Is Fear Stopping Your Content Marketing Success?
It’s hard to admit fear can be the root cause of a problem or roadblock.
We tell ourselves we’re fearless creatures. We convince ourselves we’re invincible with a neverending supply of opportunity at our fingertips.
But when fear disguises itself as procrastination, as avoidance, it can get the best of us if we don’t acknowledge it’s there.
So, let’s talk about fear and content marketing for a bit.
Creating your own original content (in your voice) increases your website traffic and gets your business noticed. Am I right?
If you agree, be honest with yourself—how’s your content marketing strategy treating you?
Do you even have one? Are you neglecting it because you have more important things to do? Or is this an excuse because you’re actually afraid of creating content.
Afraid because you’re unsure if content is gonna benefit your business.
I know the word marketing can feel and sound icky. But it doesn’t have to.
Gone are the days of Yellow Pages, aggressive sale calls, or pushy doorknockers.
Today, everyone is trying to be themselves.
Because if we love the person behind the business, chances are we’ll love working with them too.
It’s all about building trust towards a symbiotic relationship.
If you look closely at your competitors, I bet the successful ones are doing it right with content—their words are enticing, their brand or business captures your attention, they sound 110% believable, and their sales are through the roof.
So what can you do to reach this level of awesomeness?
One thing you shouldn’t do, is go crazy with your content. Don’t churn out random blog posts because you fear you fell behind. Big mistake.
Creating ineffective content is just as bad, if not worse, than creating no content.
Maybe creating content constantly isn’t a priority for you right now, and that’s okay to an extent. But you’re missing out on bigger and grander opportunities if you never invest in a solid plan.
On the other hand, fear holds people back from doing a lot of things in life. With content, it could be the fear of looking silly or saying the wrong thing, to the fear of simply not knowing where to start.
In the words of Amelia Earhart,
“Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.”
It’s okay to blame fear instead of procrastination for your lack of content. It’s the first step towards figuring out how to overcome that fear.
So if you’re unsure about what’s really holding you back from content marketing success, here are a few signs that fear could be the culprit and what you can do to curve that fear:
1. You hate taking risks and instead choose to blend in
We’ve all been there in life.
Maybe you tripped and fell on your face in front of your crush, maybe you messed up an important presentation.
Or maybe, you ate a bad egg sandwich and couldn’t hold in the gaseous aftermath in a room full of potential clients.
It’s those embarrassing situations where we feel like disappearing off the face of the Earth forever (which is perfectly okay, as long as you eventually return to Earth).
But if you’re doing this with your business, if you’re not making an effort to stand out—or not trying new things to get seen and heard by your ideal audience—what’s holding you back?
Dig deep here but let me guess, it has something to do with fear, right?
If you know you’re afraid to put yourself out there and take the risk, then you gotta get that fear under control.
You literally have to take your life, your business, by the horns or balls and run with it.
Take the reins and run wild.
Follow your gut and be confident with your words and content. Don’t try to write or create like everyone else.
Embrace being different from your competitors, and then create content that speaks or interests you (from your client or customer’s perspective).
Different is good, so take the risk of standing out.
Be you. Be proud of your business and your content.
2. Your writing is safe, generic, or bland
For some of us, it can take a lot to share our thoughts or opinions.
You may worry about getting shot down, criticized, being thought of as stupid, or thinking what you have to say doesn’t matter.
If you’ve ever been stuck in this rabbit hole, I feel you. I was there during my high school years. Writing stories anonymously online, or in a notebook meant for my eyes only.
But that little person in me grew up, and I now understand how powerful it is to share what you know if there’s a chance it’s gonna help someone else.
And ultimately that’s what your business does, right? Helping people solve a problem, or making it easier for them to achieve something.
So if you feel your content is boring or bland, it’s probably time to take off the mask, get vulnerable, and reveal a deeper part of your story.
Here’s a look at what to do or what not to do.
Now, I don’t know about you, but the IT/tech community usually gets a bad rap for using jargon and plenty of words the basic consumer doesn’t understand—just to make it sound like they know what they’re talking about.
Here’s an example of two companies I came across and what they had to say about themselves.
You be the judge, but I’m sure we’re on the same page.
Company #1 example:
Company #2 example:
The second company for the win, am I right?
It’s way simpler and easier to understand, and I get what they’re saying. In two sentences, company #2 won me over cause they’re speaking my language.
Company #1 on the other hand… first of all their website hasn’t been updated since the 90’s so you get the idea—it’s full of jargon and techy words I don’t really care to understand.
Big corporate companies go down the bland and generic route all the time to get “professional” sounding content. But it really doesn’t have to be like that.
If your business leans more towards a corporate tone, there’s still a way to make your content marketing stand out.
Use simple words and sentences, be concise, but show a little more. A little more personality, a little more emotion. Show and tell the why behind what you do.
3. You want to be liked by everyone
I mean, of course we want everyone to love us for who we are. But we’re all different.
We like and hate different things. It’s normal, it’s natural.
We live in a world where butting heads over something as petty as the colour of your hair is normal. So it’s pretty normal to assume that sadly, everyone isn’t gonna like what you have to say.
And that’s okay. You shouldn’t expect to please everyone because you can’t make everyone happy anyways.
But you can start to streamline who you actually do want to please in your business.
Go back to your target audience, your ideal customers. You want to appeal only to them.
So write like them, understand their interests and cater your language, your content, for them and them alone.
If you strive to make everyone happy, you’ll be disappointed. And that disappointment leads to fear.
It leads to the fear of us not wanting to stand out anymore. It leads to things like imposter syndrome, second-guessing ourselves, and the black hole of self-doubt.
So if you’re gonna aim for content marketing success, aim to get comfortable with being vulnerable too.
Add a splash of personality to your content, cause playing it safe with your writing does nothing to captivate your audience.
But it doesn’t have to be super personal, or “out there” either.
The key thing is to not sound like a robot.
Make your content easy to read first. No big fluffy words no one will understand. No chunky or boring sentences.
What not to write:
I am writing this blog post to explain to intellectuals around the world why the fear of content marketing could be stopping them from success.
What to write instead:
Is fear stopping your content marketing success? I’ve been there too. Read on to find out how to nip this fear in the bud!
In this case, use a conversational tone to spruce up your content if you’re going for a friendly, relatable approach.
These days, it’s okay to throw out the grammar book because how we talk isn’t grammatically correct anyways.
To recap, I really do hope this post helps you nip your fears around content in the bud.
