WORKWEEK

A short & sweet list of things that haven’t changed even a little:

1. Prioritize internal communications: This applies both to regular (scannable) updates and visibility on your content strategy and content production (i.e. what you’ve published and what will be published soon) –– as well as giving your internal teams the information they need to share your content far and wide, specifically with prospects. 
2. Enable sales: This goes beyond internal comms. You need one-pagers. You need decks. You need to show up to meetings. If sales doesn’t know what you are producing, they don’t know how to follow-up on it or use it in a pitch. And if they don’t know how to do that, you are missing the primary audience and objective of your content. Enabling sales is a true lesson is less is more––and visuals matter most. Get good at it.
3. Diversify where you publish: Think bigger than your blog. Look at what established brands are doing to win on wildly high-volume terms, and don’t think that SEO has changed so dramatically that you shouldn’t take a page from their book. Don’t take the pages that only focus on driving traffic though (i.e. aren’t related to the product at all). Traffic and conversion matter.
4. You can’t do it alone: Use agencies. Hire people. Look for those that get it. Truly get it. That’s way harder than you think––but they’re out there.
5. Be humble: You can be on top of the world one minute, and buried by an exec’s comments the next. That’s the job. You have to love the work––the writing, the storytelling, the strategy. Find an industry you like and a problem you think is interesting, and invest your time into it (no more than 40 hours a week, please). The #1 thing you can do to be successful in this role is to keep showing up with a positive attitude. And remember, you don’t have a career. You have a life. Prioritize accordingly.