We know there are lots of misconceptions around marketing! It’s an exciting field, but not all advice will be relevant to you and your business. Today, we’re sharing some of the most common expectations our clients have around their marketing, and comparing them with the reality we’ve observed over our years of marketing experience.
Let us know if you found this one handy, folks!
Key takeaways:
- Why going viral or posting daily won’t guarantee success.
- The real factors that make content marketing work over time.
- How to create strategic, sustainable content that delivers results.
Expectation: Going viral is great for my business
Reality: Is it though?
So many clients come to us saying that they want to go viral on their favourite social media platform. We understand! Lots of eyes on your content can feel rewarding, versus spending multiple hours creating with very little engagement.
However… Going viral isn’t the “be all and end all”! In fact, there are some downsides to going viral that you might want to consider:
Lots of views on one piece of content might not mean lots of leads coming straight to your inbox.
Sometimes, content goes viral that has nothing to do with your work, and none of those watchers are actually interested in what you do.
There can be pressure! After something does well, it’s common to feel paralysis and fear that your next post won’t do as great.
Instead, what are the benefits of never going viral? 🤔
- Slow but sustainable growth. You might not blow up as fast, but the people who follow you are loyal and invested in what you do, because they’re not just following the “hype”.
- Higher engagement. A smaller audience can be much more invested in what you have to say and more likely to comment because your content feels human, rather than like they are just one in thousands.
- You don’t dilute the quality of your following. Instead, everybody who is there is with you because they liked your content when you were a smaller account, not because they were sucked in by your numbers.
Expectation: Posting daily will move my business forward
Reality: It can burn you out, and not every platform needs it
“But how often do we post?” is one of the most common questions we get asked at The Brady Creative, and some people are surprised that our answer isn’t “Every single day!”
Nope, instead, we say that quality is better than quantity.
It’s better to post content a manageable number of times a week, at the highest possible standard, rather than posting daily for a few weeks and running out of content mojo.
Plus, many platforms don’t expect you to post daily! We’ve heard through our industry insiders that posting daily isn’t important to Instagram’s algorithms at the moment, great news for many of us.
Instead, work out what is sustainable for you and do it well – there are no medals for marketing burnout!!
Expectation: Blogs are good for SEO
Reality: Only with a strategy behind them
You might have heard lots of people telling you that blogging is amazing for SEO!
Amazing, you might be thinking, I’ll chuck up a post and I’ll be on page 1 of Google in no time!
The truth is though that not just any blog content is good for SEO. Without a little intention behind them, you might not get the results you are looking for!
The biggest SEO lessons to take away from this are:
1. SEO is about demonstrating you are trustworthy and useful to a search engine’s users. Google isn’t trying to help you as a business writing blogs – it’s trying to connect its users with the most valuable, relevant content possible.
2. SEO strategies, including strategic blog content, take time. You can’t get to page 1 overnight – Google needs to see lots of evidence of your trustworthiness over a long period of time.
3. Consistency matters. Yes, you do need a lot of blog posts to make an impact, but if you publish 50 posts on one day and then none the rest of the year, you aren’t showing Google that you post consistently and that’s something that Google takes into consideration when checking out your site.
Expectation: B2B content won’t do well if it’s too personal
Reality: Personal content is the future
So many of our B2B clients fall into the trap of posting “professional” content only. They share posts about what they do. They share links about their services. They might post the odd testimonial here and there.
These are okay, but… they’re boring. There’s nothing to really hook in a new viewer and get them invested in you as a business! Worst still, “professional” content isn’t memorable. Your audience should be able to recognise your content even without seeing your name and logo – and if you are posting dry, flavourless corporate content they’re never going to remember you.
Instead, personal content continues to do better – so why not 👇🏼
🙋🏽🙋🏻🙋🏼🙋🏻 Introduce us to your team
😂 Tell us a funny story from work
📸 Show a photo from BTS
🗣 Share the background of why you do what you do, and how you got started
We promise folks, your personal content will do so much better than your “corporate” vibes any day of the week!
Do you have any more questions about content marketing? We want to help! Ping us your questions at hello@thebradycreative.co.uk or shoot us a DM on LinkedIn 💙
