9 Mistakes In Content Marketing To Avoid
As the business world continues to evolve with the Internet age, Blog Content has become a powerful tool. However, many small businesses are making a lot of avoidable mistakes. And they’re missing out on many opportunities to make the most of the content they already have.
If you own a website or blog, you know how expensive and time consuming quality content can be. So get the most out of your content and avoid these costly content marketing mistakes below:
No Plan
The first and most obvious content marketing problem is the lack of a plan. Most companies have the best short-term plans. They probably know what the next few blog posts are going to be or what pages on their site need to be added.
But what about the big picture? How is your content adding value? Does your content coach a potential customer into and through the sales funnel? Are you monitoring feedback for your content so you can improve?
Here are just a few questions to get you started. The point is to get a plan on paper beyond the content value over the next few weeks.
Don’t Know Your Audience
Not understanding your buyer personas is one of the biggest mistakes related to content marketing. By not taking the time to research and understand your audience, how can you tell which topics capture their attention?
There is a chance you have no idea.
A great way to learn more about your audience is to develop not only buyer personas, but reader personas as well. Not all of your readers will be your buyers.
However, the topics in your blog should depend on the goal you want to achieve. For most companies, they see their blog as an opportunity to educate and nurture leads and hopefully push them down the sales funnel.
Ask yourself these questions about your readers:
[+] What is their age?
[+] What is their job title?
[+] What is their financial status?
[+] Their level of education?
[+] What are their hobbies?
[+] What is their pain point?
To really hone your buyer persona, conduct a personal buyer interview.
Wrong Purpose
Content writers can fall into many traps that stray away from the true goal of the content. Content writing is not about the writer, a random topic, or a selling point. All these types of writing will frustrate and alienate your readers.
The goal of content writing is to convey sound expert advice on a topic relevant to your business. Think about your audience. Whose content do you want to read? Then ask this audience what topics they want to read about. Your readers can then become customers if you establish yourself as an expert in your business.
The purpose is not to sell quickly. Content comes in many forms, but the goal is to create value. This could look like an FAQ section of your website, troubleshooting guides, or general industry information. Avoid selling content at all costs.
Unprofessional
Businesses sometimes forget to make sure their content is written professionally. Content writing needs to be grammatically correct, clear, and valid. Your content should be interesting, engaging, and meaningful to your readers.
Hiring an advertising agency or PR firm is not always a good way to deal with this problem. Unless they are specifically trained in content writing. Invest in a service or writer who will be worth your time and money.
Does Not Provide Quality
The main goal of content marketing is to provide your readers and potential customers with useful quality information. Help them solve their problems. To keep your content fresh and maintain an audience, it’s important to publish regularly and consistently.
When you don’t post blog posts for a significant amount of time, readers will stop visiting your site. Post as often as possible, while making sure you’re publishing quality content.
If you can only post once a week, it is ok. Focus on quality over quantity. When you start trashing, you start to lose readers, leads, and ultimately customers.
Also, with Google’s search algorithm, which is constantly evolving, creating quality content is the only reliable way to be found and ranked.
Missing An SEO Expert
One of the many reasons to join Content Marketing is to improve your search engine rankings. A process called search engine optimization (SEO). But a common problem with a content marketing campaign is that it doesn’t incorporate the latest SEO techniques properly.
This is an industry in and of itself. Few inexperienced employees will be able to take full advantage of up-to-date SEO information. At a minimum, you should have an SEO professional to provide you with some policies regarding how to publish content and best practices for any social media content you publish.
Ideally, you can have an SEO expert involved from start to finish so they can monitor your progress and adjust your campaign quickly, otherwise you should hire an SEO consultant.
Do Not Exploit Available Resources
Another common content marketing mistake is not using your company’s resources (specialists, technical experts, software architects, product managers). Get creative with your content and find ways to incorporate the specific strengths and expertise of your business.
Have your staff come up with ideas and even write articles for you. The more you set your company apart, the more likely it is that your customers and readers will get behind your content and ultimately your company.
Do Not Reuse
If your company has been creating content for a while, it’s likely that you’ve published a ton of content covering a wide variety of topics. The best part about all that content, is that you can use it over and over again.
Ideas for reusing and reusing Content:
[+] If you have a report, it can be broken down into multiple blog posts
[+] Create a video or slide presentation from your tutorials
[+] Have your audio and video documents converted to a written format
[+] Build on existing content by expanding on certain spots, introducing new ideas, and more.
[+] Share older, more popular content with new members of your audience
A great way to promote your eBook is to give your readers an excerpt from one of your blog posts. Just don’t forget to add a call to action at the bottom of the blog post telling your readers to download the full eBook.
Don’t let your hard work go away, keep your content working for you instead of reusing it.
Lack Of A Call To Action
When it comes to content marketing, many marketers forget to add a call-to-action (CTA) to various places on their marketing channels. There’s no better way to direct people to other parts of your site than through distinct, clear CTAs.
If you don’t tell your visitors or potential customers about your service or product, how will they know you offer them? They most likely won’t. That’s why you should add CTAs that send them to those pages or information.
Every piece of content should have a purpose and CTA. Whether it’s to get a quote for your IT services or the opportunity to get a free checklist, it doesn’t matter.
Consider setting a CTA:
[+] On your blog
[+] In your email
[+] On your Facebook page
[+] On every page of your website
[+] In your eBooks and webinars
[+] In the presentation
[+] In your email signature
Need more insight on how to choose the right CTA for your next post?
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