I recently had the opportunity to hear content marketing guru Amanda Todorovich speak about growing Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials into one of the most widely read health blogs in the country. Her secret = clarity.
Cleveland Clinic’s content strategy is one sentence. And, it’s been the same for six years. Of course, there’s a tremendous amount of hard work, data mining and management and relationship-building that has gone into their success. However, there’s a lot we can glean about clarity and consistency.
I wrote a post recently about brand purpose and decision-making. In it, I compared the mission statements of Southwest and American Airlines. Southwest’s mission was short, actionable and focused. The mission for American was long and crowded with competing priorities. There’s value in keeping it simple.
Clarity is one of the greatest benefits of purpose. Peeling back the layers to identify a clear and focused reason for being allows employees, customers and partners to better understand what you do, why you do it and why they care. It serves as a guidebook for what fits and what doesn’t.
However, the second part of that message is equally as important – consistency. It takes time to build and sustain momentum around your purpose. When you do, the results are tremendous. Even though you might feel like a broken record, keep finding new ways to tell the same story.
There will always be changing priorities in business, and the pace of business isn’t slowing down, which makes keeping it simple all the more important. Amanda had so many great nuggets of content wisdom, but right now I’m focusing on this one: be clear and be consistent.
