Let’s take a look Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working – Reason Four of Five:
4. You’re not listening to what’s important
VOX was contracted to publish content to the internet for a blogging company about six years ago. We would build the blogsite, post the content to the blog, and share it on social media. Many clients would spend the $350-$500/month waiting for the upward bump to their bottom line. Often nothing would really happen. They’d get a few followers but there was no engagement. No one was sharing, commenting, Liking, Following or Subscribing.
Let’s say you find your audience in a Facebook or Linked In group. There are 10,000 people in the group. You need to read what they’re all talking about in order to find out what’s important to them. Too often companies post to social media accounts about things that are important to them as owners or managers rather than what’s important to their prospects and customers. That’s what happened with the people the blogging company were signing up. They were paying what they thought was a fair price for an important service that they didn’t fully understand and then asking us to post content about special offers and big announcements about funding efforts or indie go-go campaigns. They were branding and selling through their posts. Two big “No-No’s” in content marketing.
Beyond that, imagine you have a full room of prospects next to your office. You finally know what interests them. So you open the door and you tell them something that research tells you is important to them. Then you leave the room and close the door. That’s what we were doing with our posts. Posting and walking away. We were building a ‘room’ or group full of live leads. We posted content important to them and then left the conversation we had started.
Any proven and effective sales person will tell you that you have to listen to the prospect. You have to find out what’s important to them. Then you have to set a follow up appointment, do your research, and then come back with a proposal that includes your solution to what they need that’s important to them. The same is true with content marketing. Blogging is posting content. Engagement is when your target responds or shares that content. When your target audience engages with your content they’re telling you what’s important to them.
If you’re going to invest in content marketing then you have to do it right in order for it to work. There’s a reason why your TV, direct mail, newspaper, and radio advertising campaigns aren’t converting the way they used to. It’s because people aren’t consuming media the same way and they don’t like to be sold. But they are buying. And before they buy what do you think they do? They research. And how do you think they do that research? They open their browser or social media account and they search for the answers to their questions. When are you going to start providing the answers to the people who are looking for what it is that you do? The sooner you start the sooner you’ll see a return.
Do your research and find out what’s important to your customers, prospects, and even employees. Then provide the answers to the questions your prospects have. But instead of putting those answers into your sales brochure and on your rate card, post them, like I’m doing with this post, as part of a regular ongoing stream of information through your blog, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, and newsletter accounts. And then:
- Respond when they comment.
- Tell them you hear them.
- Ask them how else you can help them.
- Reward them for engaging.
- Thank them for contributing.
- Listen to what’s important.
And that’s Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working – Reason Four of Five: You’re not listening to what’s important
READ: Five of Five Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working
Taft Moore is CEO of the content marketing and digital asset management firm VOX Communications, LLC. Established in 2009, VOX has helped clients in apparel, construction, entertainment, finance, government, healthcare, non profit, and startup spaces, among others, to build brand awareness, drive engagement, and ultimately increase sales. Taft is a Google and Facebook Agency Partner and a Linked In Advisor/Pro. In that capacity, Taft has driven millions of views for his clients across multiple platforms. Successes include raising tens of millions of dollars in funding for startups, geometrically increasing online sales for established brands, generating national news headlines and mainstream media coverage on the future of healthcare, effective treatments for opioid use disorder, protecting oil and natural gas pipelines in the environment, and saving rhinos. Over the course of more than ten years, Taft and his team have also generated above the fold organic search engine results for hundreds of terms in numerous, highly competitive industries. Taft and the VOX team research your industry, competitors, and influencers, build, manage, and optimize your websites, connect your social media networks, generate compelling content, and then drive engagement while building awareness through organic and paid search campaigns. An in depth understanding of digital marketing and the algorithms that drive search results help Taft to understand, educate, and then perform for his clients.
VOX researches your industry, competitors, and influencers, builds, manages, and optimizes your websites, connects all your social media networks, generates compelling content, and then builds awareness through organic and paid search campaigns. Connect with VOX to see what we’ve learned about how to leverage the internet on your behalf.
