Content marketing doesn’t stop with n number of webpages or blog posts

Whenever I tell this to my clients they think I’m trying to get more business from them, which is true, in a sense, because if I’m telling you to get more content from me, and that too on an ongoing basis, I cannot afford to provide it for free. It’s like, getting solar panels installed on your roof is a good step because once you have covered the cost of installation the power you get is practically free (and you save your environment from getting more polluted).

So, it doesn’t make sense to grow cynical if a solar energy company asks you to buy solar panels from it simply because it would mean it is trying to do business. Anyway, the point of this post is not that. I think generating content on an ongoing basis must be a conscious choice and being a savvy business person you should be able to decide for yourself.

Having said that, if you’re getting 20 articles or blog posts written and after that you think that your content marketing campaign is over you need to rethink. Millions web pages are being generated on a daily basis. At least 500-1000 among them are lapped up by search engines, bloggers, website publishers and social media/networking users to promote and spread. These are the top ones that attract the majority of the traffic of that particular day.

For how long can you sit on the laurels of those 20 articles or blog posts? The reality of the current state of the Internet is that you constantly need to publish new content in order to stay in the game.

You want people to keep coming back to your blog or website. You also want social media/networking users to continuously promote your content. You want the search engines to keep on crawling your website/blog so that whenever you are making new offers or updating your content it is indexed and reflected in search results very fast. You want to cover as many keywords as possible in order to increase your targeted search engine traffic. You also want to build a community around your product or service so that people not only buy from you they also promote your business through word-of-mouth marketing.

This requires ongoing content publishing.

Both people and search engines are constantly looking for fresh, topical content to learn from and to promote. They are not going to highlight or promote the same content again and again.

You need to provide them fresh content.

Publishing new content on an ongoing basis doesn’t mean that you do it every day (although this is preferred because you accumulate more content faster). There are many clients who prefer just one blog post every week. Some go for three blog posts. It depends on their budget and the requirement. There are many types of audience and some audience do not appreciate receiving fresh content everyday.

So quantity is not an issue here. The issue is continuity. Publish less content, but keep it going. It is like business marketing. Do you stop after a single campaign? No you don’t. Companies keep coming up with new campaigns in order to draw new customers and clients. Content marketing is also a part of that process.