Content Marketing is Mostly a Waste of Time

What kind of marketing tactic costs nothing to do, scales and spreads itself bringing you inbound enquiries over time?

Well, that sounds like content marketing.

This was the answer to a question I asked myself, “What would be the best marketing skill of all to develop?” as a marketing freelancer (now focused on Meta Lead Advertising) looking to bring in work over time.

I had hoped this could become a new service offering that I could master for myself and my clients.

And content marketing seems relatively simple, reading the advice of high performers like Justin Welsh and Nicolas Cole (I’m a fan of both, btw). Just pump out a high volume of work, see what works, refine and repeat.

Taking Action

Following this, I made 40+ podcast episodes and 68 long-form articles over 18 months, which were promoted across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Indiehackers, Reddit, Medium, etc.

My little podcast was listened to thousands of times and articles the same.

Random acts of publishing.

Sitting back, I assumed it would eventually pay off with even a trickle of emails, replies, comments etc.

The Results

But an audience didn’t materialize.

People read and listened but they didn’t respond with likes or comments.

Despite spending hours planning, writing, recording and editing pieces, they weren’t often shared beyond a few hit podcast episodes.

I think for the 1.5 years of my podcasting efforts there was single inbound enquiry.

Content Promotion

Naturally, beyond improving the content, I tried to fix this by pushing harder with promotion. I pumped my LinkedIn, Twitter feeds, Slack posts, groups, etc with shared links.

But it didn’t make a difference.

While the actual content journey itself was fun, embarrassingly, in reality very few people wanted to be part of my ‘audience’.

Thankfully but sadly, it’s not just been my experience it seems. Content overally is a tough game:

• A 2022 survey by the Content Marketing Institute itself found that “72% of marketing professionals today describe their content marketing campaigns as falling between flat-out ineffective and only mildly effective.” (Source)

• In fact, per eMarketer/Goldman Sachs in 2023, only 4% of content creators make more than 100k in revenue (Source). But to be fair, that’s a pretty high bar… 🤔

Going Beyond Transactional Content

Then my friend shared with me a point of view that taught me where I went wrong:

It is better to have 500 people who know (and like you) than 50,000 people who follow you for memes.

That was it. Content production by itself is just motion.

To be effective, content has to go beyond an information transaction and instead build that know, like and trust factor.

Content marketing in this instance is not about volume of articles or reach. It’s a digitsed networking engine.

This frame change means focusing less on output and more on creating pieces that are relevant to a target reader but also help build a strong connection to myself.

That means including myself into the work, not just pumping out anything I think could be useful.

For example:

• I created a lot of marketing interview podcast episodes with the hope that guests would share the work, too (News: They usually didn’t). I should have made solo episodes on my topic of expertise.

• I needed to focus on topics that naturally feature yours truly and my topics of expertise. Rather than publish so broadly, I.e. general marketing content.

• Lean more into connection-building formats like video over text. (Note: This is one reason I made a YouTube channel).

Some actual engagement on YouTube.

• Included more photo or visual representations of myself. In action 😏, potentially to connect the reader with the writer.

• Be honest with myself about when I’m publishing as a hobby (like this article) and when there is a commercial purpose to avoid wasting time.

Thinking aloud, this is probably why:

• We remember more personable, emotive writers — even if we don’t remember what we learned from them.

• Nobody honestly remembers the last PDF lead magnet they downloaded.

• I can’t name a single HubSpot blog author 😂 despite them successfully dominating half the web...

Especially now, there is so much AI-generated content that even recognizing an author can be hard.

And reading around after the fact, I find the view is well understood for podcasts, as explained by Jason Cercone.

I think content is still a powerful marketing tactic but I’ve learned that it has to be done in the right way:

Focused on connecting oneself with the reader through relevant topics with a clear personal connection.

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P.S. If you to sidestep the content marketing journey and get directly to the email signups and leads part with Meta ads, feel free to send me a message.