You are blogging and creating content but you feel like nothing is working like you want it to. Your sales aren’t increasing, your newsletter isn’t getting new subscribers, and it just feels like you’re wasting your time. If that is the case with your content marketing, take heart that you can access where you are and start over anytime.

1. Determine Your Why – When you are creating any one piece of content, do you know what the purpose of it is? Each content choice must have a reason for being in order to be successful. Is the content there to inform your audience about a problem? Is the point of the content to get more subscribers? Perhaps the point is to sell a new product or service? If you don’t know what the point is, it’ll be hard to get anyone to take action.

2. Understand Your Audience – When you produce any content it’s imperative that you know who you’re creating it for. Try developing buyer personas and write the content to the “customer of one” instead of creating it for a nameless person that you don’t know. This can help you develop very personalized content that gets results.

3. Know Your Niche – You may think that you know your area of expertise but the fact is, a niche might change a bit over time as technology improves. Keep up to date in your industry so that you’re ready for changes and trends that may develop.

4. Follow Your Competition – The best way to differentiate your content marketing from your competition is to watch what they’re doing. Join your competition’s lists, and look at the content they’re sending out. Can you determine if it’s working well for them or not? Can you decide how to do it a little bit better?

5. Know the Buying Process – There is a set buying process that your audience will take part in, even if they don’t realize it, and it’s important to realize where people are in the buying process. Typically it works something like this: Awareness, information search, evaluation, decision and purchase. Plus, after purchase your customer will evaluate again on whether or not to buy from you again.

6. Refine Your Strategy – If you have no strategy, or you feel as if what you’re doing isn’t working, take the time to work on refining your strategy to work better. Base this on the information you’ve gathered about your customers, the niche, your produce and/or services as well as the buying process.

7. Make Content Marketing a Priority – To ensure that content marketing will work, it’s important to do it on a consistent basis as a priority in your marketing efforts. Hire the right people to help you, and place it at the right level of importance in your overall marketing strategy.

8. Promote the Content You Create – Content cannot just be created and that’s the end. Use promotion strategies such as on and off page SEO, social media sharing, and other means to promote the content so that it is seen.

9. Create Compelling Content – No one wants to consume boring cookie cutter content. Ensure that the content matches the needs of your audience, speaks to them on their terms and provides value in and of itself to your audience.

Finally, content marketing is about the long haul. Results aren’t going to happen overnight. Continue to produce high quality, relevant, consistent content that has a purpose and provides value and you will see the results you desire.