If you were to stop promoting your content tomorrow, would you have a group of followers still seeking it out and consuming it?
To me, this is the single best test to determine whether or not you have a real Content Marketing strategy. Confused? Let me elaborate a bit.
Do you ever see and click/read articles on celebrity news or “click baity” type content? Perhaps you’ve visited that same website 2-3 times as a result of ads or social media posts you’ve seen, but would you be actively seeking that content if it weren’t presented to you? I watch Moz’s Whiteboard Friday every week without ever noticing or seeing it mentioned. My fiance and I DVR our favorite TV shows because we don’t want to miss an episode. I pull up Stitcher on my phone every Tuesday for the latest This Old Marketing podcast and am constantly checking my Youtube subscription feed for the latest episodes of DailyVee by Gary Vaynerchuk. THAT is real Content Marketing.
If you’re relying on constant promotion of each piece of content, hoping to attract visitors who can convince to fill out a form on your website, you’re not (in my view) engaging in real Content Marketing or taking advantage of its full potential.