There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding when it comes to content marketing.
The problem is that content marketing sounds incredibly simple. Content marketing simply means posting to a website regularly so that there is content for people to read and so that Google will find the content right?
As long as you post regularly, it doesn’t really matter what the content you share is. Once someone reads your posts and sees they’re coming in regularly, they’ll start to follow your site… for sure.
Hopefully you can already see the problem here when you say it out loud! In reality, this is how content marketing actually works…
Slow and Steady
Contrary to popular belief, people don’t get wowed by your website on the first visit for the most part. Normally, we are reading the web because we need some information quickly or we fancy a bit of entertainment. Thus we search Google or we click that link our friend shared. We scroll down the page, dismissing the pop up asking us to fill in our email (why would we??) and we read. We never even notice the logo at the top of the page.
Things only start to click into place if we then visit that site again. And again. Through fluke on Google, or because a friend keeps sharing the content, we start to see the same brand crop up a few times and because that’s happened, we start to recognize it. It’s only at this point that we then make a mental note of the site and think of it as one we trust and one we’d like to hear more from.
And now, instead of searching for ‘how to lose weight’, we search for ‘how to lose weight breakingmuscle’. Because that’s our ‘go to’ site for that kind of information and we want to know what they have to say.
Eventually, if they keep on impressing in this capacity, then we might go on to start reading their regular posts, or we might just subscribe to their feed. And only then do we start to get to know the person behind the content, start to know them and trust them and consider subscribing to their email list and maybe buying from them.
Conclusion
The conclusion? Content marketing isn’t a magic bullet. It is hard work and it is only effective at all if you consistently put out excellent quality work.
