I love this quote from Jocko Willink – “discipline equals freedom”. Jocko is a retired US Navy SEAL who has become an international bestselling author and in-demand leadership speaker and trainer. Perhaps counterintuitive at first glance, it makes sense when you think about it.
To achieve financial freedom, you need to be very disciplined in how you spend your money. Or consider how you free up time – you need to be very disciplined with your valuable time and not allow yourself to be distracted.
What does discipline look like in content marketing? It’s an unyielding focus on the consistent creation and output of quality content. It’s a simple idea, but simple isn’t necessarily easy.
To maintain consistent output, you need a content machine. Generation of ideas, copy, design and images needs to be backed by the logistics support to ensure timely production, efficient project management and the publishing of your content on various platforms.
Theres’s something, or multiple things, to do every single day.
And don’t forget, it’s not just a matter of pushing content out the door. It needs to be good quality, engaging and compelling.
With the right plan, people and persistence, nothing is impossible. Consider your content marketing goals, scope the output required to meet those goals, and determine the resources (people, time and budget) you need to pull it off.
Can you do it yourself? Maybe. The big question here is do you have people with the specialised skills to do the multi-disciplinary work content marketing requires? And do they have the time to do this work outside their regular job roles? Consider your time also – there needs to be enough of it to manage this content machine within your team, to keep it running smoothly and delivering high quality, consistent output.
The other side of the equation is budget, which can be used to outsource your content machine. There are different ways to approach this, from using an agency to do it all, or unbundling the process and engaging a range of service providers and freelancers to do the work. The latter approach not only needs budget, it also demands more of your time to manage the various moving parts.
Be realistic about the time, patience and capability you have to dive deep and do the work, or the skills you have to manage the process. However you choose to do it, the rewards of a consistent content marketing program for your B2B business will be worth the effort.
Like anything worth doing, content marketing requires a lot of effort to create engaging content that is consistently in market and reaching your prospective customers. But once you get going and build a manageable rhythm, the results will build and build and build until you are seeing great outcomes in lead flow and sales.
Some creativity, a bit of persistence, a lot of patience and of course the discipline to stick to the program over an extended period of time all contribute to a successful content marketing program.
The discipline to produce consistent, high quality content equals freedom for B2B marketers. Freedom from the stress of not getting content published. Freedom from the fear of your lead funnel drying up. Freedom from the pressure to deliver leads with little to no lead time.
To free yourself, talk to us.