Around 94 percent of small businesses and 77 percent of B2Cs are using content marketing to fuel business growth, but not every company enjoys a good return on their investment.
If you’re not seeing great results from content marketing, you’re not alone. Here, we’ll examine why your efforts might be falling flat, and show you how to turn it around, from the planning stage through to promotion.
1. You Have No Strategy
Only around content marketing to fuel business growth have a documented content marketing strategy. If you’re unclear what your goals are, how will you measure success?
How to fix it: Define the purpose of each piece of content. Will you measure its success by page views, traffic, shares, or conversions? When you know, you can track these performance indicators.
2. You’re Not Spending Enough
According to an E-Consultancy report, only 34 percent of companies have a dedicated content marketing budget. If you want better results, you have to spend enough to make a difference. However, you have to spend it wisely.
How to fix it: Discover which past content marketing efforts had the best return on investment, and then spend more on them. Alternatively, focus on less expensive methods, such as hiring quality freelance writers to contribute to your blog. You have to pay more for quality, but it’s worth it.
3. You’re Forgetting Your Audience
You might not be addressing the hiring quality freelance writers.
How to fix it: According to Demand Metric, 82 percent of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content. In other words, they’ll care more about you if you show you understand them. Listen to your audience and tailor your content to address their concerns.
4. Your Content is Unoriginal
You’ll never stand out online if you look and sound the same as everyone else. Boring content will only leave viewers with a poor impression of your company.
How to fix it: Approach content topics from different angles. Develop a unique brand voice, write with passion and style, and don’t be too serious.
[bctt tweet=”Develop a unique brand voice, write with passion and style, and don’t be too serious.” username=”constantcontent”]
5. Your Content is Not Search Engine Friendly
If you don’t pay some attention to search engine optimization, your content will struggle to reach your intended audience.
How to fix it: Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find keywords and phrases that consumers would use to find a business like yours. Optimize title tags and meta descriptions to drive more relevant traffic, and create user-friendly content sprinkled with internal links to keep users engaged with your brand.
6. Your Message Doesn’t Fit the Medium
Today’s consumer doesn’t hang around; if you’re not delivering the right message on the right channel at the right time, you’re history.
[bctt tweet=”Today’s consumer doesn’t hang around; if you’re not delivering the right message on the right channel at the right time, you’re history.” username=”constantcontent”]
How to fix it: On social media, use more interactive content such as infographics and quizzes. Split your content into smaller portions to make it more accessible and shareable. Tease your audience with snippets of content, and show them where to go to find out more.
[irp posts=”44747″ name=”32 Types of Content and How to Use Them (With Examples)”]
7. You Don’t Promote Your Content
The quickest way to limit the power of your content is to do nothing after you create it. Even if you create the greatest blog post ever, few will see it without the right distribution and promotion.
How to fix it:
- Tweet about your content, then retweet it.
- Post it to Facebook and Google Plus several times over a few months.
- Promote the content in email newsletters.
- Link to new content from older blog posts.
- Ask team members to share new content on their personal social media accounts.
- Mention your content when commenting on other blogs and forums.
[irp posts=”32133″ name=”30+ Places You Should Be Sharing Your Content (2018 Update)”]
8. You’re Not Analyzing Content
How many views has your content had? How many people clicked on the link to your product landing page, or signed up to your newsletter? If you don’t analyze content, you don’t know what’s working.
How to fix it: Use tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Buzzsumo, and HubSpot to monitor your content. Track website visits, bounce rates, page views, email signups, social shares and more to see which content works.
Bonus Tips: How to Revamp Underperforming Content
- Update older posts with new information to improve search rankings.
- Change older posts by writing more powerful headlines.
- Search online for similar content with higher search engine rankings. How can you make your content more comprehensive or valuable?
- Change the format of the content to make it more visually appealing. For example, include more subheadings, bullet points, and relevant imagery.
- Repurpose old content into a new format and share on social media. For example, turn an old blog post into a new infographic.
- Add internal links from older, relevant content to new content, and vice-versa.
- Add relevant outbound links to authoritative websites such as news or government websites.
- Repost content to Twitter. On average, each subsequent repost gains about 75 percent of the number of retweets.
[irp posts=”46917″ name=”15 Creative Ways to Repurpose Your Content”]
Patience, Persistence, and Flexibility
To get the most from content marketing, you need a sound strategy, a dedicated budget, original and optimized content, and a plan for distribution. Check off each item in our list to see if they apply to your content strategy.
Remember, it can take time to see results, so don’t give up too soon. If something isn’t working, analyze the content and try something different next time around. You’ll soon be rewarded for your efforts.
Do you need quality content to support your content marketing? Constant Content connects you with thousands of professional writers able to create articles, ebooks, product descriptions and other assets to tell your brand story, drive SEO and win sales.