The rise of content marketing is one of the biggest marketing trends in recent memory. Content marketing itself isn’t really new — businesses have been using “content” to tell their stories and attract new customers since modern marketing and advertising first started taking shape over a century ago.
But the explosion of the Internet and search engine optimization (SEO) over the past two decades has really brought content marketing to the forefront. Achieving any kind of lasting SEO success requires consistent creation and distribution of high-quality, non-promotional online content.
Top 10 Challenges
As a full-time freelance writer — or “content creator,” using today’s verbiage — I try to stay on top of the latest trends and developments in the world of content marketing. So a recent Facebook post asking “What’s your biggest challenge with content?” caught my attention.
ClearVoice, a content management platform, conducted a survey in which they asked 1,000 content marketers what was their biggest content marketing challenge. Here are the top 10 responses:
- Finding enough time to manage the program.
- Assuring content quality.
- Creating the content itself.
- Scaling the content.
- Generating content ideas.
- Acquiring content creation talent.
- Distributing content.
- Devising content strategy.
- Engaging with audiences.
- Publishing content consistently.
Digging Deeper Into the Data
It’s not too surprising that time is the biggest challenge faced by content marketers. Creating and managing a successful content marketing program is a time-consuming task, to be sure.
Specific time-related challenges listed by marketers included having enough time to curate, create, research, develop and write content. Also mentioned was having enough time to handle all the phases of a content marketing program and take a nascent content strategy “from zero to 60 in less than a year,” as one respondent put it.
However, the authors of the report point out that the challenge of “time” goes beyond just having enough hours in the day or week to manage a content marketing program. When you dig deeper, time challenges really have to do with organization, prioritization and focus, the authors assert.
If “time” is a big content marketing challenge for your firm, the authors recommend stepping back and conducting a thorough review of your content strategy — or maybe even your overall approach to time management.
Balancing Creativity and Quality
When it comes to the content itself, “creativity” and “quality” were mentioned as specific challenges by many of the marketers who were surveyed. These were some of their verbatim comments:
- “Making it feel genuine”
- “Getting creative with it”
- “Storytelling in a compelling way”
- “Making abstract ideas tangible”
- “Being clear and concise”
According to the report authors, “Having the stamina to generate ideas and produce compelling content — again and again — was a prevalent challenge” for the marketers who responded to the survey.
Credibility Also Critical
Ensuring a high degree of credibility is another challenge that was consistently mentioned by the marketers who responded to the survey. Specifically, they worry about whether the content they’re creating is “good enough” and whether audiences “trust us” or not.
The full ClearVoice report contains a lot more insightful details that might help you meet some of the content marketing challenges your organization is facing. Click here to access it for free.