Why Consistent Messaging Matters in Authentic Content Creation

I’m so excited to share this guest post from Samantha Laycock with you all today! Samantha is a Creative Content Strategist at Creative Purpose and blogger. She’s going to be sharing why consistent messaging matters in authentic content creation.. so keep reading!

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Your message matters. Have you ever looked at all of your creative content to see if your message is consistent throughout all of it? 

Honestly, I have never even given it a thought before until I took a six-month small business program that started in June 2021. I had already been an entrepreneur since 2016 and I was skeptical about if I could truly learn anything new. This program helped me in so many ways, but today I want to talk about one specific topic and exercise that we did. 

During one of our classes, we were broken up into smaller groups and given a small local business to check out online. We were given their website and social media platforms and instructed to play detective and see if, throughout all of their platforms, their message matched. 

Having a clear and concise message throughout all of your platforms will give everyone the same information, brand feel, and content that you want to share. 

The Importance of Consistent Messaging & An Eye-Opening Look at Social Media

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What we quickly realized is that some of these incredible small businesses struggled to keep their message united throughout all of their platforms. 

What do I mean by that? 

Well, their website would state one thing but there was zero evidence of that specific thing on their social media. 

So for example, the business that my group looked at was a coffee company. On their website, they talked about the importance of their relationships with the farmers that they worked with. They also spoke about the importance of giving back to their community.

None of these were evident on their social media platforms. They didn’t mention any of the farmers that they worked with. They didn’t mention the community initiatives that they were a part of. On one hand, they were telling their audience that these were the pieces of their business that were important to them but on the other hand, they weren’t showcasing any of it.

There was a disconnect. An unintentional disconnect that wasn’t showing who they were as a business.

They were leaving out key pieces of their story and that can have a BIG impact on your content.

During this exercise, we were to make lists of what we thought could be improved when it came to their social media. We were looking at their content through unbiased eyes. (Which is so hard to do with our own content!!)

A consistent message is about building brand trust through all of the platforms that you use. Brand trust is what helps to build domain authority, brand authority, and customer loyalty. All things that we want as creative entrepreneurs.

How can you guarantee that there is consistency through all of your different platforms? Let’s dive in.

How to Create a Consistent Message Throughout Your Creative Content

You don’t want to have your brand feel disconnected between different platforms. When people feel confused, they will leave. That is not what you want when you are taking hours each week crafting the perfect content. 

The benefits of having a consistent message throughout all of your creative content are…

• Your audience will trust you
• You will build authority in your niche
• You will build loyalty with your clients and followers
• Your audience will get to know you 
• Consistent messaging helps with SEO

Your goal is to have your content flow between all of the different channels that you share it with. You want someone to be able to recognize the content that you share, no matter the platform you are sharing it to.

Here are five steps that you can take today to help you create consistency through your creative content.

5 Actionable Steps to Create Consistent Brand Messaging

Know your content pillars

When it comes to the content that you share across all of your platforms, you want to know what your content pillars are. You need these even if you are “just” blogging.

Your content pillars are going to help you to stay on topic. These are the main categories or topics that you are going to cover in your blog or your business. For instance, my blogging pillars are:

• Storytelling
• Healing and transformation
• Acceptance and self-love
• Blogging/Creative content
• Motivation and organization

All of the content that I create falls under one of these content pillars. 

Know your audience

On each one of your platforms, you may have a different set of audiences that you reach. Those who may be on your website may not be on your Instagram. Now, this doesn’t mean that you need to create new content to talk to them. 

It means that you need to cater your content to talk to them.

Working within your content pillars, know what content works best on which platforms. That may take a little bit of digging into your analytics to see what is working and what isn’t.

Knowing and understanding your audience is also going to help you with the keywords that you need to focus on when it comes to your blog and even on Pinterest. Plus, once you know those keywords, you will know what topics your audience is searching for and needing help with. 

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Know Your Mission

More than likely, what is important to you as a business owner, is going to be important to those who also follow you and do business with you. Like I said earlier with the coffee company that I looked at:

• They donated to certain organizations. 
• They worked with certain farmers.

None of this content was showing on Instagram or even on Facebook. It was only evident on their website. By sharing this type of content, you are showcasing your business values, which are just as important as what you sell and what you teach (if not even more important.)

Plan your content ahead of time

A lot of times, we just wing our content like our eyeliner and hope that something is going to stick. When what we actually need to do is to plan it out ahead of time. 

If you are looking to start planning your creative content, here are some tips that can help you:

• Choose a monthly theme. This can be a great place to begin when it comes to planning out your content. It gives you a base on what you want to talk about. Keep in mind what you have coming up for that month. Do you have a new product or service launching? You can gear your upcoming content around that. Once you have your monthly theme picked out, you can easily look at your content pillars and talk about things that are related to your monthly theme.

• Pick a posting schedule and stick with it. I truly believe that in order to succeed on your social media platforms, you need to pick a schedule that works for YOU. Yes, you may build up faster if you post once a day or even multiple times a day but do you have time for that? When choosing a schedule, you need to be honest about how much time you have and plan for that. 

• Purchase templates for graphics. I love love love using Etsy or Creative Market for this purpose. It helps save me time and gives me more unique graphics. I can easily change the colors and words to match my brand. 

• Have an organization method. I am a BIG planner and organization nut! Hence why that is part of my content pillars. Whether you are a blogger or you have a business, you have multiple things going on and once and you need to know what you need to do and what is coming up. Whether you are a paper planner type of person, or you are an online planner type of person, find a way that works for you!

Repurpose your content

I am all about saving time and energy and repurposing content that has already been shared.

For example, I have 1,893 posts on my IG feed. That gives me about 1,881 posts that I can reuse and make into new content. 

Why?

Because for the most part, your audience isn’t going to scroll down to search what you have already shared. 

Look to see what content did really well and share it again.

Look to see what content didn’t do so well and revamp it. 

Repurposing your content is key to surviving all of the creative content that we share day in and day out. 

Those five tips are practical ways that you can begin today to ensure that your message is clear on all of the different platforms that you use. When we can look at our own content through unbiased eyes, we are going to be able to see where we may be lacking when it comes to our own messaging. 

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