Creating great content is a must for anyone who owns a website and is looking for success in the long-run. The best kind of content includes positive reviews that satisfied customers leave online; blog posts that are not only shared and read repeatedly but also have converted readers into customers; e-mail newsletters that get forwarded a lot and result in click-throughs and sales; social media posts that get a lot of comments, likes, shares, etc. These are all examples of content you want to give to your current and would-be audience.
That being said, there are a lot of myths flying around online about content marketing that we are aware of…as if the misconceptions about SEO we’ve previously talked about weren’t bad enough! Some of the worst ones that we’re going to talk about can actually harm your chances of finding long-term success for your business. If you’ve believed one or more of these lies, it’s high time you learned the truth.
- “You can get immediate results with content!”
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is—it’s a rehash of the claim “We can get your website to reach #1 on Google in a day with our SEO plan”. The truth is there is no one magic formula in creating content or getting the results you need from it.
Just like SEO, content marketing is not a one-all-fix-all solution. You don’t get immediate results by installing a blog, publishing one post, and then ignoring your blog afterwards. The only way you will get the results you want to see is to keep on creating content and actually publishing and distributing it to more than one channel.
- “We need to post once a day, every day.”
First of all, your content creators are not machines. Posting once a day every day is often referred to as “machine gun content creation” and it sounds as destructive as you think it is. Not only will your writers and creators be worn out before too long, but also at that kind of rate a lot of the content they’ll create to reach such tight deadlines will be of terrible quality.
This brings us to the subject of word count in blog articles. “How long should my posts be?” you ask? Here’s our answer: as long as they need to be. Focus less on the word count and more on the quality of the post itself. Some businesses benefit more from longer posts, others shorter—it’s different from business to business. At the end of the day, your posts need to be valuable to your intended audience regardless of how long or short the article is.
- “You only need a professional writer to create great content.”
As awesome as it is to have a writer and even an editor on board your marketing team, not everyone has the time to write and not everyone needs to write in order to create great content. If you have the skill to talk to your customers and audience, talk away. You can vary your content by creating webinars, podcasts, and videos; these all count as creating valuable content on your website.
One does not need to limit themselves to writing articles only. If one form of content works and continues to produce good results, then we suggest you carry on with your current content strategy. If it doesn’t, try something else.
- “I only need to produce great content and that’s it.”
This lie contains a grain of truth: you do need to create great and valuable content. It’s getting that content to reach your audience that seems to get lost in translation somehow. You could have made a killer blog post, but if you’re not planning and providing the opportunities for that blog post to be read, then it’s good as invisible to the Internet.
Creating great content and also having it reach your audience is a difficult balance to achieve, but it can be done. Plan out what exactly you want your audience to get out of your content, and then build your audience from there. “Rome wasn’t built in a single day,” so the saying goes; the same applies to your business’s customer base.
- “The best content promotes itself.”
If you’re a believer of this lie please stop! That is not at all how content marketing works. You will not see any results if you only put your best work on your website’s blog. You need to take that content and actively promote it on all of your social media channels as well as any other websites where you know your post will be valuable to readers. Only then will the promotion part of your content marketing campaign pay off.
At the end of the day, the most effective content marketing strategy boils down to 3 successful factors:
- A fully developed plan
- Hard work
- Effort
These same factors apply to SEO, website development, web design…anything and everything involving websites for businesses. Stop believing the lies and start making great content.
Ready to get started? Contact us at V3 Media. We also offer one-on-one consultations if content marketing is something your business is currently struggling with and you’re in need of professional guidance.