We’re not big on New Years Resolutions, if only because we go to the gym anyway and it’s annoying when it gets so crowded at the start of January. Then again, by around January 13, it’s usually back to normal.
But we do think it’s a good idea for companies to use the occasion of the new year to make sure they are communicating the right messages about themselves to their markets. This is especially true because the era of SEO keywords and business jargon has lured a lot of companies into messaging that’s as clear as muck.
So we want to encourage you to make sure five things are in ship shape before the calendar turns over into January 2026 (and by all means, hire us to help you with them):
- Make sure anyone visiting your website will understand within one minute what you do. Your home page and “about us” page copy are the first things people will look at when they decide to explore what you’re all about. Does your company do third-party freight brokering? Make sure they know that. And if you need to explain that you find carriers to haul clients’ freight, then say that too. Do you manage their data and protect them from cyberattacks? Make sure that’s clear. You don’t have to go into exhaustive detail, but you need to be clear and explicit about it. Do you help company founders find buyers when they decide to sell? Make sure the copy says so. This might seem obvious, but for too many companies, the reader is already lost once they get through all the nonsense about “solutions” and “optimization” and “leverage points” and so forth. Stand up and identify yourself with clarity. It’s the first thing you need to do.
- Apply the same clarity to the overview on your LinkedIn profile. This can be a little longer because the formatting on LinkedIn allows for it, but you still have to answer the question with clarity. Too many LinkedIn overviews read like this one (company name redacted because we’re not trying to embarrass anyone): “REDACTED delivers efficiency, enhances profitability, and solves complex challenges for though purpose-built optimization technology. Trusted by industry leaders, REDACTED combines cutting-edge optimization techniques with decades of industry expertise to provide smarter, faster decisions and measurable results.” What the flipping heck does this company do? No one can tell from reading that.
- Make sure the right people are actually seeing the content you produce. We recently started working with a client who was frustrated because a previous marketing firm cared only about their LinkedIn statistics, and more than a year of this didn’t produce a single new customer. LinkedIn posts are fine for keeping people engaged. Blog posts on your website (if they’re good) send a strong message to people who have already decided to visit. But you have to identify your highest-value audiences and make sure you connect with them on a regular basis to tell them about the new material you’ve produced – and ask them to share it with others who may need to see it. They’re much more likely to do so than a random LinkedIn viewer.
- Make sure your sales team is making good use of the content you produce. We all know (or we should all know) it takes six or seven contacts to get most prospects to decide to buy. What is your sales team saying when they make those six or seven outreaches? “Just following up”? Why are you making them say that when they could be sharing new and interesting content the company is producing? Get them involved with the process of content creation and find out what type of content will help them keep the prospects engaged and move them toward a deal.
- Make sure you know how you’re going to stay consistent in producing new content this year. We see so many company blogs, news pages and newsletters are active and strong in January, February and maybe March. By April, they’re dwindling in frequency. By the summer, they’re ghost towns. Companies fall off for a variety of reasons. Maybe whoever is writing the content is squeezing in the time amidst a higher-priority set of responsibilities. Maybe the content team ran out of ideas. Maybe it was taking up time and didn’t seem to be producing ROI. Doing the first four items will help a lot with the ROI, but you still have to stay consistent.
This is why a lot of companies hire us, of course. We’ll keep it consistent, we’ll keep generating fresh ideas and we won’t be distracted by other responsibilities. But whether you hire us or do it internally, you need to keep it consistent.
Do these five things before 2026 rolls around, and you’ll get much more out of your marketing content in the year to come.