5 Popular Content Marketing Myths that You Should Not Believe in

92% of marketers reported that their company views content as a valuable business asset. In fact, 72% of marketers have reported the content marketing has quantifiably boosted prospect engagement for their respective companies. Then why aren’t your content marketing efforts fetching positive results for your company? Well, it might be because you still believe in some myths which are damaging your content strategy.

Content marketing has evolved significantly over the years. What worked 10 years ago, may not necessarily work in 2020. Moreover, there have been some misbelieves in the domain of content marketing, which is still pursued by marketers. In this blog, I'm going to debunk 5 such myths that content marketers still believe in.
1. The content itself is enough:
A lot of marketers believe that the content is enough to drive traffic to their company websites and convert a number of prospects. In fact, a significant number of people believe that if a strategy is not working, it’s because the content was not good enough, or perhaps the quantity was not adequate.
In reality, content is not the only component necessary for a successful content strategy. Yes, there's no denying that content is the heart of your marketing efforts. But at the same time, you need to focus on the amplification and distribution of content in order to fulfill your goals.
While the quality of the content and the frequency of the posts do have a significant impact on the results, you need to make sure your content is reaching the right audience. Moreover, you need to make sure your content all the elements the audience looks for in a piece of online content.
2. All content should be focused on the business:
As a content marketer, you may think it is best for your company to produce content that serves your niche, especially your business. Marketers often believe that by promoting their business through the content, they can boost the conversion rates and boost their ROI as it will be specifically serving their niche audience.
Now, there’s no problem with producing business-oriented content for the readers. But stuffing your audiences’ feed with promotional pieces of content is not going to work in your favor. In fact, one of the most common complaints that consumers raise is that the companies that market to them on digital platforms are too promotional.
Your content marketing strategy should focus on increasing engagement with the target audiences. Here’s what you can do instead of posting all-out promotional content. Talk more about the points that actually add value to your consumers. And if you really want to put promotional content, present it as a solution to the problems your potential customers are facing.
If you are running a business of academic support for students, you can create content on how to finish essay papers on time with the guidance of professional paper writers, instead of telling them to hire essay writers from your website.
3. Super-long pieces of content can drive more traffic:
It’s perhaps the most common myth that the content marketers still believe in. You may have also read it in several articles that longer pieces of content are more likely to rank better on search engines than those with a shorter length. In fact, a report from Moz reveals that that content with the length between 1,800 and 3,000 words received more backlinks and ranked better in the search engines.
However, it is not always essential to create longer pieces of content for better results. In fact, it can be counterproductive as well. Neil Patel has extensively discussed in one of his blogs that it is not just the longer content that can rank high. And that is because every customer's preferences are different. It's possible that your target audience prefers blog posts that are short and concise.
Longer pages usually work better when your goal is to sell big-ticket items. But they are also likely to overwhelm your readers and drive them away from your page. Longer content doesn't always convert better than shorter pieces of content. It is recommended to try different styles and lengths of content to boost conversions.
4. Email marketing no longer works:
It's true that social media platforms have made content distribution and promotion a lot easier for marketers. And due to this reason, a number of marketers believe that social media has made email marketing obsolete. But again, it's a myth. In reality, emails are one of the most effective media to promote content, engage with your audience and convert them into customers.
According to a report, consumers spend an average of 138% more after being marketing through email over any other medium. Also, brands receive an average return of $44.25 for each dollar spent on email marketing. Social media is certainly a great tool for engaging with customers and build relationships. But email is more effective in converting customers.
Email marketing beats Facebook and Twitter in customer acquisition by 40 times. With the use of personalization and hyper-targeting, emails can deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. With email marketing, you can send a powerful and persuasive message to your customer, with the help of segmentation.
5.Building too many links in a short time span:
When it comes to link building, it appears that marketers don’t have a magic figure in mind. Since backlinks play a significant role in deciding the search rankings of the respective pages, marketers often end up building too many links as soon as possible. But that is not how you get the ranks of your pages high.
It’s true that the high-ranking pages usually have a number of backlinks than their competitors. But that does not signify that the number of backlinks is the key to higher ranks. Instead of building too many links, you need to focus on building authentic links. And that’s what will boost your ranking as well.
As you may already know, Google is constantly improving their algorithms. If you increase the number of your backlinks significantly overnight, the sophisticated algorithms will identify the unusual growth rate, and would not offer you the rank you are looking for. Besides, getting an authentic link to your website is tedious work, and requires your patience.