6 Tips for Better Content Consistency
Entrepreneurship, Productivity
Content is the main ingredient of every digital marketing campaign. Whether you are trying to expand your social media reach or build a stronger online presence, you need good content – content that the audience finds valuable – to be able to pull it off successfully.
There is, however, something more important than putting out content for your audience, and that is putting out content in a consistent way. A lot of digital marketers underestimate the importance of consistency in today’s competitive marketing landscape.
Consistency becomes a crucial part of success, which is why maintaining consistency is an important task. To help you improve your content consistency, here are six tips and tricks you can use right out of the box.
Manage Content Production as Projects
Good project management is the foundation of improving your content consistency. The only way you can put out content in a consistent manner is by making sure that production goes smoothly. You also want to manage time and resources in order to produce effective content.
A lot of marketers and content creators are now using the Kanban method to make their production process manageable. Kanban is a way of managing work and optimizing efficiency using the power of visualization. It is one of the easiest methods to implement in digital content creation.
You also have tools like Kanbanize making agile project management even easier. Kanbanize supercharges the Kanban methodology by making it digital, customizable, and highly flexible. You can get your Kanbanize account up and running within minutes.
Set Your Pace
Another way to improve consistency is by creating a pattern that is easy to follow. As tempting as it may be to put out content every day, you can start at a slower pace in order to put emphasis on consistency. One piece of content every week is better than one per day for three days in a row, and then nothing for the rest of the week.
Remember that consistency allows the audience to keep up with your pace. If you are used to publishing two pieces of content every week on the same days, you will have an audience base that expects to see new content on those days. At this point, the audience base is more loyal than you think. This pace allows you to gain traction with your digital marketing efforts.
Create a Guideline
Whether you are producing visual content or writing articles, it is also important to maintain consistency in style. For videos and images, this means maintaining a consistent look across all visual contents. For articles, consistency in writing style and point of view is what you want to aim for.
Maintaining a consistent style is a lot easier when content production is handled by a dedicated person. When the same person writes all of your articles, you can expect the writing style and point of view to remain similar. Add new team members to the mix, however, and consistency becomes a challenge waiting to be solved.
The way to solve this challenge is by creating detailed guidelines on how content needs to be produced. Visual guidelines, brand guidelines, writing guidelines, and other similar tools are invaluable if you want to maintain that consistency and connect with your audience on a more personal level.
Understand the Platform
Next, you need to tackle the consistency of your content across multiple platforms. It may have been a good idea to share the same content across all social media sites a few years ago, but that is certainly not the approach you want to take today.
Something as simple as posting a 16:9 video to Instagram Stories can significantly harm the engagement rate of your content. You want to adjust the format to 9:16 so that the content fits seamlessly with the media used to distribute it.
The same is true with other platforms. Content that works well on Instagram doesn’t always translate well when posted on LinkedIn. You want to invest time and resources towards producing native content for individual platforms, as this achieves a higher impact and consistency.
Get to Know the Audience
Of course, you want to tailor your content to the audience segments you’re trying to reach. Different audience segments expect different things, but that doesn’t mean you cannot find a middle ground that lets you reach – and satisfy – a wide range of viewers at the same time.
The only way you can find that middle ground is by getting to know your audience better. Take the time to review results of past content, do some A/B testing for new content, and make sure you utilize external data (i.e. data about users’ social media activities) to help you.
One important tip to keep in mind is to never make assumptions about the audience. You are making content for them, so you want to be precise about the kind of value they expect and use this to produce impactful articles and visual content.
Make It a Continuous Process
Of course, we cannot talk about consistency in content production without talking about the fact that it is a continuous cycle. You can’t expect to produce one piece of content for all of your marketing activities. You need to refresh your content, write new content, and keep your online presence updated on a regular basis.
Fortunately, turning content creation into a continuous process is also a great way to boost consistency across the board.
The more you get used to the process of making content, the more seamless that process will be as well.
Don’t forget to find ways to improve the content creation process as you get used to it more. You will find ways to write better articles, produce more informative videos without investing too much time and money, and new tricks to optimize your content creation process. Efficiency is a goal that every content creator should strive for.
These are actionable tips and tricks that will help improve the consistency of your content. These tips will also help you put out content on a more consistent basis, allowing your social media and other online channels to grow at a steady rate. If you are looking for ways to boost your audience base, these are the tips to implement.
