Here are 40 red flags for your content marketing strategy. If you see or hear any of them at your company, it’s time to rethink your plan. Your team is calling out for help. Use your content marketing superpowers!
Without a clear, strategic, and documented content marketing plan, your brand could fail. At least fail at using content to generate a positive impact. Whether you are a small business, a big company or you are working on your personal reputation, if you can hone your content skills, you can improve ineffective social media marketing.
Many corporate marketers and Main Street local business owners make more ‘I think’ vs. ‘I know’ social media and content decisions. They ignore user experience, content consumption, and native-behavior research and nuances. This lack of attention leads to fewer buyers walking through your door.
4 Content Marketing Facts That Make You Go Hmmm.
1. Up to 49% of companies don’t measure their content marketing ROI—that’s a lot of unmanaged content and distribution within many organizations. The roughly 43% who do measure ROI admit they are not very good at it. Source: Content Marketing Institute
2. Only 43% of brands document their content marketing strategy. This lower-than-recommended statistic suggests directionless content and activity. Lack of direction drives up costs and drives down ROI. Source: Content Marketing Institute
3. 68% of technology brands have a tough time creating engaging content. Mediocre and boring content under-delivers on business goals, which is never good. Source: Content Marketing Institute
4. Only 31% of B2B marketers say their companies are very effective at content marketing, suggesting an abundant amount of ineffective content used daily. Source: Content Marketing Institute
How do you even know if you are stuck in the content conundrum? Here are some quips and quotes I have picked up during my last ten years of digital marketing engagement with clients, customers, and coworkers.
40 Signs That It’s Time to Fix Your Content Marketing Strategy
If you have used or heard these phrases, it may be time to call in a content marketing expert to help create your foundational strategy. Then you can begin to build on your marketing success.
- “This is the hashtag my boss wants.”
- “This is the video title my business leader wants.”
- “We didn’t want to use facts in the messaging since we can’t verify them.”
- “We need to fit the entire quote into the post.”
- “We want to start using a hashtag in our paid social advertising.”
- “We want to use this hashtag even though follows it.”
- “We are going to use social media to drive registration, leads, and sales.”
- “Let’s use this one post to increase awareness, consideration, and demand generation.”
- “Our agency had a good idea and we want to run with their creative. Here’s the final version.”
- “My event is tomorrow and I need my message to go out on social media now.”
Many corporate marketers and Main Street local business owners make more ‘I think’ vs. ‘I know’ social media and content decisions. They ignore user experience, content consumption, and native-behavior research and nuances
Gerry Moran
- “We don’t know what hashtag or keywords we should be using — can you tell us?”
- “Can’t you just create the social media content about my topic? I don’t have time.”
- “We only need to do social media. It’s our only tactic.”
- “We don’t have to measure social media, do we?”
- “We don’t know where to send people after they read our posts.”
- “We want to use all 280 characters for our Twitter post.”
- “We want to use all 700 characters for our LinkedIn post.”
- “What do you mean I should use a visual with my social media posts?”
- “I don’t care about my video’s tagging, description, and playlist development — I just need to get this video up on YouTube.
- “Why isn’t my 10-minute video getting any views?”
- “Why isn’t anyone liking, sharing, or commenting on my post?
- “I don’t have time to do social media (or social selling.)”
- “Our team doesn’t know how to do social media, but we need to get this message out on social media about our event.”
- “I don’t do Twitter, so you will have to get my message out on social media.”
- “Oh, I didn’t know hashtags, format, character count, tone, and messaging was important on social media.”
- “We need to target only the C-level decision-maker — and don’t need to consider their buying team of SVPs, VPs, Senior Directors, and Directors.”
- “Here’s the one tweet we want to use to support our marketing campaign. Let me know when it’s up so that I can tell my boss.”
- “Let’s just use the same messaging on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.”
- “I want to be a social media influencer. How do I do that? Can you make that happen?”
- “Will you manage my social media profile for me?”
- “Someone said something negative about us on social media — what should we do?”
- “Should I respond to a comment made on social media?”
- “We don’t want our employees to participate on social media unless we sign off on it.”
- “I didn’t realize our Facebook followers don’t see our message unless we pay for it.”
- “I have $200 to spend on a very targeted social media campaign on LinkedIn; what should I do?”
- “I haven’t logged into LinkedIn for months.”
- “LinkedIn’s only for job seekers.”
- “Get this message out in the LinkedIn groups.”
- “Can you tell me who are our influencers are in our space?”
- “Let’s do social media because it’s free.”
Do you have another quip you’ve heard calls out for attention or fixing? If so, please share it below. Or, reach out to me directly at gerry@marketingthink.com.
These phrases do not suggest the lack of flexibility or openness to change by others. These phrases are calls for help! When you hear them, break out your content marketing superpowers to save the world from sub-par social media and content. Then you’ll start to deliver improved marketing results. So, maybe it’s time to ask a content marketing expert for some help?
