Welcome to “The Mailbag” a place where we take the best emails and questions that we receive each day about Digital, Social, Branding and Content Marketing and we share our thoughts to help Small and Medium Businesses build stronger online brands.
Question: Midway through the year last year our company made a commitment to content marketing and blogging. We have posted one new article every week but we aren’t finding much traction (traffic). What should we do? Some of our management want to stop blogging altogether.
If after just six months you are already pulling the plug (or considering it) I would say that isn’t much of a commitment. 😀
Joking aside, I definitely understand where you are coming from. After working hard to come up with a topic every week, creating the content, editing and publishing, it can become a little bit disheartening if there isn’t a sense of a return on the investment.
Before you throw in the white towel, I suggest that you take a few minutes and answer the following questions.
- When you say “Not much traction” what does that mean?
- What is your publishing strategy? Beyond just once a week when are publishing?
- How is the content being distributed?
- Is the content compelling?
Providing further context on the questions above.
I think it is funny how some businesses say not much traction. While I know everyone wants to come up with a viral piece of content, sometimes not much can be plenty. Maybe you only have 30 or 40 readers a day, but if they are potential customers that can far outweigh the benefit of a large number of readers that can’t take action. Make sure to use analytics such as Google Anaytics or similar to better understand who is reading your content from the web. Especially before determining traffic isn’t good.
It may seem a bit silly to suggest that timing your publishing matters, but for some sites that are heavily business focused (for instance) publishing on Friday is a bad idea. Many times on Friday traffic may diminish as people head off for the weekend and then on Monday a drove of new content comes out. I always recommend publishing earlier in the week, especially if you are only going to publish one piece.
The distribution of content is a big topic and I talk a lot about this on the site. Check this piece out for a deep dive. In short, just writing and publishing isn’t enough. Businesses need to work on building their audience and then sharing content where their audience is. I am shocked at how many companies think people will “Just sort of find” their content.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, with so much content out their and available, making sure your content is compelling is key. With 347 blogs being posted every minute, why should anyone click on yours? Really…ask yourself this? Now, that doesn’t mean your content needs to be “Epic” as some may say, this just means the content needs to be truly useful. Think answering questions, teaching new ideas and concepts or simplifying something that is widely known. With so many options for consumption, just make sure it isn’t same ole’, same ole’ as it will be very hard to build an audience that way.
Traffic is sometimes overrated and in the end content should be about building trust and connecting brands to their consumers. Focus on what matters and stay committed and the payoff will be there…Happy Marketing!
Do you have a question for “The Mailbag?” Click Here to submit your question and have it featured in an upcoming Mailbag.