4 things I wish I knew when I started content marketing

I’m several years into my content marketing career, and I’ve had my fair share of struggles, confusion, and frustration.

I have been a lifelong writer and even started my college career in the journalism space, but content marketing is a whole different beast. It’s equal parts creativity and strategy, and finding that balance isn’t always easy.

I learned how to create content that not only looks and sounds great but also leads to great results by trying and failing. But sometimes I wish I could go back in time and give myself a few pieces of advice so that I wouldn’t have had to fail so many times.

And while I can’t get in a time machine, I can share those tips with aspiring content marketers like you, to give you a leg up in your career.

So here we go…

📉 Bad results aren’t always bad

There’s the whole “you learn by failing” mantra, and although that’s definitely true, that’s not exactly what I’m talking about here.

One thing I learned about content marketing is that results can take time. And sometimes things blow up in popularity at random.

There have been so many times where I’ll post something — whether it’s a blog post, an eBook, a tiktok, a LinkedIn post — and it’s crickets for the first several weeks. But then all of a sudden, it picks up some SEO juice and it’s getting tons of views.

Sometimes this doesn’t happen organically, though, and that’s okay. That still doesn’t mean it’s a failure.

Let’s say you create a new eBook and you’re so excited to put it out into the world. You launch it, plaster it all over social media, send out an email blast, and wait for the results to come in. This initial push may yield absolutely nothing.

But these results could be a product of a variety of things from bad timing to bad luck. You could send out the exact same email again, or try a different subject line. Or create a little promo video for social. You’d be surprised how many times something that initially flopped performs well after a second-push promo.

In summary: Patience and tracking are crucial. Initial failure doesn’t mean final failure.

☁ There’s a limit to inspiration

No one’s great ideas are formed in a vacuum. Whether we’re consciously doing it or not, we’re always gathering inspiration from different places in our lives. That’s completely normal.

BUT

Sometimes I have a tendency to go a little overboard in my inspiration seshes.

I get caught in in looking at what other people are doing sometimes that it can (subtly or drastically) impact my ability to be original and innovative in my thinking.

And this doesn’t mean that it will lead to idea theft. But it can mess up your gauge for a good idea.

You may start thinking within the confines of all of the ideas you’re seeing. It can be hard to go down the rabbithole of all of these great ideas and emerge from it with your own idea that is completely unique. Often, you end up with a watered-down mashup of a couple of other examples you found.

This is not advice to not look to other similar campaigns for advice. I would just limit it.

Instead, dig into some unusual sources of inspiration. If you’re looking for inspiration for a social campaign, for example, don’t limit yourself to looking at social campaigns. Check out some blog posts, magazines, YouTube videos, and even a novel, to find bits and pieces of ideas that you can form together into your own, unique idea.

💚 Empathy, not aesthetics

I think that as a content marketer, I often get lured in by the world of “content creation.” These communities on TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram are all about the aesthetics. You want to make content that looks, sounds, and feels great.

But content marketing isn’t just content creation. You’re not creating content for the sake of creating it. You’re creating it to reach a specific goal.

And that’s why empathy is such a crucial piece of the puzzle. The best content marketing is all about striking the perfect chord with your audience.

You can create the best, most well-designed, well-written piece of content, but it’s useless if it’s not grounded in something that the audience you’re trying to reach cares about. Even going viral doesn’t matter if you’re only getting eyes from the wrong audience.

Whenever you’re creating content, you absolutely want the final product to look beautiful and polished. But that is secondary to the strategy that you have behind it.

😑 Good results are boring

It feels good for all your metrics to be in the green. We all love that sweet, sweet hit of dopamine when your Google rankings jump, when you get an influx of subscribers, when you have a record number of attendees on your webinar.

But as they say, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. No matter how incredible your content marketing strategy is, there’s always room for improvement.

It’s really important to seek out areas where you’re not doing so well, even if all of your current KPIs are poppin’. If areas where you’re lagging behind aren’t immediately apparent, you need to look into adding some new metrics to your reporting.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t celebrate your wins. Or that the positive results don’t matter. Great results are extremely useful in that they tell you what to keep doing. But I just think it’s equally as important to seek out areas that are holding you back, too.

BONUS: As a bonus piece of advice for my past self (as well as my current self because I can always use a reminder) is to triple-proofread your work.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent hours creating incredible content, between strategy, outlining, drafting, etc., and by the end I’m equal parts exhausted and excited to release it. So I’ll do a quick skim and send it off to the universe.

Big mistake every time.

When I do this, more often than not, I’ll find some error, whether it’s a typo, a broken link, an “[embed video]” where an actual video should be embedded. It’s not worth the small amount of time you’ll save. Step away and come back to proofread later. And even have someone else give it a look with a fresh set of eyes if you can.