With content marketing, content is king.
Time and again it has been proven that the blogs, which succeed in every niche, are the blogs that constantly deliver the best information. Great blog content will encourage people to share your posts, link to your blog and engage with your message. That’s gold dust if you’re a business blogger and want to monetize your blog.
Content marketing: The mediocre content problem
There are countless ebooks, webinars and blog posts, which claim to offer the tricks and tactics that can turn a mediocre blog into a gold mine. The reality is that well marketed crap is still crap. In other words, whilst it is easy to fool people into landing on a blog, the quality and value of the content is what will determine what they do when they arrive.
If you want to convert traffic into business inquiries, subscribers or you want people to click a link; your content needs to compel them to take action. It needs to motivate them.
Average content doesn’t do that: That’s because average content fails to turn readers of your blog (passive) into participants on your blog, taking action (active.)
Pushing average content is an ineffective blogging strategy
I often see bloggers on social networking sites, asking people to comment on and retweet their posts. Whenever I have checked their blogs out, it is clear why they are struggling. The content is failing to attract, engage and motivate readers. So, they hope they can demand your attention, because their blog is unable to command it. In an age where there are so many great blogs, mediocre content is of little value. In fact, even content that is slightly better than average, is unlikely to cut it!
Here’s the thing:
- The solution to getting the results you want from your blog is not to email, tweet and pester everyone you can think of, into visiting and sharing your posts.
- The solution is not to improve your SEO, as people will leave a mediocre blog as fast as they arrive.
So, what IS the solution then?
Offer compelling content! There’s no other way around it. Provide the most useful, attractive, entertaining, engaging content you can. This is what motivates the people who DO read your site, to share it with their friends, link to it and keep coming back for more. That’s the way every successful blog has grown; offering great information and marketing it correctly.
Even if you only start off with a handful of readers, and most of us do, that is enough to get share traffic into your blog and start building your initial readership – So long as the content is good enough, for them to want to read it and share with their friends. If they are not doing that, you need to improve their experience.
For example:
- Don’t write me too blog posts. These are posts that just repeat what hundreds of other bloggers are saying.
- Tailor your message so that it’s extremely relevant to your target market. If you try and be “kind of” relevant to everyone, you will cease to be relevant to anyone.
- Sell less and educate more. People do not share or value blog posts, which read like sales pitches for products, services or affiliate programs. They value, valuable content, so share what you know.
- Never be afraid to give too much free information away. The more high quality information you share, the more valuable your content becomes and the more people will share it and link to it. Equally, my sharing highly valuable information, you position yourself as an informed expert. If you hold all the good stuff back, people won’t know how great you are.
Content then Marketing
In my experience, the answer is to focus more on how you can create better quality blog content, rather than how to market average blog content more effectively.
Sadly, because people want super-fast results, many fall for the scammers offering killer blog techniques. Each time they do, they not only find it doesn’t work, but many find these techniques have actually set their progress backwards!
It takes time to learn how to write better content. It also takes creativity, courage and hard work. You may even need to break a few blogging rules. But for those who are committed to making their content marketing as effective for their business as possible, the rewards are fantastic!
Photo: aliwest44
Good one Jim.
And something that so few ‘bloggers’ seem to get.
Here’s a corollary to this – how many bloggers and content marketers do you know who actually work on improving the quality of their writing?
It’s surprising what you can do with just a bit of work – but very few bloggers seem to be prepared to do it.
It’s great for those of us who are prepared to put the time in – but I don’t understand the mindset.
Good post.
Paul
Thanks for the feedback, Paul.
Yes Jim, with your guidance I have found that I CAN improve the content of my blogs, and with practice it takes less time now that it did 6 months ago. Thanks for the reminder that even though it seems slow, when we focus on good content, the rewards will come!
Hi Ada.
Although overnight success is touted in many webinars and ebooks, none of the most successful blogs started that way. Little of any real value happens overnight, including lasting success. Thanks for the kind words!
Another great article! This one really hits home for me, because I’m concentrating all of my efforts into a brand new blog, and I’m busting my arse to create compelling content. After reading this post, I’ve decided to make a fundamental part of my strategy a -lack- of trying to sell people products, services, etc. and focus solely on educating my core audience.
I know it sounds counter-instinctive, Corey, but the best way to sell more, is to sell less.
I’m writing a post here shortly, on getting the balance right regarding attraction content and conversion content. You need both, but in my experience, attraction based content should make up the vast majority of your output.
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So do you think over selling your product is bad? By the way, content writing is very important for me that build links.
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