We’ve all been there, you’ve cre­at­ed the great­est piece of con­tent you’ve ever come up with, spent hours research­ing and per­fect­ing every line of copy… and final­ly it’s live.

With a con­stant eye on your ana­lyt­ics, you see there are a few peo­ple on your site but quite frankly it’s all a bit of an anti-cli­max. Often, you can trace the prob­lem back to one rea­son — silos.

Oh here we go again, you’re think­ing, not anoth­er arti­cle about break­ing down silos! But until those iron clad walls are bro­ken down and mar­ket­ing strate­gies are work­ing in har­mo­ny, it’ll remain a heart-drop­ping sit­u­a­tion that will con­tin­ue to gen­er­ate dis­cus­sion.

If there are silos in your organ­i­sa­tion, great con­tent won’t reach its full poten­tial, and results won’t be where they need to be to tru­ly make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence.

5 ways to start breaking down silos in your organisation

Hav­ing moved from a large SEO team in a dig­i­tal agency, to an SEO and Con­tent Man­ag­er, fly­ing solo in a full-ser­vice mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing agency, I’ve learnt the hard way how dam­ag­ing silos can be.

I’m hop­ing some of my learn­ings will help those of you win over and encour­age col­leagues and clients to open up, inte­grate, and achieve con­tent mar­ket­ing great­ness!

1. Communication

This is poten­tial­ly quite obvi­ous but is often one of the biggest points of fail­ure par­tic­u­lar­ly in cross-agency com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In-House

In-house mar­keters, get your dif­fer­ent agen­cies and depart­ments talk­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to SEO, PR, social media and dig­i­tal buy­ing. I realise it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly real­is­tic for every­one to know every­thing that’s hap­pen­ing all the time, but when it comes to key cam­paigns and big moments, all of these teams should be involved. Sched­ule quar­ter­ly cross-agency meet­ings or calls to dis­cuss what’s been hap­pen­ing and what’s com­ing up.

Agency side

Open up con­ver­sa­tions with your clients, ask them what activ­i­ty is com­ing up that you could poten­tial­ly coor­di­nate with your chan­nel. Sug­gest cross-agency meet­ings to kick off new cam­paigns. The chances are they haven’t even thought of it and will hope­ful­ly be thank­ful that you’ve asked.

2. Research

Research who your dif­fer­ent audi­ences are, and how they are inter­act­ing across your chan­nels, and use this to inspire your con­tent. You may dis­cov­er you’ve got a huge niche fol­low­ing on Twit­ter that you hadn’t even con­sid­ered cre­at­ing con­tent on your web­site for.

Or, for exam­ple, that every­one look­ing at your web­site is aged 40+, yet your social media fol­low­ing is a lot younger. Think about how you could tap into these new audi­ences on your dif­fer­ent chan­nels to dri­ve audi­ences to where you want them to be.

3. Teaching

One of the biggest chal­lenges in break­ing down bar­ri­ers between mar­ket­ing strands is edu­ca­tion. Peo­ple have a ten­den­cy to get stuck in a rut of focus­ing on the top­ic they know best with­out break­ing the mould.

So whilst for years the mar­ket­ing world has exist­ed in silo, with an ever-chang­ing dig­i­tal land­scape, strat­e­gy and think­ing inevitably needs to change too if a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is going to suc­ceed.

Organ­ise joint learn­ing ses­sions where every­one gives a snap­shot of their chan­nel; what it is, why it’s impor­tant and bring­ing their ideas of how their chan­nel could be work­ing with oth­ers more effec­tive­ly. Keep it relaxed and dis­cus­sion-based so that no-one feels like they are being lec­tured at!

4. Collaboration

Arguably the most impor­tant take­away from this arti­cle is the impor­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion. One of my biggest bug­bears when it comes to con­tent mar­ket­ing is the need for some­one to “own” each cam­paign or piece of con­tent.

Ulti­mate­ly, we’re all essen­tial­ly work­ing to the same goal across every chan­nel (whether it be sell­ing products/services/tickets or what­ev­er else you may be mar­ket­ing), so the whole “I did it, there­fore my channel’s the best” phi­los­o­phy not only wastes ener­gy, but often hin­ders poten­tial gain from oth­er chan­nels.

One of the best ways to get every­one onboard with shar­ing ideas and con­tent is to have every­one involved from the begin­ning of a cam­paign. So have cross-agency and depart­ment brain­storms; get cre­ative togeth­er; think­ing audi­ence and ideas first, dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form sec­ond.

5. Distribution

And last but not least, hav­ing an inte­grat­ed con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion strat­e­gy is key. Do you share con­tent every­where at the exact time for big impact? Or would it be more effec­tive to spread dis­tri­b­u­tion out over a few days in a stag­gered approach?

In either case, ensur­ing as many chan­nels as pos­si­ble are involved in the most effec­tive way pos­si­ble is essen­tial for reach­ing the biggest, most var­ied audi­ence pos­si­ble.

Of course, these are just the start­ing points to get you think­ing about an inte­grat­ed strat­e­gy. In prac­tice there are a mul­ti­tude of lay­ers to con­tend with, it’s nev­er going to be as sim­ple as say­ing “OK, let’s all start work­ing like this tomor­row”. But just start­ing those con­ver­sa­tions and slow­ly break­ing holes in those walls should get things going in the right direc­tion!

Do you have any oth­er tips for cre­at­ing more inte­grat­ed con­tent strate­gies?