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Building an effective team to deliver the content writing services your business needs has created an exciting opportunity for you to seize control of the messages in your marketing. But as time goes by, things have started to slip—maybe you have even ended up in a full backslide. What's going on?
Burnout could be the issue. Effective content marketing requires a consistent flow of material to your channels, often covering a wide range of topics or digging deep into the specifics of subjects. Over time, your team can start to buckle under the pressure, leading to undesirable outcomes.
It isn't just content marketers who feel the burn, either—it's happening across all industries. According to a wide-ranging Deloitte survey, 77% of respondents said they had experienced or were experiencing burnout in the workplace.
When your staff burns out, it can take time to rebuild effectiveness and restore morale. Recognizing burnout early and taking steps to address the problem can help save you time while keeping your team satisfied. Before you act, learn the signs that burnout is setting in for your writers or content managers.
1. Content Quality Starts to Slide
Declining quality is often the first sign that something isn't right. At first, this issue might manifest as more time spent editing work from writing team members who typically don't make as many errors. More obvious lapses in quality, from poor grammar to missed instructions, can create compounding problems that take more time to fix. If a reliable team suddenly slips in quality, you should investigate the issue.
2. Employees Start Disengaging
Burnout may also become apparent through symptoms of disinterest. A team that grows tired of content production might start missing deadlines or turning in work that only shows a half-hearted effort. The quality and reliability of your brand's voice might begin to vanish from the content. Sometimes, burned-out staff will outwardly express their dissatisfaction with complaints.
3. Increasing Levels of Conflict
When you first built a team for content writing services, did everything work smoothly? Growing conflict between your team and other parts of the business should be a major warning sign of cratering job satisfaction. Irritability and friction in the workplace, difficulties communicating with remote team members, and other breakdowns between teams all speak to a growing issue.
4. Rising Rewrites
Reviewing content before it goes live is an important step to ensure it communicates the values of your brand effectively and offers something valuable to users. Are you sending more articles than usual back to your team because of errors? If quality wasn't a concern before, and it is now, you may have a tired and overworked team.
5. Repeating the Same Ideas and Structure
A flow of ideas and new approaches helps keep content fresh and ensures your brand messaging never goes stale—but it’s easier said than done. Is your content starting to sound very "samey"? Do some articles look so visually similar in their structure that it is hard to tell them apart when they go live? Waning creativity can be a sign that burnout has caused writers to disengage with the material.
6. Absenteeism or Turnover Start Increasing
Finally, we have the most obvious sign of burnout: turnover. Are your writers not just missing deadlines but missing work altogether? Have you had to start hiring additional help to manage everything on your content calendar? Pay attention when employees vote with their feet and head for the door.
What Can You Do About Burnout?
70% of Deloitte survey respondents said that their employers weren't doing enough to prevent burnout from occurring. Knowing which signs to look for can give you an advantage: if you can spot the early warning signs, you can take steps to improve conditions for your team before it’s too late.
To do so, you may need to augment your content writing services with additional capabilities to take the pressure off your internal team, or engage better planning and a more reasonable content calendar. When you have a plan for beating burnout before it starts, you can keep team morale high without compromising content quality.
