Isn’t It Obvious?

mlns='> If you have to ask, it probably isn’t. [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 8.12.22 Connect With CMI [25+ Experts Weigh In on the Best Ways To Use Social Media in Content Marketing]( Simply showing up on social isn’t enough anymore. You need to engage on the right channels with the right content delivered the way your audience likes to engage. Try these expert tips to update and refine your social media strategy. [Read more]( By Ann Gynn More of the week's best stuff: - [Stop Treating Design Teams as Vending Machines for Your Content's Graphics]( by Chris Gillespie - [3 Ways To Get Bigger Content Marketing Results With a Small Team]( by Ann Gynn - [CMI News: Does This Spell Doom for Your Marketing Budget? [Video Update]]( by Robert Rose - [Keep Your Audience Top of Mind With the Simple Jobs-To-Be-Done Formula]( by Debamrita Ghosh - [This Is Why No One Uses Your Content [Rose-Colored Glasses]]( by Robert Rose  Isn’t It Obvious? How many times have you asked that question? It often comes out when you realize some request or suggestion you thought you conveyed wasn’t acted on. This “[signal amplification bias]( (as psychologists call it) explains how most miscommunication happens. People routinely fail to realize how little they actually communicate to their colleagues. In other words: People believe they said a lot more than they really said. The remote work trend no doubt exacerbates this phenomenon. Email, text messaging, Slack, and Zoom create conditions that seem to promote miscommunication. And don’t think you’re safe because your close-knit team shares some kind of mental shorthand. Researchers found that miscommunication happens more frequently among people in close relationships. (My wife just held up her hand to say something.) I often see challenges arising from miscommunication (or under-communication) between sales and marketing teams. For example, a B2B technology client I worked with last month asked me to help align their sales and marketing teams. The sales team wasn’t using much of the content the marketing team created. Instead, sales reps would create their own content or use older content assets. Worse, they’d request new content pieces from the marketing team, causing a backlog of requests and conflicting priorities for marketing (should they continue their existing thought leadership plan or accommodate the sales teams’ requests?) This kind of challenge is well-documented in sales enablement and B2B content marketing circles. Interestingly, [recent Heinz Marketing]( research found both sales and marketing teams named “using the most up-to-date and effective content” as their top challenge. “Wait a minute,” you might say. “Both teams agree that using up-to-date content is the number one problem. So why not tell the sales team to use the new content or tell marketing to make better content?” That seems obvious. And my client even tried it. The sales team communicated that they needed better content. Marketing agreed to produce it but delivered this message, “You’d better use the new things we create.” Spoiler alert: The problem didn’t go away. If anything, it got worse. The teams didn’t suffer from a content quality problem. They didn’t have a usage problem. They had a communication problem. In [Rose-Colored Glasses]( this week, I’ll explain how this team solved their problems. You may find a similar approach useful. Send me [an email](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com)or leave a comment on [the article page]( to let me know if it helps your teams work better together. In the meantime, remember: It's your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute Do you have colleagues or friends who would benefit from Robert's weekly updates? 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