As an Inbound Marketer, you may have tons of great content to share, but if you do not connect with your audience, it can all go to waste. It’s like being on Skype conference with someone and having something crucial to bring across but there is some connection problem and you can’t hear the other person clearly. No matter how hard you try to explain, your message just won’t get through.
By understanding what stands in the way of connecting with your readers, you can make small adjustments that will lead you to more fruitful connections. There are occasions when you invest time and effort into content creations and you still find yourself wondering where are all the leads? Here are 5 common reasons many Inbound Marketers fail to connect.
Table of Contents
5 Pitfalls of an Inbound Marketer
1. The audience does not feel involved
Creating a rapport with your audience and helping them feel involved in the delivery of your content can be most rewarding. What are the effective strategies for making the audience feel fully involved in your content? To engage an audience fully, apart from the interesting and relevant content, the tone of the blog needs to be purposeful and staged as if it is a direct conversation between two interested parties. People buy into what they help create, so in content marketing, it pays to make them part of the content creation. How? By asking questions. Engage your audience from time to time on different social media outlets. Listen to them. Involve them in your stories.
2. The Inbound Marketer has not done enough research
The Inbound Marketer has not done the research necessary to meet the audience’s expectation. Many a time, content marketers assert what they want to tell the world rather than what the audience needs to hear. That a proven recipe for disconnection. Understand the market prior to any marketing. Content marketers need to do market research into who their audience and prospects will be in order to find out what makes them tick.
3. No resonation. No Vibe.
The Law of Attraction is all about resonance, not attraction. You will resonate with certain people, experiences, situations and perspectives. For content marketing, this is what Seth Godin refers to as take your time to tell a story that resonates. “Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.” Most content creators, whether they be writers, bloggers or artists, want to have their work seen and appreciated. Successful online marketers take the time to earn attention, build trust and turn it into a profit. Having a good content that resonates is the number one way for it to go viral.
4. The Inbound Marketer does not come out with a bang and missing big picture
You only have less than 30 seconds before your audience realizes whether or not they want to hear/view/read more. Make sure you make those 30 seconds count.
I am totally agreeable to Corey Eridon’s (@Corey_bos) point of view on how to fail on content marketing by missing the big pictures.
“Content marketers are focused on the content creation process; inbound marketers look at how that content fits into the larger inbound marketing strategy. An inbound marketing strategy will set the standards by which a piece of content is measured, monitor performance, and iterate on successes and failures. Is one of your ebooks bringing in leads with an incredibly high conversion rate? If you’re a content marketer, you might not know the answer to that. If you’re an inbound marketer, you’re already promoting it more and fixing the poorer performing assets to emulate what the ebook is doing right.”
5. Audiences are not sold on why they should listen
Your profile and your introduction should clearly show how the audience will benefit from your content. ‘What’s in it for me?’. If you are not giving the audience the value that people can gain by reading your blog or following your tweets, they will not be convinced and take the next step to connect. In other words, they don’t feel there’s a need. As a good inbound marketer, one of the challenges is to stay afresh and find ways to make your content fresh for your audience.
Be Yourself.
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching.
Relevant Content Is Still King
In the age of the Internet and social media, information has never been more easily accessible and creating great content just isn’t good enough, what really matters is – can you connect?
Perhaps you have been making some of the above-mentioned mistakes (I did it many times :P). There are many other reasons Inbound Marketers fail to connect with their audiences. Which ones can you think of? Please kindly leave your comment below.