Content is crucial in helping you achieve business goals—whether it’s to increase sales, improve employee retention, expand your brand awareness, etc.—but aligning your content marketing goals to your business goals is often easier said than done. In this #ContentChat with special guest Rebekah Meyer (@RebekahLMeyer), we dive into the goal alignment process and share tips to help you map your content marketing strategy to the business results that matter.

ICEBREAKER: As we gather for #ContentChat please introduce yourself and share if you have documented content marketing goals and business goals.

— Erika Heald | Consultant | Content Strategist (@SFerika) September 17, 2018

Q1: Does your business communicate business goals to the company? What are some of the common goals you are working toward?

Rebekah started us off with some quick tips: goals are necessary to keep employees moving in the same direction. It doesn’t matter if the goal is annual, quarterly, or even for individual campaigns.

A1a: Companies should share overall goals so that all of its employees are pulling in the same direction. Whether that’s one large annual goal broken down into quarters or individual campaigns, getting everyone together is key. ⁰#ContentChat

— Rebekah Meyer (@RebekahLMeyer) September 17, 2018

Goals can range in focus, including sales, customer engagement, brand awareness and more. These can be set at a corporate level, then individual teams can be assigned their own goals that ladder up to the overarching goal(s).

A1b: Common broad company goals include things like building awareness, generating sales, and keeping current customers engaging with your company. These can break down into specific goals, such as gaining social media visibility or shortening the sales cycle. ⁰#ContentChat

— Rebekah Meyer (@RebekahLMeyer) September 17, 2018

A1. We keep everyone in the loop on our important business goals throughout the year. Also, at the end of each year we have a strategy meeting to set a vision for the upcoming year. Recently, a main goal of ours is to work at increasing our overall company awareness. #ContentChat

— CHARGE (@CHARGEgoforward) September 17, 2018

A1: We share, discuss, and update company-wide goals in quarterly meetings. We also have department and campaign goals that might be shared within and across teams in a similar style. #Contentchat

— Brafton (@Brafton) September 17, 2018

Well, we wait for approved goals and then the updated goals, and then more goals. So we make our own: improving our website experience, measured via survey tools, and increasing web traffic via specific content marketing to strategic site pages. #contentchat https://t.co/xOK4N1TdOI

— Jen Brass Jenkins (@chrliechaz) September 17, 2018

With those goals, teams can plan and prioritize upcoming content or activations to ensure they stay focused on the finish line. Sometimes, that means saying no to projects that do not tie back to your goals.

Priority is so key! Goals can often clash, so it’s not just enough to know what they are. Good decision making is all about deciding which ones to spend time/resources on, at what time! #ContentChat

— Rebekah Meyer (@RebekahLMeyer) September 17, 2018

A1: We have a strategic plan that is well communicated to all employees so we understand the overarching goals of the organization as well as the priority areas during periods of time. We use that plan and goal hierarchy to prioritize work and content needs. #contentchat

— Caitlin Kinser (@caitlinmarie89) September 17, 2018

A1: Big yes. We look at revenue goals by quarter and target the personas who have the capacity to hire us. Not going to share the nitty gritties, but from there, we look at how much we need to have in the pipeline and what needs to be done to reach that number.#ContentChat pic.twitter.com/c2enSMPL6J

— Jesse Ghiorzi (@jesseghiorzi) September 17, 2018

With a clear set of goals, you can also say “no” with confidence, which is important! #ContentChat

— Erika Heald | Consultant | Content Strategist (@SFerika) September 17, 2018

[Read more…] about September 17, 2018 Content Chat Recap: Aligning Content Marketing Goals to Business Goals