Photo courtesy of BrentDPayne(CC ShareALike)

Great businesses tend to view rules as more like guidelines. Sure, they can help steer a business in the right direction, but when the times calls for it, they’ll create their own course of action.

The following content marketing rules are ones that I see businesses adhere to time and time again, even when it’s clear that it’s not working for them. I see businesses cling to these rules like comfort blankets, telling themselves that as long as they stick by them, they will succeed.

But in fact, these rules might very well be hurting your business.

Here are 5 content marketing rules that you should definitely break.

Hey you!

Have you heard about relevancy in marketing before?

Yes?

Of course you have.

We all have. Over and over and over and over again.

It really is on every other marketing blog we read. Including this one, kind of. 

For those of you who missed the memo, let’s sum up what we know about content marketing and relevancy.

In general, we know that our content needs to be of a high quality. But what constitutes “high quality”? Some would argue that it means informative, others that it means humorous. Whether it’s informative, humorous, or anything in between, high quality content always engaging.

But that’s not it. We also know that content doesn’t qualify as “quality content” at all if it isn’t relevant to your audience.

This means that engaging content + relevant content = quality content.

Got it?

I’ve an interesting question for you:

If you could have three wishes for the future of content marketing, what would they be?

Content marketing is an ever-evolving field, which means that it’s full of possibilities and opportunities. The latest trends have signalled to us that content marketing is going through a revival and is moving away from low-quality, keyword stuffed, high-quantity content to customer centered, high-quality, engaging and valuable content.

This revival has meant that the internet is slowly becoming a mecca for useful, valuable, engaging, interesting, novel and fascinating content.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and content marketing is still in continuing to grow, develop and improve every year.

So in the spirit of looking forward to the future of content marketing, I’ve devised a list of what my 3 wishes for the future of content marketing are.

There’s a very dangerous perception in the business world that perfectionists are great for business. Of course, a number of perfectionists, such as Martha Stewart and Steve Jobs, have achieved greatness.

But we must remember that they’ve achieved greatness in spite of their perfectionism, not because of it.

Scenarios where perfectionists are good for business, good leaders or even nice to work with, are far and few between.

Does perfection really lead to greatness?

The simple answer is no, it doesn’t.

And it could be bad for business if you nurture and encourage yourself to believe otherwise.

Getting the perfect image for your blog takes a long time. Longer than a lot of people realize.

But you’ve read the blogs, you know the statistics: Images keep your readers engaged and interested. You simply can’t go without images.

And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably including quite a lot too.

In my last 10 blogs, the fewest images I’ve used (excluding embedded tweets and videos) is 9, and the most I’ve used is 15. That means that on average I used 11.3 images per blog. In those last 10 blogs, my average word could has been 1,705 which means that for every 151 words I used 1 image.

Here’s a nerdy graph that I made of my findings:

When you’ve been working with a marketing automation platform for a while you begin to notice a few things: Sometimes they’re good, sometimes… not so good.

Good marketing automation is all about timing and content.

Photo courtesy of Biscarotte(CC ShareALike)

It’s when an email is just there waiting in my inbox first thing in the morning, or when social media schedules have been worked on tirelessly to reach me just when I’m on my boring commute home.

It’s when blog posts have been scheduled to hit my screen just as I head on my lunch break, or when that reminder email from that abandoned shopping cart pokes its way into my email box to tempt me just as I unwind in front of the TV.

Marketing automation works best when it’s non-intrusive,  informative (because you’ve paid attention to my browsing and know that the content is exactly what I am interested in) and I don’t feel any overt pressure or push to get me to the buying stage (just a little nudge).

I know how many hours, days, week and even months those marketers work so that they seem so effortless, and I appreciate it. I like those brands, because they are approachable, not pushy, but still they remain in the forefront of my mind. It’s a balancing act, and a difficult one at that.

But then, there’s the dark side of marketing automation…