How to Stay Patient in Content Marketing

If you’re in marketing to any degree, you’ll hear “content is king” all the time. If you took a marketing class in school, if you read a book on marketing, if you watch a YouTube video about marketing, the phrase will be there. Spend enough time in marketing, and you’ll find your thoughts bending toward the content that you should make and how you should get it to your followers/customers.

“Content is king” is a great way to remember what you’re trying to accomplish, as a marketer. You want to make content that is helpful and relevant to your customers so they come back to you when they need something you can help them with. Creating good content means that you are creating value for the people in your space - and when you create value for others, you create opportunity for yourself. With this in mind, you can see why a simple phrase like “content is king” becomes repeated at every turn - it’s a great way to remember the simple equation:

Content(Information) = value = opportunity.

But there’s a problem with the phrase and the equation that is often overlooked, especially by first-time content marketers. Nowhere in “content is king” is time mentioned. And time is an important element of the process. 

“Content is king” covers the effort portion of content marketing. To create value, to create good content, you have to put in an effort. “Create” means that you have to sweat a little bit and do some work to make something that your customer will care about. That’s pretty straightforward, and you’ll get better at creating high-value content the more you do it. 

Time, though, is a wild card. No one tells you - because no one knows - how much time it will take to reach your content marketing goals. In my experience, this is the variable that stops most content campaigns before they really hit their stride. 

Remember that if you are starting a content campaign from scratch - blogging, Q&A videos, podcasting, etc. - you are probably going to be writing and speaking to nobody at first. Often, people who love you will consume the first few pieces of your content before they get bored and stop watching. After a few weeks of effort, you could find yourself creating things that no one is consuming. 

This is the point where most people give up and try something else. And if you are desperate for traction today, content marketing isn’t going to be a sudden breakthrough for you. (Unless you get lucky. Sometimes that happens, but luck isn’t a strategy. Don’t count on it.)

Time isn’t on your side, when it comes to content marketing. So how do you combat this and stay in the game?

Good old fashioned patience. It’s so hard to keep going when no one is listening. You'll ride the waves of enthusiasm and discouragement and you’ll often feel like you should quit. You will start to question the time and monetary commitment you’ve made to your content efforts, and you’ll want to back out and try something else. It may even be embarrassing, at some points, to keep sharing these things you’ve made and hearing crickets in return. 

When you get to this place of uncertainty and doubt over if you should keep creating your content, remember the following things:

Content marketing should be thought of as an investment strategy.

You know those ads you see for financial services, where there is a broker consulting an elder professional about their retirement? Whenever I see those commercials, I always feel a little bit of admiration for the fake broker. (I know, that sounds cheesy. I can’t help it. I like the fake broker.) The ads always show the broker putting his/her clients money in the best place to give them a great future, finding investments that will ensure they are taken care of in retirement. 

And when you implement a long term content strategy, I think you should think of yourself like that fake broker, and you are your own client. I think it is helpful to think of your content as more of an investment than a “strategy”. While you may be very strategic about the content you make and who you are making it for, strategy might not be the best word to describe the effort as a whole. 

“Investment” is a closer match to what a content marketing effort is. When you start out, your time and labor is cheap - you are just taking a little bit of time out of your day, and hopefully making something valuable with it. You are planting seeds on the internet that you hope will grow into something you can harvest in the future. You are buying low, and hoping to sell high. The idea, of course, is that some day in the future your content efforts will pay off and your time and effort will turn into customers and opportunities. 

With this in mind, start to think of yourself as a long term investor, like Warren Buffett. You are here to buy cheap assets - content that you can make - and hold on to them until they are valuable. This could take 6 months, 4 years, or a decade. It doesn’t matter. If you are making content that is worthwhile and could bring value to your customers/followers, it will pay off. So continue to make things even when nobody is listening. You are “buying low” every time you repeat this process, as long as your content will bring someone value.

You are practicing your craft with every piece of content you make.

Making valuable content allows you to keep practicing your craft, even when no one is paying you to do so. This is especially important for services/freelancers. If you’ve spent any time freelancing or trying to get a service business off of the ground, you know that there are long nervous spans when you have no customers and you aren’t sure where you will get new customers. In this time, you can practice your craft by making content.

Again, to create good content, you have to create content that is valuable to your customers. To provide value, you have to practice your craft in front of your audience. You have to find a way to take your experience and knowledge and turn it into something that can be used by the people you want to reach. 

Finding new and interesting ways to serve your customers through content means that you will be finding new and interesting ways to practice and explain your craft. You will not only be helping yourself get found, you’ll be increasing your knowledge of your own craft.

As a quick illustration of this point, let’s imagine that you are a carpenter, specializing in unique joinery and home remodeling. What content could you make that would be valuable to your customers/audience, and would help you practice your craft?

How about a “how to” of a door install? In this video, The Samurai Carpenter is simply installing a door in a home. (I think it might even be his own home.) He uses the opportunity of needing to install a door to share the process of door installation with his followers while actively practicing his craft. His audience gains value because they learn his method of installing a door - and he gets to practice his method, and find the best way to teach it to others on camera. Even if his video didn’t have so many views, it should still be viewed as win-win. Both parties - creator and consumer -  gained from The Samurai Carpenter’s video. 

Each piece of content increases your chances of getting lucky.

I mentioned above that luck isn’t a strategy. It’s not - please don’t count on getting lucky. Luck isn’t a goal, either. Luck is a roll of the dice, nothing more. Every piece of content that you make, while being valuable, and being a real investment in the future, is also a roll of the dice. Each piece of content that you make gives you the opportunity to be seen by the right person - the right customer, the right influencer, the right follower - that will help you accomplish your goals.

And remember - creating content, especially when starting out - is a cheap investment. It’s a little bit of time and money. You are buying low and hoping to sell high. But each time you “buy” with a new blog post, video, tweet, etc., you are giving yourself a chance to win big on a dice game. If you have found a rhythm in making your own content, and you don’t mind spending the time it takes to make valuable content, your dice rolls are basically free gambles with decent to excellent chances of a healthy payoff. 

So how do you take advantage of such a cheap game with potentially high rewards?

Roll the dice more. Make more things. Make as many things as you can, and share them often. Remember - your overall goal is to make valuable things that your customers/audience find useful. Keep doing that, and you might get a lucky roll by bringing value to the right person/group of people.