Regardless, many brands are turning to content marketing for the first time–particularly those
operating in B2B sectors. Previously, perhaps management didn’t think social media and blogging was right for their businesses, that their subject area was too specialized, or that it wasn’t worth their time.
If you’re a content marketing newbie and you’ve been tasked with creating and maintaining a content strategy for the first time, you’re probably at least slightly excited. You get to shape part of your company’s communications. You can finally bring your business into the 21st century.
In this article, we’re about to destroy your enthusiasm–or at least dull it a little. Content marketing newbies: listen up. Here are some brutal content marketing truths you really need to understand.
#1. No one cares about your product.
If your product is a sports car, a tailor-made holiday, or designer jewelry, your customers won’t ever get bored reading about it.For those of us in the real world (particularly in B2B), the average consumer has no interest in your product. Even a typical customer in your target market won’t be interested enough to click on a blog post if it’s just a thinly-disguised sales pitch for your latest product.
Instead, the vast majority of content you produce shouldn’t be directly related to your product and its uses. Take a step back and consider the topics that your target market might like to read about.
For example, say your company provides fleet management services. Your typical customers are likely to be middle managers in their 40s who like cars and driving, and have some interest in the latest developments in fleet technology and how they benefit their business. Think about the problems they face: winter weather conditions? Choosing between new vans? Vehicle maintenance issues?
Produce content that tackles these issues and provides value to your target market. Remember, content marketing is great at building a loyal group of followers and enthusiasts over time. Don’t put them to sleep with “salesy” content.
#2. Good content doesn’t rise to the top.
You’ve created an awesome series of long-form articles packed with photos, videos, and embedded social media posts. You’re incredibly proud of them, your boss loves them, and you know your competitors haven’t produced anything that comes close.Twenty-four hours after the articles have been published, they’ve received a grand total of 12 page views.
This is a common occurrence for new content marketers who’ve been tasked with starting a blog from scratch. Sure, the internet is a leveler of sorts–every website has access to the same potential number of visitors–but getting heard above the noise is a huge challenge for new brands.
Sadly, top-notch content doesn’t automatically go viral and reach millions of readers. In most cases, a blog or news website works hard over several years to build a loyal audience for their content. It’s only very rarely that high quality content alone will be sufficient for a blog to get noticed by large numbers of readers.
Even if you’re a social media pro with a thorough understanding of how to make a mark on your chosen social networks, you’re still losing the numbers game. You might have less than 500 Twitter followers, but similar brands could have five-figure follower counts or higher. When it comes to retweets and sharing, the odds aren’t in your favor.
Instead, new content marketers must learn how to promote their content in effective ways and slowly build up social media followers and email subscribers. Create guest posts. Use content that baits thought leaders and influencers into sharing (also known as ego baiting). Tap into social media trends and comment on what’s in the news. Host competitions. Provide access to e-books, white papers, or templates in exchange for an email subscription.
Overall, view content creation as merely the start of the process. Promotion must follow.
#3. Your job is only going to become more difficult.
As we mentioned at the start of the post, content marketing has matured. It’s no longer novel and it’s rarely surprising. Instead, it’s expected for every brand to have a blog and a presence on social media.According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 88 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing. That’s a lot of competition. TrackMaven research tells us that businesses continue to pump out more content, but content engagement is starting to fall. Readers appear to be suffering with content overload.
Increasingly, content needs to be something special for it to stand out. Chances are, the blog post you’re writing has been written a dozen times over already by other brands. You’re going to need to think about how to differentiate your content from what’s been published by others. This process will only become more difficult as more and more content is published online.
Content overload isn’t the only problem you’re going to have to deal with. In recent years, the social networks have adjusted algorithms so that users see less promotional content. In 2015, Facebook made significant changes to its news feed algorithm so that users weren’t bombarded with posts from the growing number of businesses on Facebook. This significantly decreased the organic reach of business Facebook posts.
Twitter recently switched its default feed to algorithmic (instead of strictly reverse-chronological), meaning that users see tweets they’re “more likely to care about” first. This means that your marketing tweets are less likely to be seen than tweets from accounts with more followers and higher levels of engagement. Essentially, brands need to start thinking more carefully about creating engaging tweets–a tweet that’s in the right place at the right time isn’t going to have the same impact as in the past.
Source:Allbusiness.com
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