Content creation is the rule for every online marketer.

Constant care and feeding of the blog and our social sites is how you keep traffic coming round. It’s how you position our company for higher “status” among those who are looking for what you offer, i.e. paying customers, and (indirectly) search engines.  

Not only must it be good, it must be plentiful. Bloggers who post content once every week get fewer results and make less impact than bloggers who post three times a week. More is more, where content consumers are concerned.

Small biz marketers are always trying to step up their content creation game…to be everywhere, all the time. It can make you crazy.

Almost as crazy as this myopic (literally) writer…

See, for the last few years I’ve kept reading glasses close at hand, all over the house. I put them on and off minute by minute depending on the task at hand. I’ve always worn glasses or contacts to correct my long distance vision. But when that middle vision (the exact length of my arm from my eyes) started going down the tubes, that’s when I knew I needed serious help. I had to see the long view, as well as do things like read my monitor and turn on the oven and read my car dashboard. These are non-negotiable daily activities!

What an inconvenience to constantly, but intermittently (like every few minutes or so) need readers. I’ve even been known to wear my reading glasses over my regular glasses…yes, I know how it looks!

Just like reading glasses, content creation is the first thing marketers reach for. You can never get too far away from it. It’s always the task at hand. The job of a copywriter is to think about creating content for clients — and then to create it. If I’m not writing, I’m thinking of writing; every day, every hour…just like needing those readers on the tip of my nose.

So my eye doctor recently told me about “monovision.” She gave me two different contact lenses. One allows my right eye to see distance and the left to perform close-up tasks. (Meaning I can watch a soccer game and text all at the same time…in unaided luxury.)

Guess what? It works. I’m now typing this without wearing reading glasses. Oh happy day! I feel like a college kid. The only difference is I didn’t have a laptop back then. (That’s the ONLY difference  ;-))  I can read anything, near or far with just my contacts. 

As this article points out: “With both eyes open, typically the result is acceptably clear and comfortable vision at all distances.”

As you think about your content creation, this “acceptably clear and comfortable vision” is exactly the kind of marketing which really works for small businesses.

So how do we apply monovision capabilities as we go about creating content in the short term, as well as the content we want to produce over the long haul?

The challenge is

1. Choosing the content that serves an evolving community of followers today;

2. Continually creating content that points to (or hints at) your developing products and services;

3. Anticipating use of future marketing channels and service to target niches within your market;

4. All while creating significant long term content for future releases, eg. that book, conference or online course you are developing.

Unfortunately, these day to day tasks — getting blog posts published, sending email regularly and on time, social networking — can distract you from paying attention to current customers’ future needs.

It’s also easy and all-too-human to get in a rut, writing about the same things all the time. You may be preaching to the choir so to speak without anticipating the needs of new potential customers. 

I made a 6-minute video about how I think about content creation from the close up, day-to-day, “in the trenches” mentality while also looking ahead to the sweeping changes and goals I want to accomplish in my company to meet the evolving needs of my clients.

As a small business owner, you have these same issues… figuring out how to serve your customers better and attract new accounts today and a year from now. Do you balance these different marketing challenges the same way, or do you have a different perspective?