Many business owners are not happy with their content marketing. The usual complaints are that the content doesn’t get enough readers, or that it doesn’t generate enough sales.

Emails are unopened, Facebook pages don’t attract many followers, the YouTube video is seen by lot less people than the one featuring the surfing cat. If this sounds like you, let’s look at why it might be the case.

Is your content different?

To find out why your content marketing is not as effective as it could be, the first question to ask is “how does my content differ from other stuff out there?” Businesses that sell products often repurpose content provided by the manufacturers of the goods that they sell. To avoid being penalized for writing duplicate content, they rephrase it.

Having some rewritten, non-original content is not necessarily bad and has its place. Fresh original content that speaks to what your customers care about can distinguish a business, helping its content become noticed and rise above that of its competitors.

How to make content different

A large book could be written about how to make content different, but there are three pointers to creating great content:

• Audience – you need to know your audience and what they care about
• Stories – people love stories that they can relate to, or that appeal to their emotions
• Subject matter – Google Trends, Twitter and other tools can be used to find trends, the hot topics that people are talking about. Create blog posts and articles about these trends if appropriate to your business sector.

All in all, you want your readers to long to read your next post or article.

Trust the experts

Business owners may be experts on running their business, but they or their employees are unlikely to be experts on content marketing. This means that often it is best to hire expert content marketers like those here at Pressroom.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.