There is a whole lot of marketing content out there – in all forms and sizes, across all kinds of channels, in different languages and formats, and targeting all kinds of audiences. With the genesis of the Internet and social media, every person has become a content producer – clicking on publish or share button is all it takes! However, this begs an important question to be asked- Is content marketing all that easy? Is producing quality content a cakewalk? Absolutely not!
It is true that there is a lot of content on the web, but it is the ‘good’ content that gets consumed and passed around – and it takes a lot of effort and time to build that kind of content.
According to the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report, producing great content is the biggest challenge marketers face, backed up by producing enough content. Some of the other challenges include producing truly engaging content, getting content delivered to the right audiences, measuring results, talent to produce content, no consistent content strategy, lack of budget to produce content, understanding buying personas and decision stages, getting executive buy-in, poor content quality, lack of process for producing content, and lack of domain expertise etc.
In this blog post, I’m focusing on the biggest challenge- producing great content. Which marketer wouldn’t like to produce great content all the time, isn’t it? But the challenges to do that are many. I have highlighted a few here:
Volume vs. Quality: In today’s keyword and Google rank driven world, there is no doubt that it’s ‘content’ that can win those search engine ranking battles. Enterprises, large and small are creating reams of content, mainly for SEO and back linking purposes to be right on top of search engine results with very little emphasis on quality. But, how far can we compromise quality for volume? Should we be happy appeasing search engines while our content has no human takers?
My personal opinion is that quality should win every time. Any content that has a touch point with your brand, even if it is being created for search engines must be fit for human consumption – if it is not, you are doing more damage than good.
Time is money, really? Yeah, we all know this one, don’t we? As marketers we are constantly racing to create as much content in as little time as possible. What we must remember is that creating great content does take time. Today’s consumers can easily see through content that is superficial and created in haste.
Creating content should not be a race with the clock- take time to put your thoughts together, time to research, time to understand the audience you are writing for, time to quality check, time to review and rework based on feedback, and time to distribute the content to the right audience. If you feel good about the content you have produced, it is quite likely your audience will feel the same.
Research is Key: One of the important components that go into creating a great content piece is thorough research. Unfortunately, owing to deadline pressures and customer demands, content marketers do not research enough which results in mediocre output.
Before writing on a topic, read up as much as possible on the subject, and find out what the experts, thought leaders and analysts have to say on the same. This way your content development process will take into account multiple perspectives to provide a holistic picture.
Content maybe king, but the customer comes first: Creating content that resonates with the reader continues to be a big challenge for content marketers. Enterprise content, more often than not, is focused on the company and its products, rather than meeting the consumer’s need. The result is collateral that fails to engage with the reader.
The biggest tip for content marketers is to put themselves in their target audience’s shoes. Think what their problem areas are and how your content can help provide solutions to those problems.
With 9 in 10 organizations marketing with content, there is no denying the importance of content marketing in the overall marketing strategy. However, content marketing is not a short term solution, rather, a practice that involves a continuous investment of resources, time, effort and money to make it a success.
