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Recent CMO Council research indicated that a majority of organizations are dissatisfied with current earned media performance. But why? As it turns out, the root of the problem can be traced to a misalignment between marketing and communication teams.

A couple weeks ago, CMO Council and Cision came together to bring you “Shifting the Content Game.” In this webinar, we spoke with leaders from Cisco and Schneider Electric about how to bring marketing and communication teams together in order to create a more unified and effective earned media strategy.

These organizations have it figured out, so let’s dive in to a few of their countless tips, tricks and pieces of advice.

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The first major piece of advice is to create cross-functional team meetings. In certain cases, global strategy boards and integrated content calendars have been extremely effective for bringing teams together. This may sound obvious, but there’s more to this that it may seem. By creating open communication between the teams responsible for your brand’s message, you enable these teams to create shared goals and accountability among each other to reach them. In addition, sharing information cross-functionally with integrated campaigns and metrics keeps your brand messaging consistent and compelling. In short, the old proverb rings true: “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

Retargeting on social media is the next major tip. Both Schneider Electric and Cisco agree that when done right, using data to analyze who your customers actually are, rather than you think they are can reap countless rewards for paid social. Consider utilizing different metrics to help gauge what kind of people resonate with your brand, you may reach an audience you didn't even know you had.

Finally, put your content in as many forms as you can. Your team works hard to create the content they do, so make sure you get the most out of it! These leaders suggest making your content available in as many mediums as possible that make sense for your brand—you never know when someone will be more receptive to a video than an article, or vice versa.

Bringing marketing and communication teams together is the next step in creating a powerful content strategy. If you want to dive deeper into these tips and glean even more useful knowledge from this webinar, you can listen to it on-demand here.