How has content marketing changed over the years?

Discussions
#1

About 8 years ago I got into internet marketing. After about a year in I fell into programming. I contracted, got a full-time job, and am now back to contracting.

I used to frequent WarriorForum back then, which I found tonnes of great content on.

I’m now back contracting and in the middle of my first product, and am approaching a place where I need to pass over the torch to marketing. Due to bootstrapping, my main method will be content marketing, but I feel like I’m running on old principles and wondering how or if things have changed, and where to go now for this kind of information?

#2

Content marketing hasn’t changed.

It’s just a lot more people are doing it.

What this ultimately means is that you have to work 10x harder now to grab people’s attention using content marketing because a.) attention spans are officially lower than a Gold fish b.) 5 million blog posts launched every day c.) if you don’t add value, people wont engage your content, which means Google will know about it via their Rankbrain algorithm, which means effectively you’ll never rank.

Gone are the days you could use Adwords Keyword Planner, find low competition - high volume terms, and create a “good” blog post and rank for it.

To rank now for anything that has even a semblance of relative competitiveness you really have to kick ass with your content.

#3

Also you are usually fighting against huge budgets unless it’s a really small niche. For them it’s all about spamming “meh” articles to domains with high authority.

Kind of demotivating to be honest…

#4

@foti-panagio you seem to be talking more about search engine marketing? I’m thinking more along the lines of any kind of content. For example, QA sites and Facebook groups, etc,

@ivm cheers for the link! I think that’s exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Yeh, does seem demotivating. If I can’t even get there with great content then what’s the point in producing great content? I’m hoping there is still a solid place in most markets for such standard of quality.

#5

Really depends on a market. I recently tried to promote a finance-related article and completely failed. Finance turned out to be a crazy competitive industry (well, it’s obvious in the hindsight), so all the medium-to-big sites do not accept any kind of 3rd party content.

That’s why there’s a trend to find audience and gather emails before starting development. If you can’t reach anyone in a couple of weeks, spending months on actually building the product is futile.

#6

Good point.

I’m all for building a pre-launch list, but I’m at a point in my bootstrap career where I’m done approaching people without a finished product. I’ve flitted from project to project and the most important thing for me at the moment is finishing an MVP. I’ve already done ample research, can reach customers (I am also a customer), and can afford to waste the time if it all goes nowhere.

After that I’ll change my strategy as necessary and go back to the drawing board if need be.

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#7

Hi,

Yes, I feel your pain. Content marketing can be tough these days – there is a lot of competition and you have to not only reach your readers but also get and maintain their attention. No easy task. I suggest experimenting with different growth channels – content marketing being only one of them – and seeing what gets you traction.

I helped one company write quality articles targeted at keywords and this has proved a useful growth channel for them – probably because these articles are genuinely useful and their customers only look for their product once they need it. They don’t impulse buy. However, using social media ads has been a complete dud. So you need to find what works for you – and don’t waste money on any one channel until you know.

I’ve just finished my ebook on content strategy for startups. It might help? You’re welcome to a free copy in exchange for feedback. Just send me an email: hannah.adcock@gmail.com.

#8

One more good discussion of the modern state of blogging.

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