Danger: Avoid a New Year’s marketing burnout

By Chris Dodds on December 31, 2013

By Chris Dodds on December 31, 2013

It’s New Year’s Eve and many people are getting ready to charge into 2014 with a shiny new marketing plan. They’re going to blog every day and get more active on Twitter and LinkedIn. Potential customers will be impressed by the flood of content and updates. It’s going to be a great year. It’s going to be different—better than last year.

Except when February rolls around, the daily blog posts have turned into weekly posts. March hits and “weekly” now means “monthly”. In April your followers have either forgotten about you or are wondering if you’re still in business, because your blog and social media have gone silent.

Don’t feel bad. It happens to everyone. Fueled with excitement, we start out with the best intentions and wind up either getting burnt out or distracted. Unfortunately, if you keep going through the same cycle of blitz marketing and silence, you can damage your brand, including your organization’s reputation.

Consistency trumps frequency 

It’s much more important to publish consistently than to publish frequently. Achieving both is ideal, but is very difficult in reality, especially when your core business isn’t web content.

If you want your audience to know, like, trust, and value you (and who doesn’t?), consistency is key.

When you publish frequently, but inconsistently (stop and start blasts of marketing), it’s hard for your audience to settle into a comfort zone and have a clear idea of what to expect from you. Even worse, the expectation they might settle on is that inconsistency is what they’ll get when they do business with you.

So publishing once a month for a year is better than posting every day for one month of the year.

If you’re thinking about how you’re going to approach web marketing (or marketing in general) for the new year, it’s important to be honest when you ask yourself “Can I really commit to this schedule?” If you can re-calibrate your intentions into a realistic plan, you’ll be much better off.

Building on consistency 

One of the best ideas you can convey to a potential customer is the story of what it’s like to work with you. If they can visualize how you’re going to help them or improve their situation, saying “Yes” to you is going to be a lot easier. Consistency is an important piece of your story.

A big underlying question that your audience is trying to answer when they read your content is whether or not they can count on you. They’re not only concerned that you’ll actually deliver what they need, but that the experience won’t be painful.

Seeing your blog posts and social network updates appear on a regular schedule goes a long way towards building trust, even if they don’t actually read the content. It keeps you at the top of their minds for the relief you can provide to them.

“I can’t commit to a schedule” 

If you’re thinking about your marketing plan for the new year and decide that you honestly can’t commit to a schedule even though you might see a lot of benefit from blogging and social media, we may be able to help.

Our blogging and social media management services are all about providing consistency to our clients’ web marketing. We create content that tells the story of what it’s like to work with you and make sure it’s getting to your audience on a set schedule, opening the door to earning their trust.

If you’ve been struggling with publishing your blog and social media updates consistently, give us a call or e-mail to see if we’re the right fit for your business.

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1 Comment

  1. Avatar Steve on January 2, 2014 at 6:22 am

    I agree with you, most of us post content on our blog twice a day for a week or a month then stop posting. And there is no consistency, however it should be consistent in order to attract visitors.

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