The core concept of content marketing is simple - engage, build trust, and create a loyal following. Sometimes brands lose their way and convolute their message because of poor marketing tactics. Here are some common problems brands face with easy solutions.
Problem: Content is not performing
Your content may not be performing due to a number of reasons. It may be due to the lack of social media integration, you may be putting your company quota first instead of your audience, or you may simply be misplacing your efforts.
Solution: Begin by focusing on your customer and audience
The best way to get yourself on the right path is to identify the needs and requirements of your audience. Content that is often useful will focus on providing solutions to a problem. Content marketers care about their audience and understand their prospects.
Problem: You have content but it isn't reaching your audience
You have to know where your audience is online in order to get your content in front of their eyes. This may be obvious to some, but if you're a small business just starting out you may not know where to begin.
Solution: Find, acquire, and share with your audience in these steps:
1. First, define your target audience. Ask these questions:
- What is the type of audience you want?
- Who is your ideal consumer?
- What do they like? What do they dislike?
2. From there you:
- Identify what they do
- Find out what is important to them
- Find out their problems
3. Then, conduct your research through:
- Surveys
- Online forums
- Market research
4. Finally, share your quality content. Here are some ways:
- Targeted commentary. Write a Facebook update for a targeted audience in mind with a link to the post.
- Relevant hashtags. Use when appropriate to expand shareability.
- Chop your post into a set of tweets or Facebook posts and drip them out over time.
- Leverage LinkedIn groups to target content delivery and share your blog posts there.
- Incorporate "Click to Tweet" into your posts to encourage reader tweeting - useful for statistical information used in posts.
- Don't forget to link to your blog in ALL social media profiles!
It's also important to review your the structure of your posts to improve the quality of your content marketing.
To further avoid problems, keep these do's and don'ts in mind:
Do:
- Have a diverse mix of content. This includes blogging, infographics, statistics etc. Offer your audience a well rounded experience.
- Blog REGULARLY - focus on high quality content.
- Share all content on social media.
- Make the content easily shareable by your audience.
- Enter the conversation yourself! Respond to interesting blog posts and share the content of others.
Don't:
- Avoid implementing a hard sell approach. Don't push services or products. Instead, engage and be a resource for others. In turn people will naturally gravitate to your site and circulate your content for you.
- Don't focus on quantity over quality. If you can't come up with any quality content it's better to not write anything at all! Don't put too much focus on maintaining an average number of posts per week/month as you may risk it's quality.
- Don't forget that content marketing isn't solely about lead generation. It's about forging relationships and becoming a resource. It's important to focus on customer retention at their benefit.
Your content marketing problems may not be the result of a lack of effort. You may just be focusing your efforts in the wrong way. Know that your audience IS out there - you just have to know what they want and where to look!