This is a guest post by Vivian Swertinski at Informz. This is the second in a series of posts with great advice about content marketing – read the first one here.

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The importance of having strong Core Strength is key to maximizing balance, flexibility, and growth. The same is true for organizations. To be fiscally fit, organizations need to be strong at the core. How is your organization’s core strength? As individuals and as organizations, it’s time to ready ourselves for 2017.  There are bound to be new opportunities for growth and you don’t want to miss out!

In an organization core strength means having the skill, experience, and expertise to effectively execute your business plans and strategy. Core strength yields benefits in productivity and agility as teams work together to drive recruitment, engagement, and retention.

Core strength is made up of culture, human and data assets, and team Structure. An organization’s internal structure has huge implications into how successful they are.

It used to be common for organizations to have a centralized communications structure where audience communications were created, reviewed, and published by a few designated resources. Technology and market channel growth play a big role in how organizations choose to structure themselves. Today it’s common to see a decentralized communication structure where individual teams create and send their own communications to audiences.

The benefits of a decentralized communications structures may be productivity improvements.

• More content can be sent out at a faster pace.
• Less pressure is placed on one employee, and dependence on that one person is alleviated.
• Multiple team members can step in to send communications.

Be aware, the risks may outweigh the productivity gains if there isn’t proper ownership and oversight.

• Over-emailing your audience, creating email fatigue.
• Subscribers reading multiple emails from different departments on the same day, sometimes even at the same time.
• Lack of personalized content.
• Insufficient awareness of frequency and inadequate reporting.

Just a word of caution for those considering or already working in a decentralized team structure: the most common pitfall organizations find themselves in is a gap in their strategy. There is a clear absence of a “traffic controller,” — someone who takes ownership for the audience experience, knows what’s being sent out and when, and controls the numbers of communications a subscriber receives. I have seen organizations cannibalize their efforts because their teams end up competing against themselves for their audience’s attention. It reminds me of the age old saying, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Decentralized communications can work, but you must work your core strength to ensure there are no gaps.

Are there gaps in your team structure that are sabotaging your results? Get your core strength up by checking out one of our newest resources, Building a Modern Marketing Dream Team. This ebook will be your go-to guide for evaluating, planning, and creating the marketing team dreams are made of. Check it out here.

(photo credit)