The Failure of Content Marketing

We are in the era of Content Marketing. The result is an abundance of content throughout the digital ecosystem. In Content Marketing, the focus is on the needs of the target audience and not on what we want to sell. By applying this “customer-centric” approach our target audience is assumed willing to engage with our “thought leadership” content, despite being strapped for time and short of attention in an ever more fast paced business- and private life. But often this rationale falls short in reality, and the content is not being consumed to the extent anticipated and planned for.

There are (at least) 3 primary factors leading to this failure:

1. Static Understanding of Target Audience Needs

Brands do personae and audience insights reports once in a while. Yet any social media monitoring exercise or analysis of most popular content at a given point in time will show you that content “needs” are highly contextual and time sensitive.

To identify content needs, I would recommend the following process: Use tools such as Netbase or Digimind to zoom in on the primary domains for a given theme or category; next select articles from these domains that align with your business objectives; then analyse the level of social traction for each content piece through BuzzSumo to see what content is most popular as measured by # of shares. It is granted that this method is underpinned by the assumption that the future content consumption somehow resembles the future content demand.

2. Lack of Reach

Your content is great, and you would like to rely on organic reach only. However Paid Media will always co-exist happily with Earned Media. Don’t be shy and promote your content on the platform of your choice includingSponsored updates, Promoted Tweets or Promoted Stories, Promoted Postsor other. It may be your first dialogue with big handles on Twitter, Influencers on Linkedin or a broad audience on one of Outbrain’s big media partners, but you will gain immediate scale. It is a worthwhile experience if you have some budget to share.

3. Mistaking Sharing for Curation

The method described above in 1. allows you to identify relevant content which you may choose to curate (again beware that “popular” and “trending” at a given point in time will not always overlap). But appreciate the basic premise that content is abundant, so simply pressing the Share button does not suffice as the center point of your Content Marketing strategy.

State an Opinion?—?don’t just share.

Generic content is abundant, so you need to add a spin. Why is this piece of content relevant to your audience, do you agree (or not) and why?

Keep it Personal

By nature social selling is personal. So avoid jargon communication when sharing. Show you are a unique individual and that you understand your connections’ needs.

Keep up the rhythm

Social selling is a lifestyle, not a stop-and-go tactic. You are building your brand, which requires consistency and persistence. Share at least one relevant piece of content every week.

Be Kind

Like, comment, re-tweet, recommend, etc, your connections’ posts. It will increase the likelihood of others sharing, liking or commenting when you share.

So, to repeat the cliche, Content is King, but I suggest you also consider the above when devising your personal or brand’s Content Marketing Strategy .