4 Ways Your Content Marketing is Failing
Content marketing is a critical part of your online marketing strategies today. Unfortunately, it is easy to work hard and fail at the same time. I am going to breakdown four areas where I see businesses failing in content marketing and hope that you can avoid these failures in the future.
1. Your Infographic Offers Nothing
I know for a fact that infographics (IG) can be extremely powerful in regards to traffic and reach, but I look at new infographics everyday and see both fantastic and wasteful things.
The infographics that really reach people often educate on a particular topic. Powerful IGs provide data and resources that people can use, and because they are useful the infographic is shared with others. You want to make sure your IG is useful now and will be useful in the future as well. Provide good information that can help others.
I see a lot of infographics with great titles, but the IG offers nothing. Why do I care about the flow of a company’s shipping department? Why do I care about steps of buying a TV that are so basic my nine year-old already knows it? An infographic should be able to educate multiple audiences at the same time and it should provide information people need to know.
2). Your Copy is Boring
Whether it is website content, press releases, white papers, PDFs or brochures, boring copy stinks and it is not readable. People are in a major hurry today to get things done and things that must be read are often skimmed. Skimming before reading is common so you need to provide a lot of information quickly. Here are a few things that must be done:
- Headlines : You must break up content and inform users what the copy is about. They skim headlines to determine if they want to read. Create interest with headlines to encourage deeper reading.
- Emotion, There Should Be Some: All writing should have some kind of emotion. If you are not excited about your product or service when writing don’t expect the reader to be excited. Keep some form of emotion in the writing so people keep reading. Inspire them or make them feel a need in regards to a service, product or idea.
- The Content Needs to Flow: Choppy content and sentences that don’t support previous sentences or paragraphs is often difficult to read. Make sure the content flows well and the copy is easy to read. It is always a good idea to ask your friends and coworkers to read over copy and give you honest opinions. Remember, you are targeting multiple audiences so the advice you receive is some of the best feedback you can get.
3). You Are Not Explaining Why
In every form of content marketing you must explain why. Why does the reader need what you are writing about? Whether it is a service, a product or educational information you are offering, you must explain why the reader needs it. Make them believe what you are saying and encourage them to take on action – buy a product, invest in a service or heed the advice you offer.
If there is no “why” there is no reason for someone to take an action.
4). You Don’t Create Trust
You have to create trust if you are hoping someone will invest in your product, service or idea. People don’t invest time or money in anything unless trust is there. Make sure that creating trust is at the top of your priority list. You can start to create trust by:
- Sounding authoritative
- Providing good and solid information
- Looking professional, including you website, marketing materials and infographics
- Having no typos or grammar issues
- Sounding believable
- Providing reliable and supporting resources
- Having a good online reputation for those that search – and they will.
Before you start any marketing campaigns make sure that supporting information for that campaign is already on the web, preferably made by you. You want the people that are doing research regarding your product, service or idea to find information about it on the web. This helps create trust and as I said before, people don’t invest time or money unless trust is there.
Making Mistakes Is Okay!
Mistakes are a part of learning. Mistakes help people determine what works and what doesn’t. You can’t expect to be perfect at something right away, but you can take some helpful hints from others and avoid some common issues that cause businesses to lose time and money. So keep these 4 things in mind:
- Make sure your infographic is full of educational information that will help people now and those in the future. Think about which audiences you want to target and provide them with the information that they want to see.
- Make sure your copy isn’t boring and provide copy that is skimmable, creates an emotion, flows well and is easy to read.
- Don’t forget to explain why someone needs what you are offering. Don’t assume the reader will determine on their own why they need your product, service or ideas. Give them reasons to invest and believe.
- Make creating trust your top priority. People don’t invest without trust, so be focused on being someone the reader can trust.
Melissa Fach has been in the SEO industry since 2007. She created her own agency, was the Managing Editor at SEJ, worked as an editor for Moz with their community team, she worked at Pubcon as the Community Manager for 5 years, and is an editor for SEMrush US Blog.
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