Strength in adversity 🏋️

Insights to elevate your content strategy and unite your team

Photo by Danka & Peter on Unsplash

Trying to give your customers as much valuable content as possible while also trying to keep you and your team happy during challenging periods can be an intense struggle.

Let’s step back and focus on one thing at a time — today I’m sharing solutions for both.

Today’s agenda:

✍️ Actionable steps for actionable content

🧑‍💼 Working through difficult situations with your team

❌ What’s next after Twitter’s rebrand to X?

💼 Briefly — our quick news roundup

⏱️ Up & coming

How to make your content useful

Kelsey Kloss, CEO of Kloss Creatives, thinks there’s too much advice for “useful and actionable” content, but not enough advice for how to actually execute this type of content.

💁 Her tips for offering higher-value, “serviceable” content to your audience:

• Create original content that’s unique to your company by pulling from your own experiences and answering your customers’ specific FAQs

• Quote experts within your company or trusted experts outside of it

• If you’re offering tips, make them as simple and easy-to-follow as possible — Kloss says if it takes more than 5 minutes for them to do, it’s probably too much

• Offer free advice that draws in your future prospects — don’t make them pay before they understand the value your business provides

Strip your content down to the basics: What are your audience’s greatest needs and challenges?

Kloss’s tips can make creating content for your audience simpler because you’re pulling more from your own resources.

💪 After all, if you want to position yourself as the trusted expert, then you are your best resource for creating the types of content your audience needs.

Make work meaningful in challenging times

Rebecca Knight is a senior correspondent at Insider covering careers and the workplace. 

She recently penned a piece for Harvard Business Review on how to keep your team on track during uncertainty, layoffs, and cost-cutting. 

Our biggest takeaways from the article:

🗣️ Maintain open communication

Uncertainty can build into a monster. Don’t let your team’s imagination run wild when there’s obvious trouble afoot.

Instead, open up to your team about what you’re feeling, and invite conversation.

However, come prepared: As Knight writes, don’t let the discussion spiral. Balance a realistic approach with a positive one that encourages your team to rise to the challenge.

🧗 Get to the root of what motivates your team

Money is clearly a major motivator, so when raises aren’t possible you have to discover what really matters to your team.

Again, you can turn to honesty and ask them what they need to make their work feel as meaningful as possible. This might include how they work or how they grow within the company.

😰 Keep your cool

As a leader, you can’t let your stress affect your team.

Take care of yourself and seek support from a mentor or therapist to develop coping skills.

Wendy Smith, a professor at the University of Delaware, says a culture of trust and support within your team can make it easier for everyone to manage their stress.

Why should you care what happens to Twitter/X?

Maybe the rebrand won’t affect you too much, depending on your business/industry.

But from a business standpoint and a marketing standpoint, it’s worth a brief discussion.

• Twitter’s been around since 2006, and eventually became the platform for real-time information, updates, and breaking news

• Elon Musk purchased the company in October 2022, and recently rebranded the platform to “X”

• While Twitter had around 450 million users as of 2023 data, Pew Research Center found that five months after Musk’s Twitter purchase, 60% of U.S. adults who used the platform said they decided to take a break from it during that time

• Tweet volume also declined around 25%

Content Marketing Institute recently used Twitter/X as an example for the idea, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when evaluating your own marketing strategies.

🤔 What does all of this really mean, though? Let’s reflect.

• Do you use Twitter/X? How has your usage/following changed since Musk’s takeover?

• Which social media channels offer you the highest engagement?

• Should you consider changing your strategy in light of Twitter’s/X’s rebrand to an “everything app”?

Your next moves are based on the answers to those questions. If you weren’t much of a Twitter person, continue focusing on the channels that gave you the best results.

🐦 If you were running ads on Twitter or pushing a lot of content through the platform, consider whether there’s been a shift in results — and whether you should push those efforts toward other platforms or resources.

Briefly

🤖 Dig into this research on how marketing AI and automation are helping small businesses

📈 Are mortgage rates rising because everyone thinks they should go lower?

💰 A Bank of America survey finds that more Americans are taking money out of their retirement accounts early

💻 Web analytics reveal that the new Bing has not managed to take any market share from Google after six months

📱 Top social media planning tools to help you easily schedule and publish your content

Up & Coming

Two ETF experts recently told CNBC that there are other ways to invest in AI beyond Big Tech — including health care, ecommerce, robotics, and fintech.

Watch the video here to listen in on the discussion.