Is your content homeless???

This blog is especially for marketers who have a good website but their social media engagement has nothing to do with it…

Have you ever paid any attention whether the content you publish has any home or not!

Not clear, let me explain. You post a lot of content on various social media platforms and feel happy when you have good organic or inorganic reach generated through it. But that content has no home, that means it does not lead your visitor to your site, blog, landing page, sign up form and you have not used any Call-to-Action to generate leads through that content, now this is called as homeless content.

 It’s important for you to know that just because social platforms are helping you build audiences, it does not anyway help you in providing full control over the content that you publish, say for suppose, from tomorrow, Facebook starts deleting archived post older than two years or censors some content, without a valid reason, what would you do?

I am not writing this to discourage posting on Facebook, you should publish where your audiences are, but you need to seriously think whether you are taking a rental property on digital space or buying a home of your own.

Platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn offers anyone an opportunity to get their words in front of a massive audience. However, as said earlier, Facebook controls the Facebook universe. LinkedIn controls posts published on LinkedIn. When your content only exists on platforms, you’re at the mercy of the platform.

Here’s a checklist of 5 questions that will help you determine whether it is OK to have homeless content or you need to change:

1. B2B or B2C?

If you operate your business in a B2C market, you may not need your own blog. An owned site can still be valuable, but since your content has a consumer focus—i.e, it directly reaches your consumer, even if it’s niche—you can simply publish text and videos that cover relevant topics and fit organically on social platforms.

For B2B companies, however, content usually focuses more on products and product education and their audience tends to be highly specific. You’ll want to take your visitors to a case study or free e-book, to give them more insights into the product, in such case, you need to build a website that will act as a base for your content and will also encourage Google crawlers to rank your site on SERP.

 2. Is your plan to build an e-mail list?

For just about any marketer, growing a healthy list of email newsletter subscribers is essential. You don’t take much risk by asking your readers for just a sign up (the worst they can do is say no), but you can gain a lot by convincing people to engage with your content on a regular basis. For this reason, it makes sense to keep your content living in a good home that you control.

1. Does your content follow the news cycle?

If you are producing time-sensitive content, it is fine if it is homeless, because it remains fresh for just a few hours or maybe a day or two. Facebook Instant Articles is a good platform to publish such content, isolated blog or company blog may not produce expected results. On the flip side, if you create mostly evergreen content, you’ll want to house it on your own site for SEO purposes.

1. Have plans of monetizing your content?

If you’re pursuing sales, if you have plans of going for ad sales, then having a home for your content is essential, so that you can measure, control and promote your work.

However, if you are not into ad sales, simply posting on different platforms will not harm your image, without your content having a home!

 5. Is your content made for mobile?

the internet age is all shifting to mobile with social apps taking share away from websites. Publishers need to optimize their work for mobile if they want to stay ahead of the content curve. Some users may still open Safari browsers to visit your homepage on their phones, but they’re more likely to click a link via Twitter or watch a video on Instagram. So if your visitors are more likely to access your content on mobile, it is not really important to provide a home to it then, let it wander on different platforms with your user having easy access to it.

A quick wrap up:

Deciding whether your content must have a home or not is vital for your brand, just answer the five questions we have asked and answer them diligently, you will be able to take a quick decision…