Content marketing is everywhere. Eighty-eight percent of B2B marketers use content marketing and it was the most important digital trend in 2015. However, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered.
How often should you be blogging? Should you be producing more videos? How does a blog post really become viral?
To help you improve your content marketing efforts in 2016, we’re debunking the biggest myths in content marketing:
Myth #1: More Is Better
Reality: With thousands of new blog posts published every day, marketers can feel pressure to keep up and post something on a daily basis. However, a successful blog has nothing to do with frequency. Quality is always better than quantity and you should never push yourself to publish short, fluffy blog posts. One, 1,000-word blog posts a week will drive more traffic than a short, thin post every day.
Myth #2: “I Can Just Talk About Our Company”
Reality: One of the most surefire ways to fail at content marketing is to make your content self-promotional. No one wants to read or share thinly veiled sales pitches. Content marketing is about providing valuable content to your audience that helps solve a problem in their lives. In some cases, you can subtly imply that your product or service is one of those solutions, but you should never make the piece about you. No one cares about how “unique” or “one of a kind” your company is.
Myth #3: Content Marketing Is the Same as Blogging
Reality: Content marketing and blogging are closely related, but they’re not synonymous. Blogging is one of many content marketing strategies and is an easy way to distribute and promote content. However, you can have a content marketing program that doesn’t include blogging at all (you could instead leverage social media, videos, or webinars). You could also have a blog that doesn’t meet content marketing principles (for example, your blog has no target audience, no focus, and no promotion or distribution tactics).
Myth #4: Content Marketing Is All About Creation
Reality: While content creation is the foundation of content marketing, you can’t forget about the marketing aspect. Content marketing is as much about creating blogs, webinars, or videos as it is about putting that content in front of the right people. There are millions of pieces of content on the Internet today, so the true magic of content marketing is actually getting people to read and share what you wrote. Whenever you come up with a new piece of content, you have to be incredibly clear on who you’re targeting and how you’ll distribute and promote it.
Myth #5: The Only Metric That Matters Is Traffic
Reality: While website traffic is a good indication of how well a post resonated with your audience, it doesn’t have much impact on your business. A blog post with 1,000 views but a 15% conversion rate is much more valuable than a post with 50,000 views and a 3% conversion rate. When you write a piece of content, think about your end goal. A blog post that is designed to get new customers may be super focused and niche, but a blog post created for social media will have broad appeal and be more fun. And don’t write off a piece of content that didn’t increase website traffic. Make sure to look at other factors, like leads, conversions, retention and engagement.
While there are many content marketing myths, there isn’t one approach that will guarantee success. You can’t go wrong with content marketing as long as you put your customer first and think about how to provide value to them.
Next Steps
Content marketing is one of most powerful tools for small businesses and entrepreneurs right now. When used correctly, content both attracts new visitors to your brand and converts those visitors into highly-qualified sales leads.
If you have not yet started your content marketing, I encourage you to do so now. Now that we have debunked these content marketing myths, you are equipped to make your content work for you!