Thread by @RyanMcCready1

📣"I want to publish more content in 2022!”

Every marketer has said this, at least once.

It's an admirable goal but flawed from the very beginning.

And it will lead to burnout faster than success.

Let me show you why.

🧵

Wanting to simply publish more content isn't a real goal.

It’s more of an aspiration.

Goals have measurable outcomes & timelines built into them.

The goal we outlined above does not.

Without a measurable goal, you end up publishing content just to publish it.

Whether it be on social media, in your customer’s inbox, or on YouTube.

Just adding more noise to an already noisy year.

I have seen a lot of marketers get stuck in a publishing cycle that only rewards making sure a blog post is live or the Tweet is shared.

Then they are confused as to why their content marketing efforts are not succeeding.

Publishing a piece of content should be a checkpoint in the creation process.

Not an end goal.

Yet, they just keep pumping out more content.

So it just becomes more noise.

On top of all the other stuff that they have already published this year.

Let me let you in on a secret...

You don't have to publish a new piece of content every day, week, month, or quarter.

Your team will quickly get burnt out trying to hit those arbitrary deadlines.

Without seeing the needle move on important metrics.

Thankfully there’s a pretty easy solution.

But your boss isn't going to like it…

Stop publishing until you are ready to set some real content goals.

Otherwise, you will never get off the “publishing just to publish” cycle.

So let me show you how to set some better goals for 2022.

In my experience, the best content goals are 3 things:

🏆 Specific
🏆 Realistic
🏆 Measurable

Here are a few examples of goals that I would avoid setting:

❌ Increase our social media presence on TikTok
❌ Publish 20 new case studies this year
❌ Launch a new podcast

Those are not goals, those are still aspirations.

They are so vague & meaningless, that just by publishing content you are going to achieve them.

Here are some more actionable goals:

✅ Increase our TikToks views & shares by 25% by March 1st

✅ Launch a new marketing podcast with 6 pre-recorded episodes by August 1st

✅ Publish 2 monthly case studies to boost our newsletter subscriber count by 50% by July 1st

As you can see, each of those goals was

🏆 Specific
🏆 Realistic
🏆 Measurable

You can easily work backward from a goal like:

✅ “Launch a new marketing podcast with 6 pre-recorded episodes by August 1st.”

But not so much from a goal like:

❌“Launch a new podcast.“

Your team knows exactly what the end goal is & how long they have to work on it.

Content now becomes a lever, just like other marketing assets, that can help you achieve your goals.

And best of all, you might find that you actually have to publish less in 2022.

Now if you want to learn more about setting better goals in 2022, first follow @FoundationIncCo.

And then check out the full article here: foundationinc.co/lab/stop-publi…