If you are delving into the world of content marketing for the first time, it can be easy to get caught up in the promise of “too good to be true” results. Content marketing is a powerful tool for driving revenue, but it doesn’t happen overnight and creating valuable content is not a standalone strategy. We’re here to break down yet another marketing myth – that content marketing doesn’t require playing the long game. 

Poor Content Doesn’t Drive Anything But Customers in the Direction of Your Competitor

If you invest in empty promises and start rapid fire publishing poor content, you’re going to find yourself frustrated sooner down the road than later. By now, most business owners know that quality over quantity is key when it comes to a successful content marketing strategy. However, another marketing myth is that finding great content writers is easy and inexpensive (a lesson many companies learn the hard way). Boring, spammy, uninformative or lackluster content is not going to increase your reach, it’s going to damage your reputation. Once you find great writers, put them to work on crafting informative, engaging and original content – but don’t stop there.

Spend Just as Much Time Promoting Quality Content as You Do Creating It

If you want your content to work for you rather than against you, it is absolutely critical that you help promote it post-publishing. Quality content will achieve more organic reach, which will improve your rankings in time, but more effort is necessary if you want to speed up the rate at which it increases your revenue. If you spend just as much time promoting your content as you did creating it, you vastly increase the chances that your target audience will take notice, take interest, trust you and come back for more. But you have to put it in front of them.

Your Not-so-Secret Content Marketing Weapon: Social Media and Advertising Dollars

If you are asking yourself, “How am I supposed to promote my content?” then we’ll fill you in on a little not-so-secret – social media. After publishing a great business blog or newsletter, you should be promoting that content on the social platform for which you’ve chosen to actively build a strong online presence, be it Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest or otherwise. However, building a strong business presence online isn’t something that happens overnight either. It is wise to invest in social advertising to promote your business page early on to inspire an initial surge of traffic/likes that will help you build a solid social foundation for promoting your content in the future.

Don’t Be Afraid to Share, Share, Share Your Content!

In most cases, if you want your content to drive speedy results, you’re going to have to invest in social advertising. But you can help the process along by always being sure to do the following:

• Invite your friends to like/follow your business page on social media
• Share quality business content from your personal profile (LinkedIn, FB, etc) as well
• Don’t be afraid to ask that your friends share your business post
• Target that list of email subscribers that haven’t heard from you in awhile
• Pay for a sponsored ad or boosted post to control exactly who you are targeting and what their demographic is, etc.
• Don’t make these 7 common SEO mistakes

If you or your in-house marketing team has no idea how to utilize social media or advertising to maximize the reach of your content, it may be time to outsource these responsibilities to someone who does. If you think that in-house marketing saves you time and money, check out another common marketing myth debunked.