5 Lessons I Learned as a One-Man Content Marketing Team
This year, I had the (terrifying) honor of being Marquette Theatre’s Assistant to the Artistic Director. The sole content marketer and PR person on staff. Part-time.
Needless to say, it was a learning experience. But what’s the point of learning if you don’t break down the how and the why of what you learned? So with that in mind, here’s my five big lessons to you, hypothetically one-man content marketer. Good luck and Godspeed.
1. There’s a lot of free stuff out there
Odds are, if you’re a one-man content marketing team, you’re working on a budget thinner than Flat Stanley’s shoestrings. However, there are resources that can help you out!
If you want short videos, try out Animoto or Magisto. For graphics (of the regular and info varieties) Piktochart, Venngage, and especially Canva are your friends (and get Gimp for editing! Seriously!) Need to start an email newsletter? Mailchimp, my friend, Mailchimp.
Working on the cheap requires some creative thinking, but hey, why else are you in this business?
2. Don’t be afraid to ask for help
Yeah, you’re the only one on payroll for the gig, but enlist some friends! Call up some small favors (emphasis on small).
I’m not talking about getting people to do campaigns for you, but you’re not alone! Get another set of eyes on your copy, your blogs, your graphics and videos. Sometimes escaping the echo chamber of your own mind will do you a world of good.
Alone or not, those outside opinions are going to save your hide when it’s time to launch.
3. Be an idea hoarder
Make A&E cringe with how much you’ve got buried up in your brain.
Every time you see a graphic that catches your eye? File it away. A good sentence? A smart video? Snapchat? Throw those in the mental basement too!
DON’T PLAGARIZE. Just be creative. You don’t want to steal ideas, but there’s nothing wrong with following a trend and picking up a style, an element, a piece of this and a piece of that that makes your content 100 times better.
4. Read everything you can
Medium. Adweek. PR Week. CMI. It’s your job to be the expert.
Keeping up with the latest trends means making sure you read everything. You’ve got to be on top of your game to know what’s going to resonate with audiences and what’s going to fall flat.
Know what the trends are in PR, know what the trends are in technology. Know who’s popular right now, why, and what they stand for.
Knowledge is your tool — the more you have, the more you’ll be armed for whatever comes your way.
5. Fail a lot
This year alone, I screwed up massively. I started a coupon campaign that saw one coupon returned and used over the course of the entire campaign. I promised to do a #ThrowbackThursday every week for a year and ran out of material halfway through. I went into crunchtime for major theatrical events with next to nothing prepared.
Eh. It happens. And as a one-man team, it’ll probably happen a lot to you. You’ll want to do a lot, but you’ll never have the resources you want. You’ll overthink or underthink and screw up somewhere along the way.
And you’ll learn. I have so many ideas for next year now that I know my capabilities, my strengths, my weaknesses. You can’t do it all perfectly, so you might as well embrace the failure and turn it into something better.
Oh, and last tip? Don’t send the wrong press release to over 100 people. They don’t like that.
