Launching a Content Marketing Project? Read This First.

About a decade ago, I applied for a freelance job I found online. The guy who posted it was looking for a case study about his client. He never provided me with a brief—we had an in-person meeting, and that was it. I interviewed his client, who was polite and helpful. My prospective client, on the other hand, was not. He treated any question I had for him as an inconvenience. When it came time to submit an invoice, he refused to pay me, saying that neither I nor anyone else who applied for the position “got it right.”

Gee, I wonder why.

Over the years, I’ve come across clients, bosses, and colleagues who want to embark on content marketing initiatives, yet they don’t make the time to write content briefs or share pertinent information. They’re always surprised and annoyed that whatever idea they had in their head didn’t magically translate into the finished product.

Here’s what they don’t understand: if you want your content marketing idea to come to life, you have to communicate clearly with the person executing it. Learn how to work with content marketing specialists for a successful, effective project.

The Challenge: Obtaining Stakeholder Involvement

If you were going to invest in a video to promote your product or service, would you tell the head of the production team to do what they liked? Or would you sit down and plan out the video, so that you achieve the desired end result?

Surprisingly, many clients don’t participate in the content creation process, even though they’re investing enormous sums of money in it. Dane Frederiksen, founder of video production firm Digital Accomplice, commented, “The biggest problem is that no one wants to spend the time planning it all out. Everyone’s busy and distracted.”

He acknowledged that clients want to know what the finished product will look like before it’s done, but that’s not possible without script reviews, storyboards, style examples, and everything else that goes into pre-production planning. By spending the time and effort to plan videos properly, clients are more likely to get what they want the first time. Getting it right the first time also saves them time and money, because they don’t have to start the process all over again when the video doesn’t turn out they way they wanted.

This isn’t a problem that’s unique to video production. Gail Gardner, small business marketing strategist and premium ghostwriter at GrowMap, noted, “The biggest challenge is that writers often don't even have access to anyone at a business, much less a stakeholder. If they do, it is often after the content is already created. And then it gets criticized by a stakeholder even if it was exactly what they were asked to write.”

What Content Marketing Specialists Wish You Knew

When asked if they had advice for stakeholders, Frederiksen and Gardner had similar thoughts.

“You get better outcomes when you invest in planning,” Frederiksen stated. “You don’t build a house without a blueprint.”

Gardner said, “I wish companies knew that we need access to as much information about them and their clients, customers, or patients as we can get. The best content addresses what their buyers need to know. And it needs accurate, in-depth information that we should get directly from the people with the most knowledge.”

When companies create content, they have the chance to make it “exceptional,” Gardner explained. By adding insights directly from the business, companies can position themselves as subject matter experts. People buy from those that they trust, and if you can tell them something that no one else knows, something that will help their business, you show yourself to be trustworthy.

Your Content = Your Reputation

Producing exceptional content has never been more important, Gardner commented. “Between Google's E.E.A.T. [experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness] and the internet being awash in fluff and inaccurate AI-generated slop, companies need to realize their reputation is at stake,” she said. “They are judged on what they put out on the internet.”

There’s an easy way to save your reputation: participate in the content creation process. By doing so, you can share your valuable insights to help your customers so they can see that you can help them solve their problems.

What other advice would you give to stakeholders that don’t participate in the content creation process?