Content marketing is a powerful tool in today’s digital and information age, but there are countless ways to do it inefficiently and ineffectively. Throwing a blog on your website and tossing content on it in hopes that it builds relevancy, trust, and brand loyalty is a strategy far too many businesses take, and then are surprised when it fails.
If you find yourself struggling to see the returns on your blog, it may be time to consider where the weak link in the content strategy chain is.
These 4 reasons are a fundamental place to start checking yourself before you give up on blogging entirely. It may not be easy to get right, but content is the true power player in creating a lasting brand that rakes in the dough, so it’s worth working for.
Readers Aren’t Getting Anything Out of It
One of the easiest content marketing traps to fall into is choosing the wrong focus. We all have our own areas of expertise. When writing a blog, most business owners default to their personal sphere of knowledge. It makes sense, you’ve heard that passion in writing matters, so you write about what excites you. The downside — it doesn’t matter if you’re excited about a topic if your readers aren’t. Blogs are value-adds in the eyes of your audience. If they aren’t walking away with something they need, they’re not coming back.
No Consistency or Relevancy
If providing high quality value for readers is the captain to your blogging ship, your second in command needs to be consistency and relevancy. Evergreen content is an important pillar to your marketing strategy, but it can’t be your whole strategy. Your ideal customers are coming to you because they expect you to have up-to-date expertise. When you give them valuable, relevant content on a regular basis, you are training them to come back frequently. Every time they come back, you’re presented with another opportunity to guide them deeper into your brand.
There’s No Keyword Optimization
SEO is not dead. It’s evolved in the savvy content marketers favor, but it still very much dictates how often and how well your content is seen. Pairing a smart, informative, entertaining content plan with the nuanced knowledge and application of best SEO practices is a hands-down necessity to ensuring your blog performs.
It’s Straight up Not Engaging
This goes beyond simply providing content that falls short of your audience’s needs. A blog that lacks engagement is likely committing several digital marketing sins – from poor design to lack of shareability to unfocused content and more. If your blog is all over the place, how can you expect to capture and guide a potential customer’s attention and journey with your brand?
Turning a blog from a half-thought-out page on your website to a conversion-machine takes time, and a whole lot of attention to detail. If you’re looking for the right content partner to meet your needs, we’d love to chat. Give us a call at 303.300.2640 or contact us online.
