At our content marketing company Media Shower, we’ve worked with hundreds of organizations, and by far the biggest problem we see is internal bottlenecks that keep good content from getting published.
Regular readers of our blog know that the average blog post gets 3.3 conversions. This means there’s a simple formula:
More content = More leads = More customers
As a marketer, your job is to get more customers. Internal bottlenecks keep you from achieving that goal. If you want to do your job well, you’ve got to be vigilant about these bottlenecks, and you’ve got to resolve them immediately.
Here are three of the most common bottlenecks, and the solutions we’ve found to get your team out of their own way…
Bottleneck Solution #1: Name a Head Chef
I’ve never understood the phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen,” because any restaurant has got tons of cooks in the kitchen. I mean, there are like a dozen cooks at any given Chipotle. But watch how the burrito assembly line works: the first guy takes your order and steams the tortilla. The next guy puts in the tofu and beans. The next guy puts on the toppings. The final guy rings up your order. (I don’t know why it’s all guys at your Chipotle. Just go with me.)
- Note the first guy does not take the order, then walk down the line, overseeing the amount of lettuce and guacamole put on each burrito.
- The first guy does not require a spot check on each burrito, unwrapping it before the cashier rings it up.
- The first guy does not run into the kitchen to whip up a quick batch of cilantro-rime rice.
With content marketing, companies are sometimes tempted to have multiple people to review or edit each content piece before it goes live. The problem is, content is subjective. My son was recently working on a term paper, and he asked every person in his eighth grade class to mark up one of his drafts. His paper came back just covered in red ink, a crimson sea of edits. And he’s a good writer!
When it comes to writing, everyone’s got an opinion, and the opinions often contradict each other. The more layers of approval you require, the more edits will come back, and the product actually gets worse: that’s the nature of the beast.
The Solution: Name a single person as your “Head Content Chef.” Find someone who will be good at the job, and trust them to do the job. You can have multiple cooks in the kitchen, as long as there’s a head chef who has the final say.
If they’re putting on the salsa, let them put on the salsa.
Bottleneck Solution #2: Push It Off Your Plate
I am frequently guilty of being a control freak.
My internal reasoning says: “I know I have to check on this work before we can release it, so I want to review it before it goes live.” Then the email comes back from the team saying, “The work is done, you can check it now,” but it never seems high enough priority to actually check it.
So the email sits in my inbox for a few days, sometimes weeks, because checking the work will be kind of difficult and require some thought, which is why I delegated it in the first place. It’s important, but it’s never as important as the high-priority item sitting in front of me right now.
We see this all the time with companies: content sits in their blog in Draft mode, patiently waiting for someone to give the final OK. Reviewing blog posts is not anyone’s idea of fun, so there the content sits, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks.
Over the years, I have gradually learned this comes down to an issue of control. I’ve learned I must either delegate completely, or I must make the time to check it myself. (Some days, I’m still learning.) I want the control of overseeing the final product, but if I don’t have time, there is no final product.
The Solution: If you’re pushing the mashed potatoes off your plate, push all the mashed potatoes off your plate. Make sure you’re delegating to someone who will do a better job than you will, because they’ll have the time. Then trust them.
Bottleneck Solution #3: Progress, Not Perfection
At Media Shower, we have a saying: “Don’t get it perfect, get it done.”
Perfect is the enemy of the good. Perfect sucks the joy out of work, because perfection is not achievable. Excellent work is possible; perfect work is not.
But perfectionism doesn’t just hurt morale; it also means you can’t learn. In content marketing, every piece of content you publish is like a mini-test. You’re seeing what works with customers in terms of topics, headlines, promotion, and so on. The best companies, and the best marketers, are the ones that are able to learn most quickly.
When you have more content, you have more experiments. You learn faster what works and what doesn’t. This is the idea behind the whole agile business movement: the concept of a Minimum Viable Product, where we say, “don’t get it perfect, just get it launched.” Launch, then learn.
No perfectionist ever thinks they’re being a perfectionist (myself included). They’ll always say they’re ensuring quality. But note a bottleneck is not the same thing as quality control. It’s easy to tell the difference, by just asking, Can we predict when this thing will get approved? If the answer is yes, it’s quality control. If the answer is no, it’s a bottleneck.
The Solution: Try releasing something that’s not quite perfect, as an experiment. See if the world explodes.
I have to confess that I had writer’s block when I started this post, but I just started writing anyway. I started with a bottleneck of not knowing what to write, and I ended up with a useful blog post. How? I just opened up the mouth of that bottle, and let it flow.
Sir John Hargrave is the CEO of Media Shower, and author of Mind Hacking: How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days.