These are challenging times to be a marketer. With the growth and adoption of new marketing channels, it can be perceived as a greater challenge than ever to find a way to consistently produce fresh and engaging content. 

In many facets of life, avoiding the pitfalls of routine and repetition is important. An excess of repetition can cause boredom. With content marketing, it is entirely possible that if content produced from your brand across multiple channels is dry and repetitive, people could learn to tune your brand out. Every organization should want to create content that stands out from the crowd and is captivating. Capturing attention is getting more difficult to do. There’s been research that has shown that attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.

So how can you keep things fresh and interesting?

There’s a famous saying that variety is the spice is life. Varying content is a good way to keep people’s attention. The idea of brand consistency is valuable, as consistency is a hallmark of top performers. Consistency should not be confused with repetitiveness. Certain underlying themes and ideas can be expressed repeatedly, but they can’t be delivered exactly the same way over an extended period of time. A thought that comes to mind here is the famous Discount Tire ad with a woman throwing a tire through the window of a Discount Tire store. Discount Tire has run this ad for decades, though they haven’t had just this ad over time. They’ve produced other types of marketing communication highlighting other attributes of the brand while occasionally dusting off this ad to highlight their return policy.

Not every product category gives a marketer an opportunity to break glass memorably. Some product categories are not perceived by the majority of people to be as captivating as others. However, that’s not an excuse to be dull and mundane in marketing communication. With the proliferation of channels in this multi-channel environment, it is easier than it has been to find an audience of people that think that your subject matter is highly interesting. That sentence isn’t meant to make light of the situation, because even though there is greater ease, getting content found by the right audience can still present a whole host of challenges. However, once the right audience is found, keeping them engaged is paramount. Discussing new topics that are related to the company’s core competency is key. There are often a lot of tangential issues that can be tied to a central area of expertise and the essence of brand’s differentiation points in the marketplace. Content planning is a process that most marketers will find helpful in creating captivating communication pieces.

A multimedia approach is often beneficial. At Distribion, we’ve produced a lot of written content via this blog, our website and our various social media channel updates. But we’ve also used video, and recently we’ve published videos highlighting our platform’s social media component and Sales Kit 2.0 features. Sometimes, video can get the message across in ways that the written word does not.

Finding ways to keep your content fresh, engaging and captivating in a multi-channel environment with shorter attention spans than ever is a tremendous challenge. Overcoming this challenge should prove fruitful for most marketers.

What are your thoughts on keeping content interesting? Share them below.