By now you’ve heard about Marie Kondo, whether you were already a fan of her book, or just learned of her on Netflix. Kondo’s self-titled approach to organization and de-cluttering, the KonMari Method™, encourages the individual to tidy items by category instead of room-by-room. Imagine tackling an entire genre of content, instead of just tidying one space that is bound to be messed up again and again.

Kon-tent that sparks joy

The great thing about KonMari? It’s a universal method that can be applied towards cleaning all kinds of spaces, not just the home. In the competitive content marketing space, for example, brands are posting more prolifically (as the market demands)…but churning out too much content without a guiding light can cause a backlash. If your content is not purpose-driven it will not spark joy in its audience, causing diminishing returns on your team’s hard-working efforts.

Tips on how to go all “Marie Kondo” on your content

Tidying up your marketing approach not only creates space for more purpose-driven content, but more importantly it will bring more joy to your audience, which will directly positively impact sales and increase your conversion rate. Learn how to “Marie Kondo” your content marketing with these helpful tips below, and before you know it you will have created a more optimal (and tidy) approach to reaching your audience. Creating tons of content doesn’t necessarily lead to tons of customers, but creating the right content will.

Tip #1: Clean by content type, not by social media platform

In translating Kondo’s approach, to strengthen your content marketing strategy for the long haul, clean up your content not by platform, but by type. Thanks to the rapid pace of information sharing that is the Internet, topics get outdated pretty quickly, demanding more frequent maintenance of outdated content. Have old blog posts taking up space, “how-to’s” from 2014, for example? Five years in internet years is ages ago, and you don’t want to give off the impression to your audience that you are a digital dinosaur. What about videos that are still in 720p spread across your social platforms? As the success of digital advertising grew, so did the number of platforms on which you could host that content. Similar to upgrading from a small apartment to a spacious house, more rooms doesn’t always mean you need more stuff. But in a room with just a few items, those items will stand out more, and will be easier to recall. Apply this thinking to your content.

Tip #2: Spark Joy with Purpose-driven Content

REI may be a pricy place to buy a jacket, but, did you know that all of their products have a lifetime warranty? So, a jacket from REI might have a higher up-front cost more than one from Wal-Mart, but over time you will spend more at Wal-Mart rebuying the same jacket each time it breaks down. Which item is going to spark more joy over time? You must apply the same thinking to how you create content. Sure, being prolific with content creation shows your audience that you are always putting new stuff out there, but brands often stretch themselves too thin, taking shortcuts to meet demands they think will create better returns. That’s when content like this is created:

This sponsored Instagram story was clearly created in a rush, and it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s first purpose was to spark joy, but instead to “post content to post content.” What you can learn from this :

• Background color: Instagram’s overlaying font is always white, which means, if your ad has a white background your profile name will not be seen, which is already one missed opportunity to lead your audience to your profile.
• Repurposing wide for vertical: it can be done, but don’t take shortcuts. Simply pasting a square or wide photo on a vertical ad space means you have to get creative with it…much more creative than just pasting a photo of your product with some generic text below it…speaking of…
• Text: keep your copy simple, and stand out from the crowd. Also keep up with trends, as the use of emojis like that is widely played-out. By now there are thousands of “bite size” ads like this circulating on stories, so what’s going to set yours apart from the rest?

Out with the outdated, in with the fresh

Tidying creates space for peace and quiet as well as new things and ideas. This is not to say you have to scrap content that is older – because content can be recycled – it’s about how you  do it. It’s more about embracing your “why.” Reorganizing your digital space creates room for more directed and specific traffic from audiences that find joy in your content, so why not start today?

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