Bad content = bad marketing results, whatever channel you're marketing on. While content writing might not be your strong suit as a marketer, there are a few bad practices you can avoid to make sure that your content IS performing.
The following advice is what we cover in our CommuniGator copywriting workshop. After several prospects and customers found their content struggling to perform, we addressed the 3 key reasons we could see from their results.
1. Your content isn't easy to digest
Long-winded emails and 2,000 word blogs aren't just time-consuming to produce but also to read. No one in the B2B world has time to read that much. Not when their inbox is full of important emails and blogs are only designed to intrigue your cold audience.
Instead, use one liners in emails that make it seem like you already have a relationship with the recipient. If this piques their initial interest, you can always expand your explanation later down the line. Or send them to a landing page that provides the interest they need.
It's important to remember that content marketing works on every level - to intrigue audiences and to provide them with relevant information. Make content easy to digest at the intrigue level if you want your audiences to interact at all. Think one liner emails and 400 word blogs MAX.
2. It isn't new
With so much content online, you might think there is no such thing as original content anymore. Either that or you don't have the time to produce your own blogs, so you take a popular one from a similar company and reword it. Not good.
The thing is if you're copying information that is already out there, whatever form it is in - be it a blog, whitepaper, infographic etc. - that content will always perform higher. It's been on the internet longer. It caught your attention, therefore, it will catch your target audience's attention before yours will.
Remember, people search for content they need. If you're struggling for new ideas, take a concept that has already been written about and focus on how your company makes it different, unique, better.
3. You're not putting it in the right place
Different types of content perform differently depending on the marketing channel you are promoting them on. For example, LinkedIn and Twitter have performed the best for B2B marketing in the past, where B2C succeeded more on Facebook and Instagram. When deciding where you want to promote your content, you must put yourself in your audiences shoes.
Understanding where your audience goes to get information is imperative to getting your content clicked and viewed. You don't even need to imagine and guess anymore either. With social media tracking tools and email marketing reporting functions, there's no reason you can't measure where your content is the most successful.
Using these three key functions as the starting point of your content marketing triangle, you will start to see your results improve however marginally. If you want to improve your results beyond that, it's time to look at the quality of the content you are producing.
Want to learn how to create effective copy to avoid these content pitfalls? Then check out the IDM's Copywriting for Digital course. A highly practical course, you will learn the keys skills needed to create effective copy across a variety of digital platforms.
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