Your team is divided on content direction. How can you steer them towards a unified strategy?

In my experience, divergent views are normal and should not be discouraged because they may open up a new and fresh perspective on content. Highly divergent views may, however, suggest a departure from the values and direction of the organisation and will, therefore, require a reevaluation of the "why" of the organisation. All contributions must be encouraged in this process to ensure that the ultimate beneficiary - the audience- is well.

Your team needs to discuss various viewpoints on content direction. As a Social Media Business Strategist, understanding each member's motivations can reveal valuable insights into audience preferences and market trends. This collaborative approach fosters respect and leverages diverse perspectives to create more effective and targeted content strategies, ultimately enhancing online presence and engagement.

Have a great conversation, challenge, debate, discussion, and then go again… And listen to one another… Use a great facilitator to hold it together and see what emerges.

It is natural to have diverse viewpoints and these should be welcomed since they strengthen an organization. However, a scattered unfocused approach to presenting content is not a good solution. You will lose the brief attention span appropriated to your content if it strays too much from its mission. Your content mission should be identified before you post, publish or disseminate. An approach to consider is an old school editorial approach. Have all team members provide ideas at a meeting; whether in person, over video chat or otherwise. Then grade these ideas for current plan space and resources in the present, table for future plans or respectively decline due to scope or other reasons.

As a Creative Director, I've successfully unified a divided team by encouraging open discussion, refocusing on project goals and objectives, analyzing successful content, developing a unified content vision, establishing clear roles and responsibilities, creating a content calendar, and fostering regular feedback and iteration. By following these steps, we aligned our team's diverse perspectives, ensured everyone was working towards the same objectives, and refined our content strategy to drive success. This approach enabled us to overcome our content direction impasse, leveraging our collective strengths to create compelling content that resonated with our target audience.

Establish clear, shared objectives for your content strategy. Ensure these goals align with your overall business objectives. This common ground will guide your team towards a unified direction.

Encourage active participation from all team members in the decision-making process. This inclusion fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to the strategy.

I'd suggest meeting to share like and different ideas using a Venn diagram. Similar ideas would be placed in the overlapping parts of the circle, and vastly different ideas would go on the other parts of the circle. The groups would then put focus on the ideas listed in the overlapping parts of the circle and build upon those.

Clearly articulate the vision and rationale behind the chosen content direction. Explain how it aligns with the company’s goals and addresses customer needs. Transparency helps in gaining team buy-in.

After recentering the team on the most critical objectives and goals. Encourage an open share-out of ideas from all members to gain perspective and expertise. Then discuss which approaches are most probable to deliver the desired outcomes. Determine what metrics will be necessary to monitor progress, establish how they will be tracked, who will own inputs, and a specific cadence on effectively measuring success. Create a framework for the ideas shared and key takeaways and celebrate with the team how they will be a useful library to access in the future as performance metrics are measured. Reinforce the ability to make adjustments as necessary to achieve common goals.

Adopt a flexible approach to implementation. Allow room for adjustments based on feedback and changing circumstances. This adaptability can help address any initial resistance and improve the strategy's effectiveness.

Regularly track and evaluate the progress of your content strategy. Use metrics and feedback to measure success and identify areas for improvement. This ongoing assessment ensures the strategy remains relevant and effective.

Such situations are very obvious in teams whose members have vivid industry experience and exposure. For example, a team working for a real estate agency has content writers with past experience in the academic and education sector, Graphic designers holding past experience in the finance industry and SEO Analyst with the same F&B Industry. Is it possible that they will have similar viewpoints for any particular campaign? Never! Therefore, here either you can take a risk by welcoming all of their ideas one by one and show them the performance metrics comparison, or, take the best of their ideas and implement the same in a single plan. We must ensure that no one in the team feels underrated or disrespected.