Content marketing isn’t exact science, but there are many attributes that can help you decide how successful it is or what can make it successful. Although every business has its own unique requirements, there are some fundamental attributes that, if followed, can bring you assured success, and these fundamental attributes can also be applied to content marketing. 5 of such attributes are listed below:
- What do you want to achieve with content marketing? This is something that I have repeatedly asked through my various blog posts on this website. You need to have a clear idea of what you want to do so that your business or your ideology gets maximum exposure. Every business has, as mentioned above, unique requirements. Although content marketing isn’t exact science, the outcome that you get sometimes can be painfully precise. I remember in the early 2000’s my entire web design business was based on content marketing (although at that time I had no idea what it was) because I was publishing lots of content on my website (it was a compilation of articles as those days we didn’t have blogging as a concept) as well as on other websites about various aspects of web designing and JavaScript programming. Unfortunately, I ended up attracting wrong audience and within a couple of years I had to wrap up my business (there were other reasons also). Why? I had no idea what my content marketing was achieving for me. Please notice, I’m not saying that I had no idea what I needed to achieve (every business needs to attract customers and clients); it’s just that, I had no idea whether my content was attracting the sort of audience I needed or not.
- Are you putting your content marketing strategy in place? Again, although content marketing isn’t an exact science, particular actions lead to particular results. The sort of content that you publish and promote draws exactly the audience it should be drawing. The content that you are publishing, the channels you’re using to promote your content and the format in which you are publishing your content have a big impact on the way your content marketing performs. This is where your content marketing strategy can help. A well-laid-out strategy keeps you and your team focused on your main goal. Your strategy helps you decide what your goal is and what you need to achieve that goal.
- What are your content marketing success metrics? When you’re driving home from office (or going from point A to point B) what are the signs you look for to make sure that you are following the right direction? You know exactly where you need to take the right turn and the U-turn and the left turn. There is a familiar tree you always observe. There is that house with a peculiar red-tinted roof. There is that front yard with beautiful white roses. These are the signs that tell you that you’re going in the right direction and the same happens with your content marketing strategy if you know what are your success metrics. What are the signs that tell you that you are succeeding? Have your search engine rankings improved? Are more people submitting your contact form? Are more people sharing your links on social networking websites? Are your sales increasing? Are you getting more subscribers for your newsletter? Are more people downloading your e-book? These are all success metrics that you can closely observe while persisting with your content marketing strategy.
- Are you are signing definite responsibilities to your team? For a larger and a medium-sized company where multiple people are working on a content marketing strategy, it is important that all the team members know their responsibilities and they have the guidelines and the tools to monitor their performance.
- Are you able to maintain a balance between quality and quantity? This is a persistent dilemma faced by content marketers and people responsible for content marketing. You are in a highly competitive field. Your competitors are continuously publishing content and although it isn’t necessarily high-quality content but somehow, they are able to out-shout you and in the process, your content ends up getting ignored. You either spend more money marketing your content and making sure that it reaches your target audience, or you go on publishing high-quality content undeterred by all the noise being created having complete belief in yourself. This works. Striking a balance between quality and quantity. You need both. If you are a well-known brand, you can do with high-quality content and less quantity. But if you are a relatively new brand and very few people know about you, having lots of content is a must, without compromising quality.