What do you think it takes to become a successful content marketer?  There are numerous ways  to attract new customers, but content marketing has quickly become a favorite method among marketers with most using it as a primary means for customer acquisition and engagement.

It is estimated that more than half of the serious marketers out there are creating at least one piece of content every day.  That adds up to a lot of content.  But smart marketers know it has less to do with quantity and more to do with quality.

Yes, consistency is a crucial part of content marketing, but if you’re consistently putting out low-value content, you’ll struggle to see any positive results and it will end up being an exercise in futility.

Creating content is one thing, creating content that consistently performs and works is an entirely different matter.  It takes a special kind of content marketer to bring it all together.

So what are some of the shared characteristics of the most successful content marketers?

Do you see content marketing as a daily chore with tasks to be completed by the end of the day, or are you driven by the desire to create the best content for any given topic?

Desire burns inside the successful content marketer with the determination to position their Brand as the thought leaders on a given subject. Nothing interferes with their consistently striving to be the best resource and solution for customers and prospects.

They have a desire to win and they refuse to settle for “just writing content.”  They don’t want to only be better than a handful of competitors. They want to be better than everyone currently competing for the attention of that customer or prospect.

Content marketers know that long-form content performs better than all other types of content and it consistently ranks higher.

You need to create specialized content with a purpose.  Content with no direction is why your marketing is not effective.  Understand and listen to your audience and focus on the content they need and want.  If you’re writing content for everybody, you’re writing content for nobody.

A Successful Content Marketer has to rise above the noise and distractions. Adding real value to your content is what keeps them coming back and is what wins the trust of your audience.

Value added content informs, enlightens, entertains, provides actionable takeaways, inspires, and encourages engagement.

Create better content that’s creative and imaginative by using storytelling elements that leave a lasting impact on the reader.

When you’re not measuring the effectiveness of your content, you have no idea what’s working and what isn’t.

There’s zero insight into what you should do next.

Did you know that roughly 60% of marketers re-use content anywhere from two to five times as part of their strategy?

This approach to generating “snackable” content saves valuable time and resources as well as money because they’re repurposing the content they know is performing well.

Those data-focused content marketers can take a blog post that thousands of people have visited (and shared) and repurpose it into a video, an infographic, or a podcast.

Or they could take the top-performing blogs on a specific topic and combine them into a high-performance lead magnet.

If you’re not measuring the success of your content marketing and making data-driven decisions, you’d never be able to do that.

While that’s great news, with more content comes more opportunity to make mistakes and miss out on content opportunities.

You need more than a documented content marketing strategy. You also need to be organized.

They know how to curate content as well as rely on employees, customers, partners, and even freelancers to produce valuable content.

A great content marketer isn’t just churning out social posts, blog posts, and YouTube clips.

Truly effective content marketing is about storytelling. Because people love stories.

The richness of the story and the authenticity of your voice will create enthusiasm and trust in your audience. It will move them to action.

Stories help the audience make a personal connection, which is vital to engagement.

It makes the customer care

It must be original

It must effectively sell a resolution or solution

It is strategically planned to be persuasive

It is empathetic and relatable

It takes time and understanding of both the customer and who you are as a company

Your audience will always remember how you made them feel, and you can do that with storytelling that’s both persuasive and memorable.

Staying Persistent

With so much emphasis on proving the ROI of content marketing efforts, many marketers fall into a “campaign” mentality.

This mentality creates start-and-stop points for content that really shouldn’t be there.

Picture the hawk-eyed content marketer, carefully watching metrics for indicators that something isn’t performing so they can “pull the plug” before too much effort is wasted.

One of the biggest reasons why content marketing underperforms for many is because marketers bring a premature close to their efforts.

They fail to realize that success does not happen in a weekend.

Rather than putting the time in, they stop their campaigns too soon, rather than letting the content run and later using that content for future efforts.

Persistence is the key to success.

Conclusion

After reading through all the qualities listed above, it might seem like this kind of content marketer is a bit of a unicorn.

But nothing says every content marketer must be born with all of the above qualities.

Like the growth that comes from your content efforts, you (and your team) can grow toward improving yourselves so you incorporate and develop the qualities that will make you more successful.

You likely already have many of these qualities, whether it’s storytelling, persistence, ambition, or creativity.

If you focus on improving these qualities while staying value and customer focused, you’re certain to find success with your content marketing
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