Why Your Content Marketing Is Failing and How to Fix It. That said, many marketers have tested content length to find out, on average, what tends to rank best. If your content is consistently shorter than that, you may find it doesn't get the rankings, shares or engagement you were hoping for. For most blog posts, aim for at least 1,100 words. Here's the strategy I use to find topic ideas for blog posts that consistently get read, shared and linked to. Many business owners think they can post sporadically to their blog and social media and still see results. However, according to SimilarWeb's 2016 Global Search Marketing report, search drives 10x more traffic to shopping sites than social media. How to fix it: Each piece of content you create should be optimized for search. You don't have goals for your content marketing. According to the CMI's 2016 B2B Content Marketing report, businesses spend an average of 28 percent of their marketing budget on content marketing.
Content marketing can be extremely effective for extending your reach, driving traffic and helping you reach your business goals. However, some business owners report that content marketing just isn’t effective for them – or at least isn’t as effective as they’d like.
This post will outline some of the most common reasons your content marketing may be failing and what you can do to get back on track.
Your content is too short
There is no optimal word count for content. The perfect length will depend on a variety of factors, including the topic, your audience and how and where you promote it. For example, with my company Due, our readers LOVE our longer 5000+ word guides. The average person spends 10+ minutes reading them.
That said, many marketers have tested content length to find out, on average, what tends to rank best. The findings span a whole range of lengths but have generally revealed that longer is better.
Research from serpIQ found that 1,500 words is a great target for most blog posts. Searchmetrics, on the other hand, suggests somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,100-1,300 words. If your content is consistently shorter than that, you may find it doesn’t get the rankings, shares or engagement you were hoping for.
How to fix it: Content quality is always more important than content length. That said, longer content tends to do a better job of comprehensively covering a topic. For most blog posts, aim for at least 1,100 words. For “evergreen” posts, aim for 1,500-2,000 words minimum.
Your content isn’t distinctive.
The vast majority of business owners now engage in some form of content marketing. This means that each piece of content you create faces a tremendous amount of competition.
This is probably one reason why most content that gets published online gets few to no links or shares. The stiff competition means content needs to be unique, valuable and must fill a gap in your industry or niche.
How to fix it: Perhaps the biggest challenge in creating successful content is coming up with original content ideas that haven’t been covered a hundred times before. Here’s the strategy I use to find topic ideas for blog posts that consistently get read, shared and linked to.
You don’t have a content plan.
Many business owners think they can post sporadically to their blog and social media and still see results. Unfortunately, this strategy – or lack of a strategy – usually ends up causing more harm than good.
Consistency is key to building trust when it comes to content marketing. If your fans and followers only hear from you when you have something to…
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