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Content Marketing – “How Hard Could It Be?”

Jumping through marketing hoops

Content marketing doesn’t happen automatically. Marketing managers almost always need to jump through hoops to make the effort worthwhile.

A Hubspot article called “5 Common Content Marketing Challenges”
addresses obstacles to getting your content in front of customers and prospects. It mentions the lack of time, experience, readership, results and organizational support as primary reasons for not being able to get content rolling out on a regular basis.

As a marketing manager, you have people asking you, “How hard could this be? The channels are everywhere. We should be publishing content so people know about us.” Maybe you’re asking yourself that question.

More bumps on the road to content marketing

Consider a few other obstacles besides the ones in the Hubspot article:

  • Lack of faith – “How do I know that any of this stuff will really work?” you ask. Well, you know that you need content one way or the other, because you have stories you absolutely need to tell. You don’t need to be the next Elon Musk. All you need to do is ensure that Sales has what it needs to do its job: leads and something to show to those leads to engage them.
  • Lack of focus – Pick a couple of channels and get good at them. You’ll kill yourself and those around you trying to spread yourself too thin, so don’t try. It can take a while to find out where your prospects spend their time and how to appeal to them. Get ready for a hunt.
  • Lack of sleep – Spending those first waking hours answering questions in forums? Hunching over your pastrami sandwich while you tweet? Sitting in bed with your laptop, studying your web stats? Good luck. Obsessing over the stuff doesn’t really make you a better marketer, just a more tired one.

You will have to jump through some hoops, like the fellow in the photo, but keep your focus on starting conversations.

And after all, how hard could that be?

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/senor_codo/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Related posts:

  1. Six Reasons You Can’t Get Your Content Marketing to Work
  2. Marketing Mangers: Make Up Your Own Job Title
  3. Getting Your Content Thing Started – A Newsletter Article
  4. A Japanese Take on Content Marketing
  5. “Give me the content I want, not the content I ask for.”
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Author: John White

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a content marketing writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Content Marketing Writer.”
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4 thoughts on “Content Marketing – “How Hard Could It Be?””

  1. Good post. And don’t forget the other one obstacle – Lack of Process. To consistently add quality content, you need a process and schedule, so writers know what they are going to be writing, to what purpose, and when.

    Nick

  2. I really like this post. I find that these are the same challenges I have as a copywriter marketing my blog: content, confidence, focus, practice – all very good points. I tend to think that focus is the one thing we need to clarify very early in the process. Everything else will fall into place with time.

    1. Yes, and the more content you have, and the more opportunities/demands there are to market it, the more hoops we have to jump through.

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