11 Reasons for Your Content Marketing Failure

Every marketer has to ask him(her)self how good and effective the content he/she posts on a corporate or personal blog is. If you write and write but all in vain — you do not get any a significant result: traffic — like nothing to speak of; there are almost no leads and incoming links to your posts; in the comment zone there is an icy silence — NinjaPromo has found some possible reasons for you. Enjoy!

1. You spend less than an hour preparing each post.

It is true that a sizable informative post can be written in 15 minutes. But it is also true that such situations happen quite rarely. It is known that most popular bloggers spend from 2 to 10 hours to prepare each post. If in your case this is not so, reconsider your approach.

2. You think your content is "good enough"

If you were asked to rate the quality of your content on a 10-point scale, what grade would you give? 6 points? 7? Most bloggers would probably answer that. But there is one tricky moment: the quality of your material cannot be assessed according to any scale. It either catches people's eye, or it makes them wanna sleep, there is no in-between.

In other words, if you rate your content at 6 or 7, this is the same as if you rated 1. Publishing such content is a waste of time.

3. Your visitors spend on the blog on average less than 2 minutes.

For most sources of incoming traffic, any indicator not exceeding 2 minutes is considered bad. If the average time is even less than a minute, then your content turns people off. You should improve it.

4. You care more about SEO than what people think.

Whenever a new blogger begins to think about search engine optimization (SEO) before writing his first post, there is an alarming signal — the attention is paid not to the text. Because there is no better way to write a horrible, trashy post than intentionally stuffing it with keywords in the hope that search engines rank your page higher. While in fact, it is more important for you that real people give links to your blog.

5. You believe that SEO is the main secret of creating a popular blog.

In order not to mislead anyone, we should admit that the overwhelming majority of successful bloggers are real SEO fans. However, none of them puts search engine optimization at the forefront.

SEO alone will not make your blog popular. Therefore, the sequence of your actions should always be as follows: first prepare an interesting article and only after that optimize it for search engines.

6. Topics — About everything.. and anything

One of the fastest ways to prevent people from visiting your blog is to write everything that comes to your mind.

Why? Because people read the material not in order to learn about your thoughts, but in order to find a solution to their problems. If you stop writing about them, they will stop reading you.

7. You do not know whether your content benefits readers.

Let's make a small test: can you tell how the life of the readers of your blog will change if within a year they apply what you publish? What specific, measurable results can you help them get?

It is not about the fact that readers get a sense of "deep moral satisfaction" from your content. It's about something else: for example, can you say that you readers have found 5 new customers for their business, applying the advice given by you?

8. You think you deserve more traffic than you get.

Does that annoy you that no one expresses gratitude to you for the valuable knowledge that you share with them for free?

With this, you need to learn how to live. Most popular bloggers have spent more than one year before they earned the right to the attention of others. In blogging, recognition comes with time. And this rule has almost no exceptions.

9. You have a scientific, engineering or another technical background.

Although it sounds terribly biased, practice shows that such a "shady" past can be a hindrance to being a good blogger. A possible reason for this state of affairs is that life in the scientific and technical world nurtures the habit of thinking in people within the framework of a technical task, as well as instills a certain measure of passivity and inability to think globally — all these 3 qualities are destructive for a publicist.

It is clear that involvement in these disciplines does not automatically make you unsuitable for blogging.

10. You do not read about how to write good content.

Running your blog and not reading any literature on creating high-quality content is the same as looking for hidden treasures without a map. Theoretically, of course, you can find them without a card, but you can hardly seriously place reliance on such fantastic luck.

By the way, reading this article, you are engaged in exactly what is said in this paragraph. But do not stop here.

11. You dedicate to reading less than 10 hours a week.

It is expected that in addition to writing a lot, you will have time and read a lot. Thanks to this, you will improve literary style (through the use of new metaphors, stories and stylistic techniques that you learn by reading other authors) — you will always stay up to date with everything that happens in the area you are covering.

It is worth noting that 10 hours a week is a vital minimum. Ideally, in order to get the full benefit of reading, you need to devote to it about 20–40 hours a week.

Summary

The preparation and publication of high-quality information is a job that requires time, energy and patience.

In order to create a successful blog (as in any other business ), it is important to learn how to work to the bitter end. And if now, reading this article, you are thinking hard, trying to assess your resource, NinjaPromo has been working not in vain.

And do not forget that a blog is the main asset of lead generation, each post of which must contain a certain offer and lead to micro-conversions (subscription to a segmented newsletter, lead for consultation on a product or service, webinar, download White Paper, etc.)