It can be very frustrating when you put a lot of work into creating content and it doesn’t have the desired effect. There are a number of factors that could be influencing this, but it’s most likely that your content distribution plan is not effective.
If your content is not performing as it should, check to see if you have any of the following habits.
1. Creating a Plan After Content Is Finished
A content team sends a fresh piece to the promo team to be seen, placed, covered, and shared immediately but when this does not happen, everyone gets frustrated.
Your PR team should always be involved from the beginning so that they can provide feedback about your content idea, give you enough time to connect with their contacts, arrange exclusives, and prepare a launch plan.
You could also try working with a specific publication to make sure that your content will be featured. This could be a good way to make sure that your content is seen.
Different content types might require different ways to be promoted.
2. Targeting the Wrong Channels
Your goal in content distribution is to make sure the people you want to see your content can easily find it. This means choosing the best distribution channels for your content. Different types of content are better suited for different channels. That’s why it’s important to have these conversations early on.
If you’re not careful about which channels you’re using to communicate, or you don’t make sure that your content is appropriate for that channel, it will be difficult to connect with people.
Before creating content, consider who you are trying to reach and what the most effective channels are to reach them. Also, discuss this with your team to ensure that the content will be optimized for each channel.
3. Tracking the Wrong Metrics
You need metrics to measure your success. Without metrics, you have no way to determine if your distribution plan is working. Some brands try to track too many metrics and get overwhelmed. Others don’t track any metrics, so they have no insight. Many brands track the wrong metrics, which makes it difficult to understand what is and isn’t working.
You should focus on the metrics that will give you the most valuable information.
4. Not Optimizing for SEO
Many brands do not optimize their owned properties or content for SEO, even though SEO traffic is very important for getting people to see your content.
Your website, blog, and content should be optimized for keywords and social sharing.
5. Trying to Reach Everyone
If you want your content to be effective, it needs to be tailored to the specific group of people who will benefit from your product or service. Otherwise, it will be too vague and your distribution strategy will be too broad to be effective.
It is recommended to create marketing personas that go into detail about who the target audience is, what interests them, how they consume information, etc. This will help to evaluate content ideas and identify the appropriate distribution channels. It is typically recommended to create three personas to start with.
This is a terrible idea. By making it harder for people to access your content, you’re only shooting yourself in the foot. You’re essentially ensuring that fewer people will see what you’ve worked so hard to create.
Although it is beneficial to increase keyword rankings and deliver more site traffic, if the content on the site is not good then it could negatively impact the brand.
It is important to make content easy to access and share. For example, by uploading videos directly to Facebook instead of forcing viewers to go to a website, or by adding social buttons to a newsletter to make it easy to follow the brand on social media.
While it’s okay to promote your content on social media, you should also give your audience something of value. For example, you could tweet an interesting data visualization from your latest white paper, and then include a link to the white paper if your followers are interested in learning more.
7. Promoting Your Content Once
Although you want your content to be successful, don’t treat it as a one-time event. Creating content takes a lot of effort so it would be a shame to only promote it once.
You can keep your content fresh by repurposing it or using it to create new micro-content. For example, you could turn an old e-book into a new infographic.
8. Not Building Strong Relationships
If you wish to work with influencers and be featured in publications, it is important to develop a relationship before simply sending them content. Even if you think you have a good relationship, one poor pitch can make them lose interest in working with you for a while.
How can you cultivate relationships with publishers, write great pitches, and keep track of what publishers want so you can deliver it now or in the future? Also, look for opportunities to cross-promote, guest post, etc.
9. Not Testing Your Tools
There are many tools available to help with your content distribution, but as with all technology, there may be some difficulties. Some brands discover after a big launch that their tracking links were broken or social buttons were not working.
Always test your tools to ensure they are functioning properly and check everything twice before beginning. This includes tools, links, and popup models.
10. Blowing Your Budget on an Ineffective Paid Campaign
Spending money on paid content distribution is a good way to make your content more visible, but only if the campaign is effective. Many brands pay for ads without first testing them, and then they’re left with little results.
You should test something small before expanding it. This will help you make it more effective and prevent wasting money.
11. Strategy
Although a plan may mention many aspects of content strategy, it may not mention the need to publish high-quality content that meets searchers’ needs and answers their queries.
This could be backed up with an objective. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that a well-funded business should target:
Within 12 months:
- 90% or more of landing pages that have value of over 1,000 visits a month, and should be revisited.
- 50% or more of landing pages are considered to be equal or better than other pages designed to answer the same query.
I think you could improve your performance, but the above would be a great place to start.
12. Procrastination
We often put off doing things we should do in favor of activities we think are easier and more enjoyable. Planning can be time-consuming and complex, involving data analysis.
It is necessary to audit what you have and what is missing and then to plan to fill the gaps; however, this can be postponed. Having missing content is not acceptable, but having content that is merely “OK” is not acceptable either. Surely there are more important things to be doing than creating truly great content?
An audit is necessary for understanding what content you have and how it is performing before looking for gaps. It will save time and may be political to have it done externally for an independent view.
13. Brand
We value brands highly and want to create our own that disrupt others. To do this, we have teams that establish and enforce guidelines. These guidelines have both graphical components and directions on elements like tone of voice and language usage.
This means that web pages are often made by brand agencies, who write the copy based on a detailed plan. Usually, these pages are exactly what the agency and brand wanted them to be. However, the problem is that they don’t always match what people were searching for, and they’re not designed to be successful on Google. Despite this, CMOs still expect them to do well.
This can result in a loss of traffic, and I would also say it can result in a loss of brand equity.
14. Red Tape
The larger the company is, the more bureaucracy there is. More people are involved in decision making, which can lead to more delays.
The more people involved in a project, the slower it goes and content created by a group can often be average.
According to Stephen Morris, SEO and Content Specialist, if you work for a large company, it is necessary to establish systems and protocols that employees will be expected to follow. Employees should be involved in the creation of these frameworks and should be given autonomy to make decisions within the parameters of the system.
Although it may sound too good to be true, it is hard to argue with his belief that if there is a mutual understanding of the tone of voice and what topics will be covered, then Marketing likely won’t need to approve each individual blog post.
Taking a slightly different approach lies in preparation.
15. CRO
Conversion rate optimization can make companies a lot of money by increasing the number of people who click on the “buy” button. However, this increase comes at a cost, which can include the need for higher quality main and supplementary content, and a balance between conversion rate optimization and other company goals.
This is about giving customers what they want so that businesses can get what they need. According to Mark House, Program Manager at Bibby Financial Services, it’s a science, and experts usually do a better job at achieving the goals that both customers and businesses have.
16. Data
Figuring out what sort of content is needed in your market isn’t complicated, but you have to base your content planning on data
I’m not opposed to using a whiteboard, but brainstorming, guessing, or assuming what your website’s most valuable content should be is not a great way to start.
James Skinner, Head of Digital IT at Dyson Ltd, reveals that this is a definite high priority area for his money.
Two sins Skinner has seen many times:
- No data on which to base decisions
- Ignoring data when making decisions
“I believe that A/B testing is very important, but it is often only focused on things like changing functionality and visuals, like button colors. I think it is more important to test different content approaches. However, it is one thing to come up with content ideas, and it is another thing entirely to prove that those ideas are valuable.”
17. Money
Some companies have money for paid search, display ads, retargeting, social media, agencies, etc., but don’t spend it. This is strange because spending even a small amount of money on any of these things can improve the quality of a website’s content and ROI.
18. Talent
There is a set of skills necessary to make this work, as well as a team who is willing to invest in your goals.
- Data munchers who find the gaps and opportunities.
- Brief writers that make sure what the writers get is going to result in amazing content coming back.
- Those that work on and around the CMS: Developers, design, SEO, CRO or sometimes one or a few multi-skilled individuals.
- Leadership talent, who can champion the idea of what is needed, and of course get it done, removing barriers if they get in the way.
It is crucial that everyone works as a team, Skinner says. The biggest obstacle is often the lack of agreement on goals and the benefits of working together. This is not only a challenge for content, but a wider issue in the digital world.
No matter how good you are currently, you will always need to acquire new skills and experience to improve.
19. Timing
This occurs when the most important project in the business is taking up all of the resources, so other projects that are necessary take priority. This means that the project that should always be the most important becomes a mid-level to-do.
House believes that timing is the most important factor in success and that data and customer needs are also very important. If you are debating timing, it means you are aware of the customer need. If you are not debating timing, you are not quite there with the customer need.
20. Perception
There is a lot of content that is not very good that is published by companies that should do better. This is often because these companies think that if something is not broken, it does not need to be fixed. In my opinion, the people in charge of finances would disagree with this way of thinking if they knew how much of a return on investment there could be from making a change.
Skinner believes that there is a general need for digital education in businesses that might be termed “traditional”. He says that even five years ago, their web ambition was not much more than having a decent online brochure. Now they are investing huge sums in transforming their digital capability, and part of that is educating the senior team in what is possible.
In this excerpt, House argues that it is important for companies to invest money wisely, and that employees should treat business money as if it is their own. He goes on to say that if employees don’t understand why they are doing something, they should make it their business to find out.