One of the biggest problems entrepreneurs face in marketing is trying to take on two major roles at once.
There are two major roles in content creation that make an impact on the results you get – strategy and execution.
In a traditional company, you often find the President or CMO creates or helps to develop the company’s content strategy. Developing the strategy is its own separate skill set. To create an effective strategy, you need to understand the company at a high level, including its goals and mission. Plus, you must understand how marketing works, especially in your company’s industry.
Once the strategy is complete, the next major role begins – execution. This is usually handled by a type of coordinator or manager role that delegates various tasks across departments. This person translates the strategy into action. They follow trends, create content, and keep the goals set by the strategy in mind.
These are two large roles that are often done by multiple people in a company. But for small businesses, we don’t always have the resources, so we become the strategist and the executor, hoping that our limited skill sets can do it all. Which inevitably leads to burnout and to feeling like a failure.
But it’s not a failure. It’s doing multiple jobs to the best of your ability.
So, what’s the solution to this problem? Finding the resources your company can afford that will provide the highest ROI for the services you need. Let’s break down each one to help you make the best decision for your business.
Strategy Resources
With strategy, the main ingredient you need is knowledge, and luckily, there are plenty of places to find the knowledge needed to create a strategy. You might be ready to do it, but you sit down, and you don’t know where to start. The main ingredients your strategy needs are:
- Goals/KPIs – What you want to achieve with your content.
- Target Audience Demographics – Who specifically you want to reach.
- Branding/Messaging – Your brand position in the industry.
- Content Guidelines – What content you want to create and where.
If you have an understanding of these four things, your strategy is already in good shape. If not, that’s okay. You can use your strategy to get a better understanding of these items. Walk through all of this and more in our #1 Content Strategy resource – The Consistent Content Workbook.
If you’re looking for more hands-on strategy resources, that’s where a strategist comes in. A strategist comes into your business, learns about your company and industry, and develops a strategy for you, so you can just focus on execution. You can learn more about our various content strategy services here.
Execution Resources
We know knowledge is strategy’s main ingredient, while time is execution’s. To implement a content strategy, you need a lot of time. Time to research, time to create, and time to adjust as needed. What is the one thing most entrepreneurs lack? That’s right, time. But there are ways to make content creation take less time.
If your content strategy doesn’t immediately give you content ideas, you’re not doing it right. A content strategy should give you a head start at content creation. Next, focus on batching content, which is creating a few pieces of content at once, then scheduling them out over time.
Of course, the best thing you can do if you lack time is to hire out. If you have a strategy in place, work with someone who is well-versed in graphic creation, writing, management, or all three to implement it. When you work with ATB Social, strategy is included in all of our services, including social media management. Learn more here.
How We Create at ATB Social
We recognize that it’s not easy to do it all when it comes to content strategy. In fact, we often see a drop in quality and consistency when entrepreneurs have to work alone. And when we cannot properly market our businesses, our businesses suffer. At ATB Social, each team member has a role to ensure that full thought and focus can be given to each area. Strategies are created by a strategist, while the execution is done by a Social Media Manager.
Find yourself making this mistake as an entrepreneur, time to get a strategic partner on your side. Discover our content marketing services that can take your business marketing to the level it deserves by scheduling a complimentary consultation with our team.
