Content marketing is gradually replacing traditional advertising. People have become better at tuning out advertisements and often pay to not see ads on their televisions. However, content marketing has its troubles too. There are several challenges of content marketing, such as posting good content regularly, increasing competition, having unrealistic expectations, going either too broad or too narrow, and calculating its ROI. Continue reading to learn why these are challenges of content marketing and how to overcome them:
1. Producing Good Content Regularly
With how competitive the online marketing world is becoming, the need for consistently good content is high. Many business owners, however, struggle to deliver good content on a regular basis. Even if they outsource the task, they must rely on the writers to produce high quality content. To solve this problem, you must first determine whether or not it’s within your means to write your own content consistently.
Perhaps you’re not a natural writer. Or writing content takes up time you’d rather spend on other areas of your business. If so, then consider incorporating outsourcing into your strategy. You can still write some of your own content, if you choose, while making up for the other needed posts with outsourcing.
2. Growing Competition
As touched on earlier, competition in the online marketing space is steadily increasing. Moreover, brands are now expected to have a social media account where customers can get in touch. Many consumers also expect businesses to respond quickly on social media sites. Twitter users, in particular, want a reply within 1-2 hours of tweeting a complaint to the brand.
With an increasingly saturated space, how do you grab someone’s attention in content marketing? It starts with the headline! The title of your blog post will either be clicked on or not. And users will only click on a headline that catches their interest. Some tips for writing good headlines include:
- Delete unnecessary words in the headline that don’t make it compelling
- Ask yourself if the headline would make you continue reading
- Use interesting adjectives
- Ask yourself if the headline is believable
3. Setting Goals Too High
Some business owners anticipate too much too soon from content marketing. Usually, this marketing strategy is a long-term pay-off, rather than a quick reward. As a result, content marketers set goals that are too high and mistakenly believe that they failed if the goals weren’t met. Set realistic goals and adjust them as necessary. Be patient with your content marketing efforts.
4. Too Broad or Too Narrow
Content that is too broad doesn’t deliver as much juicy information to readers and doesn’t make the brand stand out. On the other hand, content that is too narrow in focus covers such a niche topic that few people read it. Find balance between broad and narrow for your content marketing plan. A few niche posts every once in a while can be great, but too many will hurt your readership growth rate.
5. Calculating the ROI of Content Marketing
The fifth major challenge marketers and entrepreneurs have with content marketing is calculating its ROI. Before you try determining ROI, figure out ahead of time what you want to accomplish with content marketing. Are you after more followers? More leads? Become a thought leader? Then, determine how you will measure that metric. There are many analytics and social media tools that will assist with recording data. Examples of tools you can use to monitor ROI include Google Analytics, Twitter Analytics, and Klout.
Conclusion
Content marketing comes with many challenges but is still very rewarding once you master it. Take the steps to overcome the five main challenges of content marketing that were listed above, and you’ll pump out better content for your readers. Following a content marketing plan is also more enjoyable once you’ve gotten the hang of it and learned how to handle its challenges.
