You work hard to produce good content. Intelligent, thoughtful, interesting articles and posts. You share valuable ideas in your newsletter or your website or content management system.

Maybe you do videos, podcasts, or webinars. Maybe you regularly interview experts and authors and other smart people with something valuable to offer.

Unfortunately, your numbers tell you the folks aren’t reading or watching. Let alone contacting you to find out more about how you can help them.

Is content marketing a failed idea?

No.

Do you need to upgrade your research, writing, and content production skills? Get a better camera, microphone, or lighting set-up?

No.

Your subscribers and followers may not be reading or watching your content simply because you make it difficult for them to do that.

I get a lot of newsletters I’d like to read but don’t because I’d have to follow a link to a website, maybe log-in, maybe download something.

Sorry, I don’t want to bother.

Almost daily, I get emails that don’t share any ideas or information, but invite me to register for yet another webinar or “summit”.

Looks like it might be great, but I don’t have time for that.

I get sent links to a lot of videos. Five minutes, I might be your boy. 20 minutes, sorry, maybe another time.

I might like to read your pdf or ebook, but I’m in the middle of something else right now. Okay, I’ll download it and read it later, but let’s face it, later usually never happens.

And hey, I don’t want to give you my email address again. I’ve been your subscriber for years. And now I’m going to get two of everything from you? Thanks, but no thanks.

Like most folks, I decide to read or watch something in a second or two. If the next step is to start reading or watching, I might do it. If the next step requires me to register for something, put something on my calendar, invest an hour or two of my time, the odds are I won’t.

Sometimes I will. But not every time.

Bottom line: if I have to spend a lot of time to get to your content before I can consume it, on most days, the answer will be a hard no.

Love ya, but I’m busy and have to move on. You set up too many hoops for me to jump through, and I’m not in the mood.

So I never see much of your best content.

My advice to anyone who wants to build their business or practice with content of any kind: make it easy for people to access that content.

More readers, more leads. More leads, more clients.

How to use a simple email newsletter to build a law practice