News post and repurpose it through different mediums:

• Round 1: Blog post A >> Social media
• Round 2: Blog post A >> Infographic >> Social Media
• Round 3: Blog post A >> Webinar >> Slideshare >> Social Media
• Round 4: Blog post A OR Infographic OR Webinar >> Email

Also, evergreen your content. If a topic emerges in the industry you’re writing for and you previously published something on it, create a new post with your updated point of view and link back to the previous conversation.

3)  Put your content in front of the right people

Publishing remarkable content and marketing it to the wrong audience won’t produce remarkable results. Instead, use hyper-targeted data sets that coincide with your buyer personas. This gives you the ability to deliver your content directly to the decision-makers that fit your prospecting parameters. For example, Winmo’s primary focus is B2B sales prospecting, so we’ve found success with a direct approach.

Leveraging marketing database software like Winmo can help you improve sales productivity and broaden your reach. And, the data these resources provide outside of the “golden email address” can strengthen your personas immensely. TIP: Identify brands that have recently shifted their digital spending to a new media channel you offer a solution for. Get your content team to create targeted content based on this new business trigger and deliver it via email marketing.

4)  Keep your data clean.

Whether you’re using an outside source (shameless plug) or managing in-house, you must keep your data clean. So many teams overlook this because it isn’t a sexy job. Who wants to play in spreadsheets all day? But, overlooking this can result in wasted time and money. Our in-house research team confirms our database every 60 days. In a 4-month period, we find that 7% of people take a new job and an additional 9% change their titles.

Repercussions of bad information can include:

• Decreased engagement: You’re not getting a response because you’re not sending to the right people.
• Wasted resources: Your sales team is emailing and calling the wrong people or your marketing team’s direct email campaign targeted the wrong prospects.
• Jeopardized reputation: First impressions matter. Don’t jeopardize the initial introduction of your brand by sending great content to the wrong person.

If you liked this blog post, check out:

1. The 6 Stages of New Business Prospecting
2. Hottest Summer Brands Increasing Spending
3. Q3 2022 Agency Predictions and News