Want Content Success? Don’t Read This Article.
How to Growing a Content Marketing Sapling?
Yes, we all want our businesses to grow and a chance to savor the real joy of success. Every organization sets out in advertising, marketing and a sales programs to build in success but sadly they give up before the fruits of their labor become evident.
This is exactly where the rubber meets the road, the two year mark. I know it seems like an eternity, but if your serious about succeeding then read on or cruise on over to Junta42.com and check Joe Pulizzi’s article: ”Create Content that Sleeps, Creeps and Leaps,” it’s very thought provoking read.
I had a great conversation today with Dr. Sandra Bauman from Bauman Research about start-up companies. She shared with me the idea about “sleeps, creeps and leaps.” In the first year of a business launch, the brand sleeps. In year two, you start to see the company creep toward success. But it’s in the third year that the business leaps and really begins to grow. Fascinating concept. The same principle can be applied toward corporate content marketing.
As the corporate content program starts (let’s say with a blog, white paper,enewsletter strategy), success is difficult to find. Not much of the right traffic, not many tangible results. This is a good reason why most corporate blogs die within three months.
It’s only after months and months, possibly a year of time before you start to see real engagement. Because you have kept your content promise, you now start to see people sharing your content, signing up for your RSS feed, and linking to your great content. Google starts to pick up on this and your organic search engine results start to pick up.
Then, after well more than a year, the real magic happens. You become the thought leader. A trusted advisor for your industry. People start to look to you for guidance in the industry. It’s in this time period, that you start to see quantifiable business returns as a result of your content.
Yes, it could happen sooner, and it could also take longer, but the key issue here is this - content consistency.
The picture with Joe’s post is perfect, think of content marketing and custom publishing like growing a giant oak tree in your front yard from a sapling. It takes time, patient, care and planning. So don’t fret when you or your organization feels like nothing is happening, keep watering and fertilizing. Though please don’t over-water, give your powerful content story the time to grow in the sunshine of the online world, using the leverage of the internet and all your creative concepts juices.
Stella says, my green thumb is really hurting with all these different content trees growing but my mind is satisfied with the creative fertilizer. Better buy a trimmer.
Thanks Junta Joe, great write and the great oak in your front yard must be doing very well. Keep up the good work.
