If everyone is honest with themselves, then they’ll admit that at one point or another, their content marketing strategies have sucked. Sometimes, it can be due to the content itself, while other cases may put the blame on the marketing side of things. Whichever may be at fault, the end result is the same: poor reception, minimal traffic, terrible return on investment and a lackluster desire to continue to try. Thankfully, all is never lost, and you may just need to look at a few different strategies to inject new life into your approach. For those who are currently struggling and can admit that their content marketing sucks at the moment, we’ve put together a summary of three different tactics you can try to boost potential and increase your likelihood of success.

You’re Not Planning

When you have a great plan in place and understand what needs to be done on a day-by-day basis, then there is very little that can stop you. If you have a website, existing content and feel like you can wing it when it comes to content marketing success, then you have a problem. The very best in the business have comprehensive plans for their content and marketing elements that outlines not just what they’ll be doing tomorrow, but next week, next month and even next year. Sure, things can change and new opportunities may suddenly present themselves, but a lack of planning or foundation for what you intend to do in the future is a key component of why so many content marketing strategies suck.

You’re Not Listening

When it comes to pinging for SEO, we may find ourselves easily entrapped in the notion that content has to be optimized perfectly or built for machines. Another major issue can be how you are crafting the content with respect to your goals: if you are overtly promoting a product or trying to sell yourself in your social media updates or blog posts too much, then they are bound to fail. Quite frankly, people do not want to know about you or the product – they want to learn about something unknown and exciting, or find information that solves a particular problem. It is important to combine all of these elements into something of value, but make sure you are listening to the needs of your readers, rather than polishing your own ego or overselling.

You’re Not Consistent

Content marketing requires a dynamic yet planned approach, as well as responding to the needs and desires of potential customers, readers and viewers, but it also needs to be done consistently. Particularly common with social media, many people who wind up pinging for SEO will focus on keyword management and other minutiae while forgetting to update their content offerings as frequently as possible. Social media updates need to be provided at least one – if not several – times per day, while blog posts and other forms of content should be created and deployed no less than once every few days. A smaller niche may be able to spread out content, but evergreen content marketing in particular requires an active presence in order to avoid falling into the doldrums.