32 GERMINATION.CA JANUARY 2018 Here, experts from across the industry will discuss issues that are top-of-mind, share technical advancements, talk about tips for success and provide perspective on policy. I CONFESS — I like to procrastinate. As a result, I force myself to regularly block out some time in my schedule for specific topics I need to think about — things like the gen- eral vision of our team, where we’re going as a business, our sales processes, where we’re at with new projects and current customers, and account management-type stuff. Long-term planning requires us to focus and give seri- ous thought to the road ahead. I don’t need to tell you that in a time when technology has us all moving at a faster and faster pace, spare time to accomplish this plan- ning is often in short supply. But being a procrastinator isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A Columbia University study differentiates between “active” and “passive” procrastination. Active procrastina- tors are a “positive” type of procrastinator. They prefer to work under pressure, and they make deliberate decisions to procrastinate, the study says. The results show that active procrastinators make purposeful use of time and control their time carefully, and this actually improves BUSINESS MANAGEMENT MY NAME IS MIKE AND I’M A PROCRASTINATOR Mike Dorris, Sales and Operations Manager, Cultura Seed Solutions @mikedorris1 • mike.dorris@culturatech.com • culturatech.com their performance and makes them effective. Many of us, whether we realize it or not, are active procrastinators. But for active procrastination to work, it’s important to have good data so you can make operational and strategic decisions. Quality data needs to be: • From all areas of the business • Standardized so that data comparisons can be made • Accurate • Complete and consistent A good business management system should allow you to record and collate accurate and standard data from all aspects of a business, validated at the point that the opera- tional transactions are performed. It should also provide you with a quick and easy way of accessing this data in useful formats. Procrastinating isn’t always a bad thing. If you’re like me and identify as an “active” procrastinator, making sure you have good data is essential. A COMMON COMPLAINT about content marketing campaigns is that people don’t see it making an impact for their business. But before you blame the marketing genre, have you stopped to evaluate the quality of the content you’re generating? Don’t shoot the messenger! If what you’re pushing out doesn’t set you apart from the crowd, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise you’re failing to get views or generate engagement. So how can you fix it? Ask yourself, “Why should my customers care? About this article? About this blog? About this video?” When you focus your thinking on being customer-cen- tric, it becomes much easier to find your content market- ing sweet spot. To keep your content unique, consider: • Is your focus niche enough? •  Are you using the right channels to reach your audi- ence? •  Saturation — Don’t be a “me too.” For example, CONTENT MARKETING IS YOUR CONTENT UNIQUE? Shawna Shimnowski, Client Services Manager, CREATE by Issues Ink @issuesink • sshimnowski@issuesink.com • issuesink.com don’t start a podcast if all the other seed companies are doing podcasts. Once you’ve considered this, then you can dive a little deeper and sharpen your understanding of what the buzz in your audience’s industry is. Your content needs to be meaningful to create a connection. The adjective “meaningful” can often be subjective from one person to another. The key to under- standing what is meaningful to your audience is taking the time to talk with others and investing the resources to actually find out. To accomplish this, you might want to consider setting up alerts to help you follow trending topics, subscribe to relevant influencers’ and competitors’ email lists, and have regular conversations between your sales and marketing communications teams. It takes a lot of work to earn our audience’s attention, so let’s make sure that once we have it, we keep it.