Misconceptions in Content Marketing

Content Marketing is not the silver bullet for online marking, and it ain’t easy, but these days it should be a part of your marketing efforts. The big misconception is that your customers will go directly from reading your content to purchase your product. When that does not happen it is easy to give up.

Content Marketing is about building awareness and being a voice in the market. It is about introducing your brand to your potential audience and building a relationship with them. The only difference between content marketing and traditional networking and PR efforts is that you can do it from home in your PJs.

— Video borrowed from SEO MOZ’s Whiteboard Friday series

Content Marketing:

• Is not easy, have patience and leverage it to build a relationship with your potential customers.
• Has a pretty high fail rate. Plan on failing pretty often until you figure out what turns your audience on.
• Is about building connections and authority.
• That is separate from your other websites is most likely not well optimized for search.  If you are going to blog, consider making it part of your primary website, the regular updating of content can help your site’s SEO and the connection to a site with established traffic will help your content rank higher in search. At a minimum you must link to and from your other sites.
• Is not a “If you build it they will come” strategy. You must push your content out via social channels, emails, and on your website. Don’t forget there is no limit to how much you can push, consider producing and reusing evergreen content.
• Does not work without an eye on the data. It can take a lot of visits from a user before they convert to be a customer. Without tracking you will never know what works.

Bottom line: If you are going to use content to market your business you need to invest in the time and the talent to make it work. Plan on at least six months to a year of daily posts and social networking before you begin to see a return.

Side note: Whiteboard Friday is a pretty awesome source of information about how to best optimize your web site and content in a way that returns on your investment.