Did You (also) Believe these Myths about Content Marketing?

Content marketing allows businesses to connect with prospects and customers. Content marketing is hot and buzzing in the marketing world. Everyone is talking about content marketing. Content marketing is the gasoline for your social media marketing efforts ----Arrrrghh…you have heard all of this but still we all do know that it’s a fairly new phenomenon and it’s quite natural that there are quite a few misconceptions around content marketing – how to do it, what makes it more effective and what are the best practices.

At our agency, Midas Touch, we work with several businesses, in various industry verticals, and assist them with their content marketing efforts. Through our learning of last few years, we thought of listing some common myths about Content Marketing and also provide some rational explanation around those.

Myth 1: Blogs are the only ‘valid’ form of content

Undoubtedly, blogs are important. They can definitely serve as backbone to your content marketing strategy. Blogs are also excellent medium to communicate with your target audience. But don’t commit the mistake of thinking of blogs as only valid form of content. 

Don’t forget to incorporate other equally important forms of content in your strategy. These could include – eNewsletters, videos, case studies, eBooks, whitepapers, infographics, podcasts, webinar recordings or even memes! Such nuggets of content can be very effective in reaching out to your target audience through various social media platforms.

Myth 2: Anyone can write, so anybody can handle content marketing

Finding good writers is key to your content marketing strategy. Don’t go for the lowest

bidder because low cost can have a serious impact on quality. Good quality content writing requires not only language skills but also business senses, creativity and domain understanding.

Myth 3: Content marketing is same as SEO or Social Media

SEO used to be heavily dependent on the content aka keywords. But not anymore. Now search engines have started giving heavy importance to answers to specific questions and therefore the quality and depth of the content is more important than keyword stuffing. Undoubtedly, high quality content will definitely help in the organic searches for your website but don’t base your content marketing strategy based on SEO requirements. Similarly, social media should be used as a tool to disseminate the content to right target audience and remember, if you don’t have content, you won’t be able to share anything on social media. 

Myth 4: Content Marketing does not have any direct RoI

Depends on your definition of RoI. Good quality content is a very effective way to engage with your target audience. Conversations are also valid Return on the Investment of sharing the content. You get more brand awareness, customer connection, customer retention, and customer loyalty. And these, and more such factors, are not quantifiable in numbers and therefore can be construed as “no ROI”.  Every piece of content is different and based on the intent. The content which is written for sharing and commenting cannot be used for lead generation – that’s a grossly wrong use of content.

Myth 5: Content marketing is about Your Products/ Services

In fact, it is NOT about your products and services. Your brochure and other collateral is not content marketing. Well, content marketing has to be about and related to your business but it cannot be 100% about your business – then you are doing injustice in the name of content marketing. Today, people are searching for solutions to their problems. If your content offers them that, then you have a winner in hand. Try to provide educational and thought leadership content which will establish you as expert in your field and establish your image of a trusted partner.

Did I miss any? Drop a comment and I will include it in this article – with credits to you! :-)