Is your content doing what it needs to do for your marketing? If it feels like you’re not getting the right returns on your investment in content, make sure you’re not running into these problems.
1) Wrong voice
More often than not, problems with content come down not to what you say but how it’s being said. Using the wrong voice for your audience can seriously impact the ability of your content to do its job. You don’t want to talk to highly skilled and educated professionals about matters related to their specialty in casual, simplistic language—nor do you want to bore a young audience into a stupor.
2) Shallow insight
Content needs to offer something interesting to be worth anything—in most cases, that means going deeper into some specific niche, detailing something in a unique way or offering truly original insight. If someone could read near-identical articles on a dozen competing websites, and not feel any difference except wording, then your content isn’t going to do the job.
3) Boring
Not every subject is inherently exciting, but that’s no excuse for letting your content be boring. You have plenty of areas to spice up your content; the medium, graphics, voice, viewpoint, all of it adds up to determine whether a piece of content grabs its audience or not. Don’t resign yourself to boring content—nothing needs to be boring.
4) Not tailored
Do you think about your audience before you start writing? Do you take into account the interests of the people who’ll read the blog post, watch the YouTube video, read the Tweet, study the e-book? If not, your content isn’t going to resonate the way it needs to. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all piece of content. If you’re looking at multiple market segments you need to appeal to, then each of those segments needs its own content—even if that means retreading a subject multiple times to cover each type of prospect.
5) No lead
Content in marketing needs to guide your prospect to a particular end goal. This might be taking direct action, such as signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to a social media account, or buying something. Maybe you want to generate shares and backlinks, and need content that goes viral. Or maybe you just need well-researched, intriguing content that builds your authority in your niche and lets the next piece of content make a sale or generate a lead. Understand where content needs to take the viewer and make sure it’s working towards that end goal.
For more advice about marketing and how to make the most of your content, contact the Monster Media team today.
