So, you are a smart and innovative small business owner who recognizes the benefits that content marketing can bring. Of course, you’ve started using it to help with your business’ growth. You’ve studied multiple resources and developed posts which follow the how to create great content guide to the letter. You have a blog and social media accounts for sharing that great content, so everything should be amazing by now.
But your content still isn’t working, right? Or, at least, it isn’t working as well as it should.
That might be because you aren’t using this medium to its full potential.
1. You aren’t adapting and changing your content and strategy
When was the last time you revised your content marketing strategy based upon emerging trends and performance data? If the answer is “more than three months ago” you should start with a detailed analysis of the data provided by your content analytics tools and start making changes fast.
Marketing is a dynamic field and is governed by trends which change nearly as quickly as fashions. Adapting and upgrading your content marketing strategy, as well as developing new kinds of content to fit it, is essential for success.
2. You aren’t teaching people anything with your content
Your content must not simply throw some facts at the readers in the hope of impressing them or - even worse - sing the praises of your business and products. Truly good content, the kind which gets shares and likes and motivates people to buy or subscribe, must teach people something valuable. Educational posts are extremely versatile, but all of them have one thing in common - they are customer-focused.
This means that you need to develop posts which will provide people with solutions for solving their problems. And if you make it not only valuable, but also entertaining and easy to understand, you’ll get what constitutes “great content”.
3. You aren’t marketing your content
Many business owners seem to believe that “content marketing” stops at developing content and posting it. That’s it. No promotion through social media, no shares through influencer blogs and accounts, no paid promotion, no nothing.
Is it any wonder that such posts don’t perform?
No matter how great the post you create is, no-one will appreciate it if nobody sees it. And if your business blog doesn’t have a lot of traffic already, the world at large won’t notice it.
If you want your content to perform well, you need to promote it with as much passion as you do your own business. That’s where a big part of your content marketing budget should go. Some of the basic tools you should use to promote your content are:
- Social media posts (don’t forget to tweet links to it several times over several weeks)
- Email newsletters
- Influencers
- Guest posting to other blogs
- Press releases (for big and detailed informative posts)
- Comments on Reddit, Quora, social media, and various niche websites
4. You aren’t making it fun and engaging
You can make an amazingly helpful, detailed, top-quality post that will be extremely valuable, and promote it well. But it might not generate much traffic anyway because whilst valuable it is also mind-numbingly boring.
It’s a common problem for informative posts, especially for the areas where it’s hard to find something to joke about, like heavy machinery production. Can you imagine adding a joke or two into a post that compares several types of industrial-grade laser cutter, for example?
Creating light-hearted, engaging, and somewhat fun content is essential if you want it to be popular. This is the kind of thing that people share, so you need to find ways of breaking down your huge if valuable posts into smaller, easily-readable and engaging pieces that people will enjoy reading.
By all means retain the dry-toned informative content, it has its own kind of value. Though publish it in the form of e-books and white papers and offer it to customers who are serious about doing business with you.
About the Author
Kate Bregovic is a wife, mother, freelance writer and fitness enthusiast. She covers many topics – from business management trends to fitness regimes. When she’s not writing, she's planning outdoor activities for her family, cooking or working out at the gym. Follow her on Facebook.
