Recent reports suggest that organizations in both the B2B and B2C space are doing a much better job with their content and thus are seeing greater return.  There are three reasons why organizations are rolling out more successful content efforts.

  1. Better Planning – digital marketers and B2B and B2C organizations are doing a better job of mapping out their content strategies and they are ensuring that their strategies are flexible and adapting to the needs of their audience.
  2. Doing a better job with content curation – people are creating better content which in turn, is being consumed by more people. Of course there is still a lot of “noise” and sub-par content out there, but publishers are working on producing and releasing better content.
  3. Having a flexible strategy – B2C marketers have improved how the adapt their content strategy allowing them to adjust to their needs of audience. This speaks to spending more time growing, monitoring, and measuring the progression of your content strategy.

If you feel that your own content efforts are stalling or that you are not simply getting the return that you had hoped for, it probably means that you should revisit your content strategy and it probably means that you need to dedicate more time to your content marketing efforts.  Or it may mean that it is time to step back and evaluate your content efforts with a Content Assessment. (Contact us for a free quote for a Content Assessment of your website).

According to a study from the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs there are a few reasons why your content marketing efforts are stagnant.

Content Marketing Success Factors

The main issues that I have seen with clients include:

  1. Lack of Strategy – a simple lack of a plan for their content efforts.
  2. A lack of dedicate time/resources – clients are not investing enough time with their content marketing efforts
  3. Content Creation Challenges – clients struggle to create fresh, new, and compelling content for their audience. They know that they should be different than their competitors yet they do not do enough research or know enough about the type of content that their audience is looking for.

Why is Content Marketing important?

This seems like a logical question right?  Well there are several reasons why content marketing is important, but here are a few thoughts as to why you should continue to invest in content marketing:

  • Content marketing has and always will be a key component of any marketing program. From advertisements, to whitepapers, webpages and social media posts, content is the vehicle that is used to deliver a message to your audience
  • Brand awareness in an always-on culture – The internet never sleeps, in the digital world, creating engaging content can mean getting your brand noticed or reminding the world of your brand. Content Marketing Goals
  • Content helps build relationships with your audience. No matter how your share your content (website, social media, blogging, etc) you should participate in the conversation with your customers and with your audience.  Content marketing allows you to do that.
  • Strong content allows you to be a leader and not a follower. There is a lot of “copy-cat” content on the Web, don’t contribute to the noise.  Prepare unique and useful content that will cause others to share and discuss your content.  If you can create highly engaging content you will receive the benefit of everything from generating brand awareness, generating leads, driving traffic (SEO benefit) and obtain quality links (SEO benefit) and building a relationship with your audience.

The thing is, like SEO, it does take time to get results from content marketing.  You need to be committed.  When people say it’s a marathon not a race, well I would disagree.  Content marketing is both a race and a marathon.  Your efforts should target both, but there is greater value in thinking long-term when it comes to your content efforts.

 

7 things to Consider in Optimizing a Content Strategy

  1. Do you have a defined content strategy?
  2. Is your content strategy documented?
  3. Do you have a content calendar?
  4. Do you have resources for content curation?
  5. Do you have resources for content promotion?
  6. Do you have targets/goals set for your content efforts?
  7. Measurement takes time.

The need for content marketing is quite obvious, how you map out your strategy is not.  Work first on identifying what’s working and what’s not from a content perspective (Content Assessment), next define your content strategy, refine your strategy, create great content, monitor engagement and modify as required.  Sounds imply right?  Well it’s not quite that easy.  The reminders above should be in the back of your mind as you continue to map out your content journey down the digital highway.

Reminder of why you should invest in Content Marketing
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