Why you’ll never succeed at content marketing

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Content marketing is unquestionably one of the best tools for promoting your business. - Janet Barclay, OrganizedAssistant.com

Content marketing is unquestionably one of the best ways to promote your business. It’s free, or relatively inexpensive, and more importantly, it keeps you in front of your target audience.

Not convinced? Check out the statistics in this infographic:

The Anatomy of Content Marketing: the heart of online success

From Visually.

If you’ve already embraced content marketing but aren’t seeing any results, you might be going about it all wrong. Did you develop a content marketing strategy and set specific goals, or did you just start posting random links and messages?

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Setting goals is key to your content marketing success.” quote=”Setting goals is key to your content marketing success.” theme=”style1″]

There are many different types of goals you can establish for your content. Here are some of the most popular:

Once you know exactly what you’re trying to receive, you can begin to create content that will support your marketing goals. As you do, make sure that your content supports your long-term vision and mission.

Above all, focus on creating content that puts your audience first. Providing value will demonstrate how you can help them far more effectively than any type of self-promotion.

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Janet Barclay

A former professional organizer, I now eliminate stress for my clients by hosting, monitoring, and maintaining their WordPress sites so they don’t have to worry about security, downtime or performance issues. When I’m away from my desk, I enjoy reading, photography, watching movies, and cooking.

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18 Comments

  1. Avatar Sophia on June 1, 2016 at 10:58 am

    Too big topic indeed! Thank you 🙂

  2. Avatar Seana G Turner on June 1, 2016 at 1:48 pm

    I think one could argue that setting goals is key to succeeding in so many of life’s pursuits! I think of content marketing as one of many tools that businesses have. Love the quote about “identity, relationship, and content” being the core of content marketing. With so many businesses, letting your clients get comfortable with you is a wonderful first step toward a lasting relationship.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 1, 2016 at 3:09 pm

      You’re so right, Seana, yet how often do we just dive into something without giving a thought to what we hope to get out of it?

      I find this especially true with content marketing. I started blogging in 2006 because someone told me I should, but I didn’t know why or how to go about it. On any given day I would blog about organizing, productivity, technology, working from home, organizers, virtual assistance, or random thoughts that crossed my mind, and it took me nearly 3 years to figure out that I needed a focus and a niche! :O

  3. Avatar Liana George on June 1, 2016 at 4:36 pm

    Wow Janet, I never realized the impact that content marketing and blogs particularly played on your visibility in the online world! Good information to know and keep in front of me on those days when I don’t “feel” like producing more content! Thanks for the “food for thought” 🙂

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 1, 2016 at 4:40 pm

      Happy to inform and motivate you, Liana! Your blog is great – keep on doing what you do!

  4. Avatar Adam Barnett on June 2, 2016 at 9:43 am

    Yes, planning and setting clear goals is important, but when it comes to content marketing the most important thing is to provide information that has value for readers. Nothing more, nothing less.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 2, 2016 at 10:05 am

      Providing value to readers is extremely important; there’s really no point to it otherwise. But as a business owner, you ultimately need results, and setting goals will help you identify both the results you need and the best type of content to create and share to help you achieve those goals.

  5. Avatar Sabrina Quairoli on June 6, 2016 at 9:12 am

    Great information, Janet. I started out just sending a newsletter with different information than my blog and realized the workload was really hard to manage so I began to think how can I make this easier and still give the mailing list followers a little more love. By just making a little change, it has helped emensely. Thanks for sharing the infographic.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 6, 2016 at 2:05 pm

      That’s great, Sabrina! We often make things much harder for ourselves than we need to, don’t we? The key is to find that perfect balance between providing value to our subscribers and not taking too much time and attention away from other important activities.

  6. Avatar Jill Robson on June 6, 2016 at 11:18 am

    Content marketing is always something i am working on. Thank you, Janet.

  7. Avatar allison weigensberg on June 6, 2016 at 2:06 pm

    Great intro to content marketing Janet! You definitely piqued my interest! Thanks 🙂

  8. Avatar Linda Samuels on June 7, 2016 at 8:16 am

    Love the compelling stats that you shared. Having jumped into the social media content generating arena about six years ago, I can attest to the effectiveness along several benefits you mentioned.

    You always have such great info to share. I love learning new things from a great teacher like you. Thank you.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 7, 2016 at 9:07 am

      Thank you for sharing your personal experience, backing up the data in the infographic! You’re a master at content marketing, so I’ll be very interested in finding out your #1 takeaway from the eCourse.

  9. Jodi Holzband Jodi Holzband on June 7, 2016 at 9:53 pm

    Thanks for sharing this post, Janet. Content marketing is something we invest in at SpareFoot and I’m really proud of the high quality content that we put out there. Infographics and posts like this really help underline the importance of providing great value to potential customers.

    • Avatar Janet Barclay on June 8, 2016 at 6:34 am

      You guys are doing a great job. I love the way you provide your readers with a wide spectrum of information by using multiple bloggers as well as featuring other experts within many of the posts.

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