Inbound Marketing & My Struggles with Content Anxiety

I love the concept of inbound marketing. It’s good for consumers (a central tenet is to give people content that’s helpful for them). And it’s certainly good for copywriters like me (more and more companies are hiring us to write content for their inbound marketing campaigns).

But since we’ve been HubSpot customers for about a year, I also see the downside: the ceaseless pressure to feed the content beast. And that inevitably leads to occasional bouts of content anxiety.

Back in the day, if we didn’t blog for a few weeks, it was no big deal. As long as our blog didn’t turn into a total content graveyard, there was really no harm done.

It’s different now. If we don’t blog for a week, I get a little uneasy. After two weeks, I feel sick to my stomach. We’re supposed to be masters of all things content — what will people think?

The fact is, though, while we’ve built up a pretty big content team, we’re not some corporate behemoth. As such, we sometimes face a two-out-of-three conundrum (e.g. “you can have it fast, good or cheap — pick two”). Our version: You can spend time on billable work, on nonbillable work (e.g. marketing, business development) or with your family at night — pick two.

Keeping my family happy is priority #1 (and not just because my wife may be reading this). So there will be times when I have to choose between billable and nonbillable work. In that case, I’ll go with the billable work every time because we also have to keep our clients happy. We owe it to them and, frankly, it’s just good business.

Which brings me back to my content anxiety. Given our deadlines (with a few vacations thrown in), we’ll inevitably experience some blog droughts during the year. But that’s our problem. The good news for you? If you’re falling behind on your inbound marketing efforts, you always have an easy solution: Hire us.