Content Marketing Round-Up: August 2016 Edition

By Jason McClain | August 17, 2016 | 0 Comment

How is your content marketing going? If you are new around here, content marketing is the act of creating content for your business with the intent to attract and engage your target audience. Like so many other aspects of online business, it’s important to visit any news centered around content marketing every once in a while. So, with that in mind, my friends, let’s round it up!

Content Marketing Statistics for 2016

What stands out the most here is that businesses simply don’t know how to use content for marketing purposes. They are either not doing it, or not doing it effectively for one reason or another. 32% of marketers have an actually documented content strategy. That is down 3% from last year. You can’t really do content marketing without content, ahem! Rather than creating content as a business asset, 50% of B2B companies are still using banner ads to drive traffic. Shockingly, only 31% of them even thing it’s effective. That just doesn’t make any sense to me!

65% of marketers don’t know what type of content is effective for their audience. Sometimes it’s obvious. If your business generates a lot of photos or video, then utilizing that content is a no-brainer. If your business has a lot of questions coming in from your audience, answer them with articles because the odds are that many people have the same question. If you’re just lost, start with one type of content and put a plan in place. Only add another type when you’ve mastered the first one. Then measure each type and put more emphasis on the one with the best results.

Scaling Your Content Marketing

If your business is global, then naturally you want your content marketing efforts to be global as well. Scaling to a global level can be daunting, but don’t let it intimidate you. You can take this as quickly or slowly as you like. Expand into each market slowly. Get your content marketing team ready and make sure you have some global specialists on board. Make sure the tools available to your content marketing team suit your global aspirations. Finally, make sure your content uses relevant local information whether that is addresses or hashtags.

Improving Your Content Marketing

The first thing you must understand about content marketing is that it is communicating with your customers, but not selling to them. Content marketing relies on the natural progression from you helping a customer by answering their questions or solving their problems to generating sales as a result of that. There are a variety of ways to do that from blogging to social media sites. Content marketing breaks through the noise of advertising and all of the other garbage out there. It is the meat and potatoes that your customers are looking for. It is what sets you apart from the other guys.

Avoid These Content Marketing Mistakes

There are several common mistakes that you want to avoid in your content marketing campaigns. Let’s take a look:

• Your content isn’t awesome – Put out your absolute best stuff! Your customers and you business deserve it. Good content will produce better results.
• Your content is not useful – Well, what are you creating it for then?
• You are selling and not teaching – Remember, content marketing isn’t a selling tool. Teach your audience something they don’t know.
• Your content doesn’t paint you as an expert on the topic – That’s not going to work, my friends. You must, must, must know your stuff and sound like it!
• No goals for your content marketing efforts – What!?! Create goals. Crush them.
• Your content is not evergreen – You are limiting yourself and the effectiveness of your content. Create content that will be just as relevant in 10 years.
• Your content isn’t tailored for your audience – What you want to talk about or what you want your customers to know is probably a lot different from what they want to read about. If you concentrate too much on that, you’ll have no audience.
• You are not using SEO in your content – Why don’t you just stick your content in an envelope and hide it in your safe? Using some really simple SEO strategies can set your content on a launchpad and be a much more effective result for your efforts.

Wrap Up

Let me know in the comments how your content marketing efforts are going. I love hearing from you, and this community is here for you to share new ideas.

 

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