Why People Are Ignoring Your Content Marketing Efforts

0
"You must market your marketing." ~ Jay Baer

Did you know that although 77% of marketers use content marketing as a strategic business approach, only 8% say the strategy is ‘very effective’ in helping them accomplish their overall business objectives?

Content is the fuel of all online transactions—consumers spend millions in cash and a substantial part of their day consuming and interacting with online content.

Yet, not all content receives the same traction, buzz or demand. If your content efforts are not paying off in terms of increasing leads, traffic and sales, boosting customer engagement or providing positive ROI, it could be that you are making these major mistakes:

You do not have a plan for your content program

Only 27% of B2C marketers have a documented content marketing plan. The rest only have a verbal strategy.

Without a robust plan, you will not see any positive results with your content marketing efforts. A documented plan helps you build buyer personas, track customer behavior and then map out a suitable content plan that allows you to create content that closely caters to the precise needs of your target audience.

Absent of a plan, your content marketing efforts will be akin to going round and round in circles in a closed maze.

You are not optimizing your content

You could produce stellar content on a regular basis but it is of no use if the right people are not finding your content. Search optimization is at the heart of content marketing, making it necessary to undertake keyword research before you create any content.

Comprehensive keyword research lets you know what your target audience is looking for. This way, you can formulate just the right type of content to help your audience solve their problems.

On the contrary, without conducting keyword research, you would be essentially creating content that no one wants or content that does not fulfill any particular need.

You are not promoting your content enough

Word-of-mouth-520x264Are you spending all your efforts and resources creating content and none on distributing it? It is not enough to create a sparkling video or a brilliant blog post; you need to get the right eyeballs on this content if your efforts are to pay off.

A look at some of the most popular content pieces shows that the creators of these pieces put in a lot of effort in distribution and promotion to make the content more visible in a sea of other competing content.

Spend as much time on promotion as you do on creating content. You might have to set aside a small budget to promote your content, for example through influencer marketing or on social media, two channels that can create plenty of buzz for your content when used strategically.

Your content does not stand out visually

The amount of information circulating the internet is enormous, perhaps more than online users can consume. Among the top challenges facing content marketers is getting customers to engage with their content.

Unless you are already an influencer, getting people to consistently engage and anticipate your content can be formidable given the amount of content that’s already available to them.

However, visually appealing content is a powerful way to stand out in the sea of online hubbub. It is no wonder that platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, which are largely visual content platforms, are immensely popular among online users.

Incorporate video, infographics, images, Twitter streams, or Instagram pictures into your blog posts to encourage readers to stick around, engage with more content on the site, comment and share the content.

Improving the visual element of your posts or serving up more visual content other than blog posts also contributes to the process of storytelling, which is an essential aspect of content marketing. In many ways, visuals tell the best stories.

You have not optimized for mobile

banjo-appMobile is the present and future of marketing. As many as 90% of online consumers own a smartphone and use it to regularly access webpages and social media sites.

Without a doubt, any marketer who does not optimize their content for mobile will be left out in the race to capture and engage with the tech savvy consumer.

Not sure whether your content looks good on mobile devices and on desktops alike? Use free Google tools such as webmaster tools, mobile emulations tools and the mobile-friendly tool to assess how well your content is optimized and to remedy any optimization issues.

Is this content useful?

If your content marketing efforts are not paying off yet, perhaps the most important question to ask is “Is this content useful?” At a time when there is more information than can be consumed, the most useful content is the most successful. Fixing these mistakes will ultimately help you to create, distribute and promote content that is useful i.e. meets the precise needs of your audience.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This site uses cookies. Some are essentials and others help us improve your experience. You can click settings for more information and to manage your cookie and privacy settings.

Privacy Settings

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems.

In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
  • wordpress_test_cookie
  • wordpress_logged_in_
  • wordpress_sec

Decline all Services
Accept all Services