Content creation is not new, but many still consider it the new big business, and ergo…everyone wants a piece of it. Due to the sudden boom in the industry, there are many conflicting content creation tips guaranteed to help you to win the content game. The “experts” push many tactics down people’s throats, and though these may work sometimes, they never do as well as expected or only work for a short while. And that’s the problem.
Content creation tactics are good, but they’re a means to an end, not the end itself. Fixating on tactics will have you looking for one superior quick fix that doesn’t exist. How do you get out of this? STRATEGY. Your content creation strategy is a mix of different tactics tailored to suit your business and style.
It’s like playing chess; the winner is whoever can predict his opponent’s future action and counter it five moves before he makes it, i.e., whoever has the best strategy wins. To truly win the content game, you need to move from tactics to strategy. In this post, we’ll try to debunk bloggers who dish out questionable content creation tips by showing you why putting tactics over strategy is a bad idea.
Tactics Focus Solely on One Thing
If you look at five blogs which consistently dish out content creation tips, one thing will hold for all of them: they push tactics. You can tell because many of their posts would have titles like “Do This One Thing to Increase Content Production” or “These Tips Are Guaranteed to Bring in More Traffic.”
Each post is designed to have you focusing on one thing at a time. If you want to win the content game, that’s the worst advice you can get. Tactics don’t push a complete agenda. If you’re in this game to win it, the only content creation tips you should implement are ones that tell you how to improve the quality of your content while increasing output and pulling in traffic.
You Never Know Which Tactics Work Best Together
Like cooking, to win the content game, you need the right ingredients in the correct measurements, or you’re going to have yourself a disaster. What most blogs with content creation tips don’t tell you is how to blend two or more tactics to get your desired results.
Different types of content need different marketing strategies, and using the wrong one can leave you worse off than you were before implementing it. When looking at content creation tips, try to be objective and logical, look for elements that suit you, your type of content, and your target audience.
Tactics Are Often One Size Fits All
Many times, blogs that offer tactics as content creation tips often make them seem like simple one size fits all rules that are guaranteed to work for everything and everyone. That’s a prime example of a logical fallacy. There is no single universal principle for content creation, what tactics work for you often depends on the type of content you put out, and the subject matter of your blog. For example, while making more videos is good advice for a “How to” blog, it won’t yield the same results for a legal blog. Buying into the one size fits all agenda may be your undoing. Don’t believe blogs that say you only need to do one thing to get ahead in the content game; tactics don’t get you the blue ribbon, strategy does.
Tactics Don’t Help You Anticipate Shortfalls
One more problem with focusing on tactics is that tactics are steps towards achieving a defined goal. These steps hardly ever take note of obstacles that may be on the way or how to avoid or overcome them. A tactic tells you what to do to reach your goal with nothing more. This is dangerous. If you can’t anticipate problems or are led to believe you’d have none, when they come, you’d be left paralyzed. This is why you should disregard content creation tips that preach tactics alone; no war has ever been won with tactics alone.
Conclusion
In the tactic-strategy debate, strategy would always win. A good strategy allows you to pursue your goal while taking note of and avoiding pitfalls. What’s more, it’s tailored to your needs. What the tactic pushing content creation tips don’t tell you is that no matter how many tactics you try to implement, if they’re not couched in strategy, you’re going to be spending many resources in exchange for zero progress. You need the right balance of tactics and strategy to succeed.
Developing your content strategy may not be the easiest thing to do, but it is gratifying. You get to blend content production and content marketing tactics to get a website that gives quality output and pulls in the kind of crowd every blogger wants. Replace tactics with strategy, and your website will be better for it.