Fact vs. Fiction: Content Marketing Myths You Need to Stop Believing
The Internet holds a plethora of information about content marketing claiming what you should and should not be doing in your campaign. While many of these are useful and true, some are myths that many people still believe – myths that may not be necessarily helping you get the recognition, traffic and branding you want. It’s time for you to breathe easy as we debunk some of the myths you might be afraid of trying when creating your online content.
Myth: Content Marketing means producing more content for and related to your site.
Content marketing is not limited to more writing and content production tasks. Production is just the first part of the process – marketing is what makes the content effective at reaching your audience and building your brand. In order to be able to market your content successfully, you need to stop focusing on quantity.
Many people believe that releasing more content is good in generating leads. There are studies showing the relationship between content update frequency and lead increase. What you need to realize, however, is that it’s about quality: you need to produce content that is timely, relevant and engaging, and you need to choose the right platform to feature it in to be successful.
Myth: Nobody reads long content.
I hear many stories of writers struggling to keep their work short because the recommended number of words for each online feature is too little. Here’s a fact: not all topics can be fully shelled out in 300-500 words.
Google’s study shows that when people research online, they usually look for in-depth discussions of general topics. Only those who already know what they want before even going to the web start out with an advanced search. This is why Google introduced the “In-Depth Articles” feature to their listings – proof that people do read long content, as long as it’s high quality, well written, and relevant to their search. If you’re still forcing to write those 300 to 500-word blogs and feature posts, think again: you could be missing the opportunity to appear on the SERPs as a trusted source of in-depth information.
Myth: Once you release your content, it’s a hit-or-miss.
This myth is a perfect waste of good content. Just because your content didn’t become viral the first time around doesn’t mean you should just let it disappear into a sea of newer pieces. Remember the marketing portion of content marketing: it’s about understanding your audience, knowing where to place your content for people to find, and knowing how to feed your content to your audience to help them find it more quickly.
After you’ve written your content, you need to formulate a plan for repurposing your content. You could use it as a post on social media and forums; a resource for your newsletters, whitepapers, infographics and case studies; or as material for videos and press releases. Evaluate where it will be most useful and deliver the content straight to that audience – it doesn’t have to be a hit or miss because you only focused on the results the first time you posted your feature.
Myth: Blogs are the ultimate content marketing platform.
If you still believe this myth at this point, you haven’t been reading the previous items closely. Blogs are effective tools because they give you a platform for consistently publishing new content without actually spamming. It also lets you build the voice of your brand and establish yourself as an industry leader. But it’s not the only content marketing platform you should focus on.
When creating your content marketing strategy, you’ll need to think about three things:
- First, you’ll need to decide what medium is appropriate for your campaign.
- Second, you’ll need to establish and your goals for content marketing. The best medium and platform for introducing your brand may not be the same as the platform most effective for closing deals.
- Finally, think about how to approach content production in light of your audience. Make sure you speak the vernacular and give them the most relevant information they want at the time of content publication.
Myth: Once you’ve got new leads, your content marketing strategy is successful.
This final one may only be a partial myth, because it will depend on your goals for marketing your content. If the content you produced is meant to gather new audiences and create a new following, then this statement will be a fact, not a myth. However, you should not limit your use of content marketing to gather new leads.
Content is part of the entire online marketing process – from the acquisition of new leads, to the entire marketing funnel, to conversions and retaining your customers. Measure the success of your efforts by looking at the goals you meet from each of the marketing stages your customers fulfill, not just by the number of new leads you get.
We’d be happy to help you dispel more content marketing myths and develop a stronger, more effective strategy. Talk to us today to get started.