11 things that make your content marketing successful

In this blog post you’re going to learn about 11 things that can make your content marketing successful.

Content marketing success is not a random phenomenon.

The approach to success is very scientific and methodical.

Just like in any business or any strategy, you have to be persistent and you need to have a clear idea of what you’re doing and through what you’re doing, what you intend to achieve.

If you are clear about that plus, if you are persistent, success can never be random. You are bound to plunge into it.

Why use content marketing to promote your business?

I have written a lot about the benefits of content marketing and why you should use it to promote your business. Some of the links I could quickly find are

• What are the benefits of content marketing?
• 6 indisputable benefits of content marketing
• Why content marketing is better than advertising

Some of the reasons why you should use content marketing to promote your business include:

• It provides useful information to your customers and clients (and shoppers) that they can then use to decide whether they will need to do business with you or not.
• It definitely improves your SEO, especially organic search engine optimization.
• Helps people use your products and services in a better manner once they have purchased from you.
• Gets you more leads and attracts prospects and customers to your website or blog.
• Builds your brand.
• Establishes your reputation.
• Keeps your prospective customers and clients engaged.
• Helps you maintain a positive buzz on social media.

Why content marketing sometimes doesn’t work?

There are many reasons content marketing doesn’t work. In this blog post I have listed the mistakes that you should avoid in 2019.

But this blog post is not about why content marketing doesn’t work. It is about the 11 things you can do to make your content marketing successful, and here they are:

1. Create/write useful content

Useless, aimless content is neither useful to you nor to someone else. And if your content is not useful, why should someone appreciate it?

The entire purpose of having an operational content marketing strategy is that you promote your business on the strength of your content.

Your content derives strength from people.

When you are writing content (or when you are getting it written by a content writer) make sure you publish only useful content. It must help your visitors in one way or another. It must solve problems. It must provide solutions.

Why is it important that you publish useful, high-quality content?

Your content marketing success solely depends on how people react to your content. Even your search engine rankings these days depend on how people react to your content.

Drab, uninspiring, useless content is not going to get any attention.

Useful content, on the other hand, grabs people’s attention. People react to it. They share it on their timelines. They link to it. They spend more time on your website, bringing down your bounce rate that in turn, improves your SEO.

2. Publish original content

If you are publishing what everyone else is publishing, there is no motivation to come to your website or blog. People will come to your website or blog only when they find something that they cannot find somewhere else.

Constantly coming up with unique topics can be a problem.

But your opinion is always unique.

For example, I am constantly writing about content writing and content marketing and there must be thousands of other individuals doing the same.

Still, what I am saying here is unique because I’m using my own “voice” and my own writing style to express my own opinion.

Even when you are curating content – linking to external content – give your own take, the way I do sometimes.

These days when I don’t have time to write a completely original blog post, I link to an external article or blog post and then write some words on my own. I present my only unique view on the topic, even if couple of sentences.

3. Be consistent and persevere

I don’t know about other people, but this is a big drawback that I have experienced in my own clients. They initiate their content marketing with great enthusiasm, even have the clarity about what sort of content they need to get written and publish, but then, within a couple of months, and sometimes even within a month, they lose track and no longer want to publish new content.

Now, you may say that being their content writer I should be able to convince them that content marketing success cannot be attained without consistently publishing high-quality content, but the problem is not with clients who hire me as their consultant (and hence, would heed to my suggestion), the problem is with people who hire me just for my content writing services.

Though, I give them my unsolicited advice, and then it’s up to them.

Anyway, the point is, they pursue content marketing for a couple of months, don’t see results, and then abandon content marketing midway.

Content marketing is an ongoing process. New content is constantly being pumped into the World Wide Web.

Unless you publish new content, your old content is going to be pushed into oblivion by your competitors and even by those who are not directly competing with you but are constantly publishing new content that can be remotely related to your content category.

People mostly abandon content marketing because they think it is an extra expense whereas, it is a necessary expense, running expense, just as you continuously have to spend money on running your infrastructure.

4. Make your content accessible for content marketing success

People these days are not just using PCs and laptops to access your content. They’re using all sorts of mobile devices.

They may access your content on their mobile phones, on their tablets and even through smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Your content should also be easier to read. Avoid creating long sentences and thick paragraphs.

5. Maintain a content publishing calendar

The lack of a content publishing calendar can also derail your content marketing. Constantly coming up with new content writing and content publishing ideas can be a difficult task after a while.

Whether you are writing and publishing content on your own or your content writer is doing it, you definitely need to maintain a content publishing calendar so that you have things in the pipeline for the foreseeable future.

You can use an Excel sheet. You can use Trello. You can also use a mind mapping tool (which I use).

6. Learn to repurpose your existing content

Backbone of a successful content marketing strategy is publishing content on an ongoing basis and sometimes, it becomes difficult to publish totally unique, original content even from the perspective of your own website or blog.

What do you do?

You repurpose your existing content.

Here is an older blog post you would like to read: How to repurpose old content.

Repurposing your existing content means creating new content out of your old content.

You can do this in the form of a weekly or monthly recap – creating summaries of all the blog posts you have written in the month of January, for example.

If you have been researching and gathering data to write and publish multiple blog posts, perhaps you can use this data to create infographics.

You can create podcasts from your existing blog posts, web pages and articles.

Similarly, you can create slides, animations and YouTube videos.

7. Try to improve your search engine rankings to ensure success of your content marketing

I always write on my blog that your search engine rankings should be a natural outcome of your quality content and you shouldn’t focus much on it aside from taking care that the search engines can easily crawl your website, it loads fast and you provide meta information to make it easier for the search engines to understand the nature of your content.

Having said that, it helps to have your main keyword in the title of your web page or blog post.

Strategically placing your main keywords also helps.

Again, don’t make extra effort. Focus on good writing but make sure that you use your keywords and search terms when you are creating content.

For example, since I want to attract clients who are looking for content writing and content marketing services, these are the phrases that I often use.

Just as content marketing is very important for better SEO, search engine optimization also fuels your content marketing.

If people are able to find your content on search results, more people can access it and there are more opportunities for inbound traffic.

8. Create an active presence on social media and social networking websites

Social media and social networking websites can be great content distribution platforms.

For example, everybody is on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram these days.

Most of the content consumption happens through these platforms.

Your social media and social networking platforms (your accounts, your profiles) can be a great source of targeted traffic to your website or blog.

Share content from your website or blog on social media. Publish original content. Build an audience.

It takes time. Ongoing engagement will be needed. So, there is no need to hurry. But, consistently make an effort to build an audience.

9. Use email marketing to disseminate your content and keep the people in your mailing list engaged

Billions of emails are sent to and fro every day. More people use email than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram combined. Email marketing can be the backbone of your content marketing success.

How do you use email marketing to implement a successful content marketing strategy?

If you continuously publish high-quality content, your visitors wouldn’t like to miss it. But, they cannot visit your website or blog every day. Give them an opportunity to subscribe to your updates.

When they subscribe to your updates, send them an email whenever you publish a new blog post or a new web page.

Send them useful information that they can use to better utilize your product or service.

Keep in touch with them. Ask them how you can help them.

But basically, you can use your mailing list for successful content marketing.

10. Use analytics data to steer your content marketing in the right direction

Without analytics data it is just guesswork.

Analytics tell you what content your audience wants and then you can write and publish your content accordingly.

Even when you are trying to cover keywords and search terms for your SEO, analytics will tell you whether your SEO-content is working or not.

You can track individual links. You can track a group of web pages and blog posts. You can track your social media updates.

Your email marketing service (I use MailChimp) will have its own analytics features that will let you know how well your individual email campaigns are performing.

11. Have well-defined KPIs

Key performance indicators are very important.

Although, as I often write on my blog, by the end of the day what matters is how many sales you have made, content marketing is more targeted and segmented.

Content marketing doesn’t directly increase your sales, it creates positive circumstances that in turn, increase your sales.

So, your KPI might be getting more subscribers for your email updates.

It can be increasing the number of unique visits.

If you want to target a particular geTorres of theographic area, you track whether your visitors from that particular geographic area are increasing or not due to your content marketing efforts.

You may also aim for bringing your bounce rate down.

Before and after data is very important for tracking your KPIs.

KPIs tell you how successful your content marketing strategy is at the grassroots level. This is how the sum total of your content marketing brings you success.

Concluding remarks on making your content marketing successful

To implement a successful content marketing strategy first most you have to understand and accept that it is not a one-off activity.

The second thing is, before it can bear fruit for you, you have to keep the momentum going even when you feel there is no return. This is because in the beginning, there is actually no return.

For the initial months, you will simply need to focus on creating and publishing lots of high-quality content, distributing that content using all available channels to you, and building a platform and a presence.

Then, it is this platform and presence that begins to generate business for you, more leads and more sales.

Content marketing in the beginning is like laying bricks and building other structures of a house or a building. You cannot use that house or building before you have built it.

Hence, unmitigated quality, distribution and engagement and perseverance definitely ensures content marketing success and through that, business success.