5 reasons you need a long-term content strategy

It's no secret that content is time-consuming.

However, some marketers are so focused on whittling down that time, on cutting corners just to "get something out," that they ultimately end up losing out.

What do they lose?

The power inherent in high-quality content helps you:

• Rank in Google.
• Build trust with consumers.
• Earn leads.
• Convert leads.

Rushing content, meanwhile, gets you the opposite, and is a recipe for major content failure.

For content to succeed - truly succeed, with the rankings, engaged readers, and conversions to prove it - you need to play the long game with your content marketing.

You need to come to terms with the realization that it may take anywhere from six months to a year (or even longer, according to one study) to get your content ranking well.

It's a better use of your money and resources

Imagine going on a diet to lose weight. For two weeks, you eat only whole, clean foods and you exercise for two hours a day.

You feel great and - hey! -- you lose weight. At the end of that two weeks, however, you stop exercising and go right back to your old diet habits.

What happens?

Of course, you gain all of the weight back, and your guise of physical fitness takes a nosedive.

Not surprisingly, the same thing happens with content. Regardless of what you're doing, content marketing takes money and resources.

If you're paying someone to flood your accounts with content for two weeks and then laying off your strategy entirely, you can bet not only will your strategy be ineffective, but it will also be a waste of your money and resources.

Instead, you're much better off allocating your resources to a long-term content strategy that will build readers over time and help you maintain steady levels of traffic and clicks over months or years.

Instead of wasting your resources, this funnels them right back into your company and ensures that you're building value while also establishing a solid foundation of lasting, relevant content.

Long-term content engages readers

To keep readers interested and engaged for an extended period, you need to offer them comprehensive, in-depth content that helps them address their concerns and solve problems.

And that means long content, in terms of word count per article.

Don't think just because we live in an age where attention spans are short that long-form content won't do well. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

An Orbit Media survey found that bloggers who write longer posts (anything over 1,500 words) get better results.

Why does long-form content perform so well as part of a long-term content strategy?

In addition to providing outstanding value for readers, long-form content also allows your company to build authority and establish dominance by showcasing your knowledge on relevant topics in your industry.

Content changes all the time

As search engines and readers progress, the demand for quality, informed, relevant content increases all the time. Because of this, a long-term content strategy is the best possible weapon.

Designed to insulate marketers against change and help them maintain their traffic and readership despite changing SEO, content, and marketing requirements, long-term content marketing allows space for the strategy to absorb and adapt to changing trends.

This ensures more effective content and a more adaptive strategy that doesn't have to scramble to keep up.

Long-term content is synonymous with cornerstone content

Every good house needs a solid foundation, and every good marketing strategy needs cornerstone content to provide long-lasting value and relevance to readers.

Cornerstone content is long-term content that might not draw a huge number of clicks right off the bat but remains valuable for months or years after the publishing date.

Think of it as a down payment toward your own business.

In fact, if you look at the aforementioned Tim Ferriss's blog, you'll notice most of his most popular blog posts were written up to two years ago. How's that for an effective long-term strategy?

In contrast, short-term content strategies are largely aimed at ranking well for a specific keyword or phrase, so they all but neglect cornerstone content entirely.

Unfortunately, this leads to a less valuable and less relevant website for users of all types.

For attracting long-term clicks and ensuring that a website's readers are engaged, entertained, and consuming value at all times, cornerstone content becomes more of an essential than a luxury.

Long-term content doesn't turn off with a hard sell

In today's marketing environment, there is virtually nothing customers hate more than being hard-sold.

Nobody wants to know why they can't live without your product or why it's critical for them to "buy now!"

More often than not, these approaches simply alienate customers and make it harder for your company to sell products naturally.

Unfortunately, the hard-sell is often a tone taken by short-term content.

Because short-term content is insistent by nature, it's tough to engineer it so it doesn't push on your customers.

As a result, short-term content strategies run a high risk of alienating customers and making it more difficult to sell your products.

Long-term content strategies, on the other hand, do no such thing. Because they're not designed to elicit an immediate response from readers, they seek to provide value and relevance rather than insistence and immediacy.

In other words, they succeed in explaining a problem, helping the audience handle the problem, and then inviting them to engage in a discussion about the problem.

This, in turn, is a fantastic way to nurture long-term customer relationships and ensure that your company continues to meet the needs of your clients.