In order to thrive in the fast-paced, ever-evolving technology sector, a business must constantly work to stay relevant. You probably already know that content marketing is an excellent way to position your brand as a thought-leader and reliable source of information related to your industry. After all, content is king for a reason. However, you might not realize the significant role played by careful timing, along with speedy promotional efforts, in ensuring your audience reacts to your content with interest rather than apathy. In fact, when it comes to content marketing, timing is central to success.

Staying Fresh with Timely Content

Content marketing is a tool for strengthening your brand through the creation and publication of content that is of interest to your readers and relevant to your industry; but in many cases, qualifying as interesting and relevant requires being timely. That is, you should post about topics that are generating buzz and therefore likely to draw an audience.

Timely content can include information on recent advancements in your industry, breaking news or developments, and any topic that is currently relevant but has a looming expiry date. Public interest doesn’t linger long on any given story or topic, so it’s important to write about new technology or industry trends before the initial buzz dies down.

In order to find and produce timely content, you must remain up-to-date on the stories and topics that not only relate to your brand and company, but anything that might be of interest to your customers. Once you establish your brand as a reliable voice from within the industry, it takes time and effort to maintain that reputation.

Not All Content Is Evergreen

Unfortunately, the majority of original content is not evergreen. If a topic is no longer relevant to your audience at the time you publish it, few people are going to read it, even if the post itself is of high quality, informative, and entertaining.

It’s also possible for an article to be written too early, so you need to be sure the time is ripe before posting it on your website or blog.  Hidden within your reservoir of evergreen pieces, you may have premature articles that your audience is not yet ready for. If there is little interest in a topic you’ve written about, it would be wise to save that post for a later date. 

Race Against The Clock: Promote Your Content ASAP

The freshness of news fades quickly as knowledge is disseminated. With so many voices ringing out through cyberspace, you need to differentiate your own from the mix with excellence in every aspect. Thus, good timing isn’t just about posting new and relevant content (although that is a large part of the equation), it also requires actively promoting your blogs posts and updates to ensure your audience accesses and reads your content before it has a chance to become old news.

One of the major goals of content marketing is to gain a reputation as an industry expert, but in order to build your brand up as a trusted source, you must first ensure that your consumers and potential clients are aware of your content. If you don’t promote your content as soon as you publish it, you’re wasting the most valuable period for generating interest in your brand. From the moment content is published, a clock begins to tick. For instance, when it comes to paying to promote content on Facebook, experts at Unified Social say if you don’t do so within 24-hours of posting, you may as well not bother at all.

Your audience wants to be aware of emerging trends, newly discovered facts or newly minted products, but if they read a more popular article on the same topic, they are less likely to read yours once they stumble across it. Fast-paced promotional efforts ensure readers will access your content as soon as possible. Also consider that the best viral campaigns became popular because of their immediacy, freshness and relevancy to a wide number of people.

Don’t Break The Flow Of Conversation

Just as your promotion and pieces themselves must be well timed, it’s important to treat comments, feedback and criticisms of your product or blog with the same sense of urgency. Any two-way dialogue that occurs between the public and your brand should be timely in the sense that you reply quickly; this humanizes the brand by demonstrating that you respect your fans and clients enough to take the time to respond, but it also proves that your brand knows its subject matter well and is knowledgeable enough to expand on or discuss your content whenever necessary.

Responding to comments on your blog post or questions on your Facebook brand page as quickly as possible is good for business. It shows that you are diligent about delivering what your fans and followers want when they want it; it proves you are quick thinking and able to handle a curveball. Speedy responses to consumers prove your brand is very much alive and active—like a person having a conversation with its fans rather than a faceless company without interest in the little people.

Remember not to underestimate the importance of timing in content marketing and the need to promote content as soon as it is published; you should include these elements in your content calendar and marketing plan. Content is still king, but timeliness is necessary to optimizing exposure; and without exposure, your content cannot be impactful and its influence cannot spread.

About the Author

Emily is a freelance writer based in Toronto, Ontario who covers a range of topics from technology to travel. She holds a Bachelor in English Literature and Business from the University of Waterloo. No matter how many projects she is working on, Emily always finds time for baking, reading, and yoga.