The “Field of Dreams” Fallacy and Inbound Marketing Myths

If you build it, they may not even know… Are you waiting on Shoeless Joe?

Are you taking the “Field of Dreams” approach to inbound or content marketing? Many folks I speak to are… and it’s killing them.

I have to tell you, it frustrates me to see folks working hard to create some content, and then no one ever sees it.

Often, this lack of “splash” is that makes quitters out of some really otherwise tenacious people.

Well, Im here to tell you that you can’t just publish an article on your website and expect that people are going to:

know about it.
care enough to read it.
care enough to “like” it on Facebook.
care enough to comment on it.
care enough to share it.
be moved enough to take action.

If you aren’t getting the response you had hoped for, ask yourself: Is there a chance I didn’t ask for that response? In many cases, people will do what we ask.

I’ve seen people’s feelings hurt when their stuff didn’t get found, but they didn’t spend the time to promote it themselves.

I’ll ask:

Did you email it to your group of close advisors? Did you even share it on LinkedIn? I usually don’t even need to ask whether or not there was a promotion strategy in place.

There are a lot of times when content can be found in Google searches if you are truly trying to serve the customer (more on that in a future article, maybe this weekend. I’ll link it here when it is done). But you can’t count on that, especially in the beginning, because it takes time to show up there for certain phrases.

So start focusing on how to get your stuff seen as you create it. For more on that, here’s a selection from Jay Baer’s piece on marketing your marketing.

They marketed their marketing. You have to consider that when you’re attempting to break through the enormous amount of digital clutter, and it’s where social media and content really work together.We often think about content and social media as different, but they are really two sides of the same coin. Content is fire, and social media is gasoline. It’s much easier (and more effective in many cases) to use social media to promote outstanding content, than it is to promote your company.

Read the rest of Jay Baer’s piece here: