Content marketing expert and journalist Rachel Lindteigen believes that in order to be successful in our sector in 2017, you need to follow a set of rules, not necessarily cutting-edge at first glance, but the secret lies in being consistent – you must not forget about any of them with every project you start and never let go. Which we all know is rather difficult because the path from theoretical planning to the final result can be meandering. Sometimes it’s because the client changes their mind, sometimes because our idea turns out to be impossible to be implemented, e.g. for technical reasons.
Rachel Lindteigen believes that despite the difficulties, it is worth doing all we can to follow these rules:
 – Think before you plan
Don’t go directly to creating content. Think about why you are creating the content first. Organize brainstorming, discuss it with your associates and clients or with other people who could help you with the decision (maybe they’re experts in the field, maybe they have more experience?).
– Less means more
Ask yourself: does the consumer really need the content you’ve created? If not, why do you want to create it? Rachel Lindteigen thinks it’s better to create less content which is more valuable to consumers. Served wisely it will be more engaging, because they won’t be tired with ‘choke-ups’ they get from you.
Similar recipes for effective work were brought last year by Ula Radzińska from the conference in Cleveland where they discussed e.g. about the trends for 2017 – what comes to the foreground is “slow content marketing,” which means quality over quantity and is the answer to the overwhelming inflow of content marketing offers and practices, not always that practical.
– Invite experts and influencers to your projects
Even if only as an expert on your poster. They will make your content look more reliable and – what’s important – will most likely share it with their recipients, which eventually will let your content reach a wider group of recipients. Sounds reasonable, so it would be worth making those rules your New Year’s resolution.
However, apart from new projects, which always seem more exciting than those we had been working on for a while, there are also our regular responsibilities. Regular like the passing of days in your calendar. How to keep boredom and routine at bay when performing similar tasks repeatedly? Whenever I find it difficult to come up with an idea for e.g. a poster for a regular client, I’ve noticed a great way to overcome this is to invite a different graphic designer than usually to cooperation. Someone with a different view and a different hand will naturally come up with something different. Of course, the person responsible for the project must make sure the proposal is consistent with the previous ones – it can surprise customers but should not make them feel disoriented. Such unexpected juxtaposition of a project with a new designer turns out to be successful in most cases. This proves that even routine tasks can be performed with excitement.

And all this came to me on the first day after the Christmas/New Year’s break, when Aude team was coming back to the office from all different places, full of emotions as varied as varied were the places they visited. Some of us spent the time traditionally, some unconventionally; with many other people or with only a few… The tales I could hear during the coffee break formed an inspiring mixture, allowing me to produce this text and illustrations – different than usually ☺ These were made of the pictures we took during the holidays. Contrasting them was enough to produce totally new content.