Edition 6: Why Chaos Is the Enemy of Great Content & What To Do About It

Many companies are putting some content out there, but the process to create that content is scattered and chaotic.

When everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off to pull content together this is what it looks like:

'What version of that case study are we on?'
'Where's the hero image for this article?'
'Oh I have no idea - is it somewhere on Slack?'

Scatterdness and chaos.

It's an all too familiar scenario in rapidly-growing companies.

Everyone's moving at light speed working on their specific tasks, so:
* Images, assets, documents land 'where they land'
* Time is wasted searching through the seas to find them
* Emails are sent back and forth with a trillion versions
* Important information is lost in all the noise
* Mistakes are made because there's too much friction

We develop Notion workspaces for all of our fractional content strategy clients for this very reason - to pull all the pieces together in a central location so folks on the all the other internal teams have easy access to what they need, when they need it.

It may seem like a pain in the backside to implement systems and processes as a growing company when you have ninety million other things to do, but I promise you that the friction caused by wondering where the hell everything is, all the time, is much more of a burden.

So what is the opposite of chaos when it comes to content?
Calm consistency that catalyzes quality.

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💡 1 Big Content Idea: Do a ‘Self-Diagnostic’ to Determine the Root Cause of the Chaos

Chaos isn’t always easy to root out. It comes in several different forms and the root causes can be different depending on the maturity of your organization and where you are in your life style.

To be able to take the turn to ‘calm consistency’ however, you have to find the root causes.

There are a few typical culprits:

• A lack of a documented content strategy

• Too many people using different tools to brainstorm ideas and create content

• A lacking or non-existent brand voice, tone, and feel

• Not following a content calendar: both for production and publishing

To determine which of these is the likely culprit it’s going to take a point person - likely whomever is in charge of marketing and content creation in your organization - to have a good number of conversations with everyone that has created content to date.

It’s important that these conversations are recorded and synthesized so you can make a determination of the ‘root cause’ and the best way to proceed.

While there are some specific things you should depending on the cause, there are a few things you should do regardless to take your content creation from chaotic to calm and consistent.

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🪓 2 Actions to Take: Build a Simple Content Tool Stack & Establish Voice, Tone and Feel

No matter what the root cause of the chaos is, there are two things you can do to start to calm things down

1. Build a simple content tool stack.

2. Establish voice, tone, and feel.

Build a Simple Content Tool Stack & System

A great way to get things organized - either for the first time or re-organized - is to build a simple content tool stack. It can be as simple as building a Content folder in your company’s Google Drive and adding a few other sub-folders there for things like images, drafts, resource materials etc.

If you already have this basic organization system built, the next thing to consider is adopting a simple project management tool like Asana or Trello to build your content pipeline. The content pipeline should be a few lanes like Ideas, In Progress, Ready for Review, Ready to Publish and Published. Everyone involved in the content production process should have the ability to access the pipeline, but only the person ultimately responsible for ensuring content gets published should be able to move the cards from one status to another.

We use Notion for this purpose, but it’s a little more robust and intended for more complex content pipelines that include a variety of content types like email marketing, website content, blog content, press releases, social media posts etc.

Establishing Voice, Tone and Feel

Content is less chaotic when each piece you create has the same voice, tone and feel:

• Voice:

  • Refers to the unique and consistent personality or style that a company projects in its content.

  • It’s the brand’s overall identity and how it communicates with its audience.

  • Voice remains consistent across all content types and platforms.

  • Examples: Friendly and casual, professional and authoritative, witty and humorous.

• Tone:

  • Refers to the emotional inflection or attitude conveyed in a specific piece of content.

  • It can change depending on the context, audience, or purpose of the content.

  • Tone adjusts to suit the situation or message, while the voice remains the same.

  • Examples: Encouraging and supportive, urgent and serious, lighthearted and playful.

• Feel:

  • Refers to the overall atmosphere or emotional impact that the content creates for the audience.

  • It’s the combined effect of the voice, tone, and other content elements (like visuals and design).

  • The feel influences how the audience perceives and emotionally connects with the content.

  • Examples: Warm and inviting, sleek and modern, intense and energetic.

So if you want a couple of ‘quick wins’ build that simple tool stack and system, and get your voice, tone and feel aligned as soon as possible.

Then when the chaos is rooted out, your content will be on the path to consistent high quality!

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💻 3 Cool Resources to Check Out

Here are three tools that we use daily in our work as fractional content strategists that are worth checking out:

1. Jotform- Jotform is a fantastic tool that helps you build simple forms you can use in all of your marketing, and it would be a great option to help you build a ‘boilerplate’ contract if you haven’t yet.

2. InVideo- InVideo is a pretty incredible AI-driven video creation tool that allows you to create really fantastic, high-quality vidoes straight from text prompts. Really fun to experiment with this to add a new dynamic element to your content!

3. Peech- Peech is a cool little video tool that makes it VERY easy to repurpose your longer-form video content into short-form content. If you struggle with this, grab Peech.

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How We Help Our Clients

Our company, Zanate Ventures, is a content studio based in Austin, Texas. Our goal is to help companies tell a better company story through fractional content strategy services including, but not limited to:

• Website content refreshes - to the customer’s transformation

• Content strategy - focused on repeatable systems and processes

• Marketing funnel development leveraging:

  • Social media

  • Blog content

  • Email marketing & outreach

  • Press mentions, appearances, and exposure

We offer several levels of engagement, but everything kicks off with a 30-Day Diagnostic period to identify the quickest wins and long-term plays that will help energize your company’s story.

Interested to learn more?

Book a 30-minute discovery call here:

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See you on Thursday August 22nd for Edition 7!