5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Not For You, by Brian Newmark

Content marketing can help any business to flourish and make a brand presence for them online.

Content marketing can be for anyone.

And yet, it is not for you.

You won’t want to do anything that does not help. You surely do not want to do anything that hurts.

Content marketing can hurt instead of helping if you go wrong with it.

Here are several reasons why content marketing is not for you.

1) Cheap and Free Loaders:

This is a term that does not go well with content marketing. If you do anything cheap, let it be cheap content, cheap link building or cheap promotions on the social media, it will all just backfire.

There’s two ways to go about it, either you write great content yourself or you outsource it. Similarly, the same great content can be used in the form of guest blogging for promotions. For outsourcing your content creation efforts, you have to dedicate a decent budget to it.

If you go for cheaper ways to build content and end up getting low quality, re-written and spun garbage, content marketing is surely not for you.

2) Spamming as a way for promotions:

You might wonder if people still resorts to spamming in times like this when mediocre content is considered as spam. The bar is already set much higher in 2014 and there is simply no scope for crappy content.

However, people with an outdated mindset do not realise this. They still do it and it just does not work anymore.

Link spams in the form of mass comments, article marketing, spam guest blogging, buying cheap social shares etc. are all forms of spamming.

It is time you either stop content marketing or quit spamming. If you continue to spam then content marketing is something that is just not right for you.

3) Updating oneself with the Times:

Things change and in the online world they change pretty fast. Last year guest blogging was a gold mine, now it is a mine field. At this moment with guest blogging, if you are able to execute it well you will get plenty of benefits, if you go wrong it will backfire pretty badly and if you do nothing you will miss out where your competitors will capitalize.

There is simply no scope for outdated content when it comes to content marketing. You need to update yourself, know the rules of the game for the current times and keep an eye out for any changes coming your way.

4) Not working on Social Media:

Social media is the ultimate platform for promoting your content. No amount of great content can help if no one reads it. Content marketing needs eyeballs that social media provides.

Your social presence is the ultimate decider on whether your content marketing campaign will reach an audience that you initially wanted. An active social presence can get the desired numbers of likes, retweets and other social votes. It can also help propel the content further on the social media.

Social profiles are the launch pads that propel your content further. It takes years of dedication, consistency and discipline to get a social profile active. They are the base for getting a message viral. But getting it viral is the result what matters is the hard work behind that viral force.

If you ignore social media, content marketing is not for you.

5) You are too obsessed with the results:

Content marketing is a process not an activity.

It takes time to bring in the results and take an awful lot of time to get started. Great content takes time to build, even if you outsource it will still take time. The strategy itself is a time taking process. The promotion has to be done properly and most of it should take its own course of time. All this requires patience and running around for a quick result does not help.

One just needs to do the good things and wait for the results to start flowing in. You can’t speed up the process.

If you are too desperate for a quicker result, content marketing is not for you.

Along with these there are a number of reasons why content marketing might not be for you. For example content marketing requires discipline that is you can’t do something today, do nothing for a week and suddenly start working on it again. Nothing adds up that way. You need to be disciplined in your content marketing efforts.

Content marketing is a specialized form of online marketing that requires certain skills. Anything can be outsourced of course but ultimately it has to match the best of the standards. If your content marketing efforts aren’t up to scratch, it is best not to do it at all.

 

By Brian Newmark