There are many who claim to know the secrets of content marketing. I’ll tell you one thing that is not a secret, but very few people understand how important it is: keep your promises.
When a business begins the process of launching a content marketing plan one of the key things they need to do is to find a way to not just attract readers, but to entice them to return again and again. There are all sorts of ways of reminding readers: you can email them, tweet at them, post on their Facebook walls, and send up smoke signals. Most of these reminders will get ignored.
Verify this for yourself: what reminders do you personally ignore for all of the things that you’ve signed up for?
Do the simpler thing: promise them that you’ll publish something new every day (or every day Monday through Friday) and keep your promise. If readers find what you do compelling they’ll develop the habit of visiting and reading what’s new. They won’t need a reminder.
But break your promise, forget to publish something today, and you’ll weaken that bond. They may check back tomorrow, but if you don’t publish again that day, you’re training them to not come back.
Trust me: writing every day, without missing a day, will train them to keep coming back.
When I launched this site in 2009 I made a simple promise: I’ll publish something new every day, five days a week. Because of that promise I’ve developed a wide readership. A significant percentage of them return every day to read what’s new. And they share what they read with others and quickly discover the kept promise as well. I do use social media to spread the word, but I find that most of my regular readers find their way back to my site on their own.
It’s difficult to develop and publish new material that frequently, but it’s a very effective marketing technique.
There’s your secret: promise your readers something new tomorrow, and then tomorrow, keep that promise.
Successful Content Marketing: Keep Your Promises by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.