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It seems fitting, on the eve of Valentine's Day, to reflect on one of the most common problems I encounter with content marketing. I've yet to meet a single person that doesn't agree content marketing is a great idea. Small business owners, in particular, love the thought of being able to dispense with their advertising expenditure. Content marketing gives companies a ton of autonomy in their marketing activity another highly attractive aspect. No one disputes the benefit of spending marketing budget to produce original content and create a tangible asset at the same time. So where does it go wrong?

It's not as easy as it looks
Setting up social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are a snap. The early days, like any romance, are fun and even a little intoxicating. Suddenly you're communicating with people from all over the world, sharing ideas and finding more information than you imagined possible. As the first bloom of love wears off, the hard slog of consistency sets in. Mal Gordon wrote an excellent post called Can I Have a Puppy? nailing the problem many business owners have when it comes to the social media end of their content marketing strategy.

It's not free. It's not even cheap.
Many of us were drawn to the idea of content marketing myself included – because it's `free'. While I've laid out almost no cash for my content marketing strategy, I also have the luxury of being a writer. Producing content isn't a problem for me. Has it been free? Well, no. I have to schedule my blogging and social media time or it doesn't get done. When I'm working on my own blog or spending time social networking, I'm not doing client work and, therefore, not earning money. In a blog post titled, The Real Cost of Social Media, Danny Brown dissects all the different ways a social media campaign costs money. He put a dollar figure to each task and came up with a pretty staggering total. While he admits to using a `worst case scenario', I don't think he was that far out of the ballpark for what a full-fledged campaign costs.

It takes time – a lot of it
One thing many people don't anticipate about a content marketing strategy is the amount of time required to develop, implement and manage a content marketing strategy. Most business owners I know are already time poor. Even if they have the desire and the talent to develop case studies, white papers, blogs, newsletters, videos, e-books or any other original content, they probably don't have time in their schedules to do it. One of the most fascinating findings in the B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report put out by MarketingProfs and Junta42 was how much content creation is being outsourced. While 55% of all content is outsourced, 77% of large companies outsource their content? Why? I suspect it's because they have the budget to do it.

Consumers are fickle
It's very easy to get side-tracked into a numbers game with content marketing. Worrying about how many followers you have, how many connections, how many likes and tweets and retweets you get is probably the wrong way to go about measuring the success of your content marketing strategy. Jay Baer discusses the problem of `attention infidelity' in a thought-provoking post addressing the behavioural side of life in Web 2.0. He predicts consumers are worn out by unrelenting social media campaigns and now we have to find a way to rekindle the romance with them.

The slow burn of content marketing
It's no wonder people get disappointed. When a new romance takes all your money, all your time, is difficult to please and easily bored, the initial infatuation of `love at first site' fades quickly. Why would anybody stick around in these conditions? Because content marketing works. If you make an investment in content marketing, you'll be building assets and goodwill over the longer term. The success you achieve when you develop your own content and promote it through your custom built networks improves exponentially with time. I've encountered many people who give up just as they're about to realise success with their strategy. In my experience, it takes at least six months of consistent effort for a social media and content marketing strategy to begin showing results. If you work diligently, behave ethically, and focus on building lasting relationships with your followers, I guarantee you'll be rewarded. Avoid the `love at first sight' trap and you're likely to find a groovy kind of love.

What do you love about content marketing?

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Image Credit: All Broken-Hearted by Orin Zebest, on Flickr