Before You Publish More Content, Fix Your Story
A common request I get is some version of “we need more content.” Usually there is a list behind it: blogs, LinkedIn, SEO pages, case studies, maybe a newsletter.
Sometimes the answer really is more content. But before I add anything to the calendar, I usually ask what all of it is supposed to make the buyer believe about the company.
The answer is often less settled than the publishing plan.
Ask around the company and you usually hear different versions. The founder talks about the bigger vision, sales leans on what helped close the last deal, product emphasizes the capability it cares about most, and marketing may still be working from language approved six months ago.
At that point, the content brief starts doing a job it was never meant to do. It becomes the place where positioning gets decided, one article at a time.
I had to fix this in my own business
I ran into the same problem recently at First Domino Marketing.
Over time, the website, my LinkedIn profile, the FDM LinkedIn page, Google Business Profile, Clutch, Facebook, and other public listings had accumulated different descriptions of the business. Some still reflected older service language. A few used different company names or different founding dates. Links pointed to different destinations. None of those differences looked serious on their own.
There was no disagreement between departments. FDM is a one-person firm. The different versions had simply accumulated over time.
Side by side, they described slightly different versions of the company.
I did not need another article to explain FDM. I needed to decide which description was current, which services should lead, which proof belonged with those claims, and then make the public record match.
Once that was settled, new content had a clearer job. It could reinforce the position instead of inventing a fresh version of it.
The content team should not have to make the positioning call
The content team should know which buyer matters most, which problem the company wants to own, what buyers compare it with, and which claims deserve to lead before it starts filling the calendar.
If those questions are still open, every asset becomes a small positioning exercise. The content team ends up deciding, piece by piece, which version of the company gets published.
The calendar gets busier while the company gets harder to repeat.
A buyer has to explain you to other people. The champion inside the buying group has to retell the story to colleagues you may never meet. Edelman and LinkedIn’s 2025 research on hidden buyers is a useful reminder that those unseen people can still influence the decision. If your public material gives them several versions, you have made that job harder before sales gets involved.
Buyers are forming preferences early
6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report found that 94% of buying groups ranked preferred vendors before engaging sellers. The vendor preferred before first contact ultimately won 77% of the time.
That research does not prove that content created the preference. Prior experience and existing relationships matter a great deal. The useful point is narrower: by the time a seller enters the conversation, the buyer may already have a working view of who belongs on the shortlist and why.
Your website, LinkedIn presence, case studies, and articles are part of what buyers can see before that first conversation. When they point in different directions, the buyer has to assemble the company for themselves.
AI can spread an unresolved story faster
AI makes production easier, which is useful when the source material is sound. It is also a very efficient way to distribute an unresolved story.
In the same 2025 study, nearly all buyers reported using LLMs during the buying process, and comparing vendor offerings was the most common use. Part of what a buyer sees may now be a summary of your material rather than the material itself.
Inside the company, the risk sits in production. If five people give AI five different descriptions of the business, the team can create five inconsistent sets of content much faster than it could a few years ago.
For the AI-search side of this, I have written separately about how inconsistent public sources can produce an inaccurate or outdated picture of a B2B company. AI makes it easier to multiply whatever story you give it.
What I would do before publishing something new
Once the positioning is clear, the useful question is where the next hour of content work will do the most good.
I would start with the anchor pages that carry the company story. These are the pages a buyer, salesperson, search engine, or AI tool should be able to return to for the current version of an important part of the business. A service page, comparison page, case study, or proof page can all play that role if the page answers a durable buyer question and stays current.
Then look at the older content that already has some value. An existing page may rank, attract links, get referenced in sales, or answer a question buyers still ask. If the topic still matters, updating that page can be more useful than starting again from zero. Older content is also where message drift tends to accumulate, so a refresh is partly an SEO task and partly a positioning check.
I would create something new when there is a clear gap. Maybe buyers keep asking a question the site never answers. Maybe you have a new use case, stronger proof, or a comparison that keeps coming up in sales. A timely market change or a point of view you have can justify a new piece too. The supporting article should still strengthen an anchor page rather than become another isolated destination.
New pages can create additional search and referral entry points. A useful article gives you something current to distribute on LinkedIn or send after a sales conversation. Case studies and comparison pages give buyers and internal champions something specific to pass around. I would also watch which pages sales actually sends and what buyers mention on calls. That tells you more than the publishing count.
Run this check before adding another content stream
Put five things next to each other: your homepage, the main service or product page, the current sales deck, the company or founder LinkedIn profile, and one recent piece of content.
Then ask:
• Who is this for?
• What problem do we want to own?
• What are we asking the buyer to believe?
• What proof supports that claim?
• What should the buyer remember about us that they would not say about three competitors?
If the answers materially change from one asset to the next, I would fix that before approving another month of content.
Check whether your homepage, sales deck, LinkedIn, and recent content agree on the buyer, the problem, the main claim, the proof, and what you want to be remembered for. If those answers keep changing, settle the positioning before you add more content.
