No one is sharing your monthly “5 Easy Tips” blogs. No one commented on the posts about your latest company event. In fact, you’re not seeing much engagement with your online content at all.
And you’re not the only one. More than 75% of blog posts from marketers receive fewer than 10 social shares and zero links from other domains (Moz).
What happened? Is content dead?
Is content no longer “king”?
No.
Content isn’t just king anymore. It’s the king, queen, prince, princess, wine, goblet, sword, castle. It’s everything. In fact, 70% of internet users want to learn about products through content versus traditional advertisements (MDG).
The problem is the content you’re publishing is no longer engaging, educational, or helpful to the modern consumer.
It’s just there. Lying there with other fluff content, regurgitating information found on other sites. Existing for the sake of existing. Content for content’s sake. Your users and the search engines are sick of any content that isn’t concise, original, and speaking directly to their current needs.
This is the massive difference between merely publishing content online and creating a resource that engages your target market. To fix your content, you need to address the following key issues:
- Know Your Consumer
Consumers are online for a specific purpose, whether it’s to solve a specific problem, find something to do, make a transaction, shop, or just be entertained. The most valuable content fulfills that need at the right moment. That’s why 63% of marketers create buyer personas and use them to compose content (Hubspot). You need to understand your customer and their web habits to create content that improves their lives.
- Be Concise
People spend an average of 37 seconds reading an article online (Company.com). In web browsing terms, that’s a long time. However, that doesn’t leave room for fluff in your content. Long introductions about the problem, industry, or audience just annoy readers now. Readers don’t want you to tell them why there is a need for your article. Just give them the answer! But remember that concise does not (necessarily) mean short.
- Outsource to a Professional
Sixty four percent of B2B marketers outsource their writing (TopRankBlog). While expert insight from within your business is important, your CMO also needs a reliable partner or agency that can convert that knowledge into a format and style that gets results. Today, the most successful B2B marketers spend 40% of their total marketing budget on content marketing (Content Marketing Institute, 2017). When properly executed, content marketing can be the most effective tool in reaching your consumers. At Anderson Group, we combine content marketing with other channels and tactics—like social media, PR and media relations, influencer outreach, and collaboration with your sales department—to magnify its effectiveness.
- Measure, Analyze, and Improve
Everyone says they’re going to do it. But many times, analysis is nothing more than looking at how many visits a blog page receives. Content has so much more to measure. That’s probably why 89% of marketers ranked improving the ability to measure and analyze marketing impact as a top priority (Demand Gen Report). Each article you create is a way to see what helps your site rank better for keywords, what your customers want, how your customers convert to a sale, and much more.
So, content is still king. And like a king, it needs to be high quality and deeply engaged with the needs of its people. In the end, all search engines and consumers want is content that quickly and effectively gives readers what they need, when they need it. That’s not so hard, is it?