Do you have a great blog, but no one is reading it? Or perhaps they read it and don’t come back?

Sometimes the problem with content is not the strategy itself.

If you’re crossing all the ‘t’s and dotting all the ‘i’s, then you might be unaware of the following three problems that cannot be solved even by content marketing best practices.

Content marketing will not:

Make up for lack of personality

The other day I saw an interesting article titled, “Bloggers Do It With Feeling” on dannybrown.me. The author asked this question:

“How many times have you stumbled across a blog and felt that something is missing? They have great content. They even have a really cool photo to draw your eye in. The text is large enough to read easily. The blogger kindly responds to your comment, yet you never go back.”

Your audience is looking for something to help them connect with your blog. It could be that they need to feel challenged, or inspired. Maybe they need some encouragement. Or maybe they want a contrary point of view – someone who asks, “Why Not.”

Great content makes your audience feel like they can relate and that’s something that the best strategy will not do for you.

What feeling do you want to inspire in your audience? What is your blog’s personality? Once you’ve answered these questions, then put together a content style guide.

This will help you to incorporate the desired style and tone into your content and appeal to your audiences’ emotions.

Make up for poor writing

Fact #1: Not everyone can write well.

Fact #2: Not everyone who can write well, can write well for the web.

Writing for the web is made even more complicated by the fact that readers have extremely short attention spans. Your audience is looking for a compelling read and they won’t waste their time on an article that isn’t interesting or that is difficult to read.

That said, the way to write better is to write more and to write often.

This will not only improve your writing skills but it will also help you to connect with your readers because they will tell you what they want to read.

Will not lead to overnight sales success

The problem with creating content is that it’s time-consuming and complicated.

Even with a clear strategy, you’re never 100% certain that it will work.

It takes time to develop a committed, loyal audience. It takes time to understand their needs and to create content that will solve their problems.

Growing pains are an important lesson in developing content – ask Seth Godin, or Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

Their blogs had humble beginnings too. So don’t expect that your efforts to create great content will lead to overnight success either.

But with time, you will see how far you’ve come and how much you have grown as a writer and a content strategist. Your subscriptions, comments, re-tweets and shares will eventually validate your hard work.

What do you think? Are you experiencing any of these three problems? How are you dealing with it?