Boo! 5 Reasons Not To Fear Content Failure

Few people in the world don’t fear failure. Failure means we’ve done something wrong. It means we haven’t thought a plan through, and now we’re going to have to sink additional resources into fixing our mistake.

Those consequences might be worrisome, but if you focus on them too much, you’ll find that you’re not willing to take risks. If you actively try not to fail, your business and advertising campaigns won’t flourish.

Sometimes your content has to fail to ensure your later success. So if you’re standing over the remnants of a project or desperately trying to keep a campaign afloat, sit back and ask yourself: how could I benefit from this failure?

1. All Work Needs Testing

Nobody gets their work perfect the first time they complete it. Writing copy, for example, is more about the process of rewriting than it is the drafting. It’s the same with content creation. You need to test your initial copy drafts to find the work that’ll catch your audience’s eye.

When you A/B test your work, you can determine in advance what copy features are going to land well with consumers and which may fall flat. If you want to preempt the release of a piece of work, you can A/B test it and experience any potential failures before they go live online.

2. Breaking Barriers Reveals New Paths

Let’s say you A/B test your work and it still flops online. This isn’t a bad thing! Instead, you’ve just found an advertising path that doesn’t resonate with your audience. Moving forward, you’ll be able to avoid making content that follows in that vein.

Instead, you can experiment in new genres and see how that kind of content impacts your audience’s engagement.

3. Learning to Say “Yes”

In a similar vein, content failure encourages you to say “yes” to future projects. This may seem like a backward thought. Shouldn’t content failure make you more cautious, after all? Not always. If the content you planned and created fails, you’ll be more willing to reach out to outside sources for inspiration.

If someone suggests a content-creating path that you’d never take, you can think back on your previous content failure and say “yes” to the new idea.

4. Admitting To Mistakes Improves Your Reputation

You might not believe it, but consumers appreciate reminders that you and the people behind your business are human. If you make a mistake online – like posting a piece of content that flops – try making fun of yourself.

Alternatively, actively discuss ways you can improve your content with consumers via social media. That kind of transparency and self-deprecating humor can turn flop content into successful content.

5. Practice Makes Perfect

Finally, consider the content that fails online practice work. If you’re just starting a business, or if you’re new to the industry in which you’re advertising, you need time to get your feet underneath you.

Look back at the pieces of content that failed to get the numbers you wanted. How can you change your future work? What kind of balance do you need to strike to draw in consumers? Mistakes made are lessons learned, and future-you will benefit from your content experimentation.

There’s no need to be afraid of Content failure. Don’t strive for it, of course—but be prepared to learn from it when it inevitably arrives.

Image attribution: ilkercelik – stock.adobe.com