The Mission Aligned Content Process - Deborah Ager - Hard Corps Marketing Show #138

Without putting the time in to develop a cohesive focus for your content, messages can get sprinkled throughout an organization without consistency, resulting in misaligned efforts and missed opportunities for engagement. Writer, Mentor, Coach, Editor, and Writing Mentor at Radiant Media Labs, Deborah Ager, walks marketers through the process to develop content that aligns with an organization’s corporate goals for cohesive, successful messaging.   Takeaways: Marketing teams become aligned when all of the mini departments within have their goals and priorities contributing towards the overall company objectives that marketing is working towards achieving. Review your client profiles once a year with your management team. Talk to sales and learn to see if there has been a shift in your market, so you can adjust your marketing efforts to address any changes. Listen to sales calls and learn from trends of phrases that buyers are using to describe your product or service. Consider taking an old cliché and putting a new spin on it to make fun and interesting copy. When developing your writing process to build good content, start with your audience in mind, master your market, align your mission, the purpose of why you are writing, and then articulate your ideas from brain to page with brainstorming and mind mapping. Before starting what other companies are doing, take a step back and think about if you really need to do that same action. Will it best serve your target market? “Care at scale.” - Casey Cheshire - Before sending your email that is checking on the well-being of the recipient to thousands, ask yourself, should this message go to thousands or perhaps only go to a handful to have more meaningful engagement? To focus the purpose of your writing for a cohesive message, develop your focus action statement, “I help the customer do or achieve X to result in X outcome.” If you are having difficulty aligning your personal mission to the company’s, think about the results of the product or services that your company gives. Do those results help people or contribute towards an overall cause that you can personally resonate with? Take the time to learn from the content you create.  What is receiving engagement, what are people responding to? Career Advice from Deborah - Eat more ice cream and don’t worry too much about a supposedly linear path. Diverse experiences help you grow and add to your toolbox.   Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahager/ Radiant Media Labs: https://www.radiantmedialabs.com   Busted Myths: Everyone on marketing teams have their goals and efforts aligned. - This is not always the case. Efforts can become disjointed when there are multiple departments within marketing that have their own goals and priorities, separate from the overall marketing goals. All companies have a clear understanding of their market. - Many businesses have not clearly defined who they are trying to target internally or externally. They may have had a market in mind when they first started, but if their ideal buyers are not reviewed regularly, then markets can change and the vision of who the company is serving can become blurred.