Is your content marketing strategy succeeding?

Content marketing can be a powerful tool – but if your campaign isn’t attracting views, it’s not doing its job

Content marketing – a strategy based on producing valuable, relevant content to attract a consistent audience – can be a boon for mortgage originators. If you’re producing relevant content on a blog or social media, you can keep people coming back to your site.

But how do you know if your content strategy is working? Writing for Forbes, marketing expert Jayson DeMers recently listed six signs that might indicate that your content marketing strategy is failing.
  1. You haven’t defined success. According to DeMers, hoping for general “success” isn’t enough. “Instead, you should have very specific, measurable goals in your content strategy,” he writes. If your main goal is to increase search engine traffic, he writes, you should know what keywords you’re targeting.
  2. Your follower counts aren’t going up. While DeMers stresses that “quality over quantity” is important, your audience should increase over time if your content is sufficiently engaging. “If you aren’t noticing much of a difference, something could be wrong,” he writes.
  3. Your traffic isn’t increasing. Content marketing should be increasing your traffic in many different directions, DeMers writes. Your search rankings should be going up, you should be getting more social media visits, and even direct traffic should show an increase as loyal readers return.
  4. Your on-page time is under two minutes. “If your content is keeping your visitors’ interest, they’ll be staying on your page for more than a couple of minutes,” DeMers writes. If your analytics show your page-view times are low, your content, quite simply, probably isn’t interesting enough.
  5. You don’t have any standout pieces. While you don’t need to go viral for a content campaign to be a success, you should see at least a couple of your pieces getting several shares and likes, or generating an ongoing discussion in the comments section, DeMers writes.
  6. Your engagement rates are low. “Pay close attention to any ways your audience is engaging with your content, including likes, shares and comments,” DeMers writes. While likes, shares and such aren’t necessarily a direct measure of success, he writes, generally the more of them you’re seeing, the more successful the content is.