For your content marketing strategy to be successful, it must lead to conversions and sales. Also, you’re competing with other blogs for the same market. Therefore, there can be no room for errors.
Content Marketing Errors to Avoid
1. Failure to Monitor User Generated Content
Your fans and customers are ready to defend you at all costs. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, you should monitor user-generated Content that mentions your brand to make sure it’s not offensive. If your fan abuses somebody in a post, the victim can sue you for allowing that to happen. Therefore, make sure you profanity filter your UGC campaign to protect people and safeguard your image. While having good customer support and interaction is important, you need to make sure you are making sure interactions are positive.
2. Lack of a Plan
You can’t wake up one day and decide you’re going to start a blog. This method is disastrous because you don’t know where you’re going. Acting on gut feeling leads to a lot of inconsistencies and confusion. Your readers are going to lose interest because they don’t understand you. Start your content marketing with a detailed specific plan. Know who your target is? Do you want leads or sales? Having a clear plan and goals in mind will help you to target your audience and make your marketing more profitable. The more questions you ask yourself, the easier it will be for you to develop a plan.
3. Generalizing Readers
Don’t assume that everybody interested in your product is going to read your blogs. This is a mistake that newbies often make. You should always tailor your Content towards a particular niche. Which stage of the buyer’s purchase process are you targeting? Are your articles focused on awareness and helping readers understand the problem? Are your articles more inclined to the consideration stage of the buyer journey? The more targeted your marketing is, the more successful you will be in your business. Understanding your customer will help you write content that matters.
4. Separating Content
Your content marketing strategy should be uniform. The biggest mistake you can ever make is separating social media content from SEO plans. It would help if you didn’t separate them because they serve the same purpose. Both pieces of content complement one another. Your post on your website should be like what you write on your company’s social media page. Also, posting links on your social media is a great way to draw customers in.
5. Mediocre Content
Your Content shouldn’t be too short or too long; anywhere between 600 and 1000 words is acceptable. Also, make sure that whatever you write is backed by facts. Don’t copy Content from competitor sites. Focus on creating original content that readers will appreciate. Before publishing content, you should proofread it and correct mistakes. Mediocre Content will chase away readers.
6. Lack of Expertise on the Subject Matter
You should always pick a niche before you begin writing. Are you going to focus on business or lifestyle articles? You can only write great Content if you understand the subject matter. Therefore, avoid topics that you know extraordinarily little about. The more comfortable you are on a topic, the better your writing will be and that will come across to readers.
7. Lack of Proper Analytics
You need to do an in-depth analysis of all your blog posts to know which ones are successful and why. Don’t look at one metric and assume everything is fine. For example, some people only look at the number of visitors to a page to gauge their content’s popularity. This strategy is wrong because not everybody who visits your site will read your blog posts from start to finish.
- Not Using SEO for Search Engines
One of the most important parts of marketing is making it easy for customers to find you. If they cannot find your site easily, then you will be lost in the thousands of others trying to sell similar products or services. Utilizing good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps your content to appear in major search engines such as Google. You want to use searchable terms inside the copy of your marketing materials to help them to show up on keyword searches. Use keywords related to your product multiple times to ensure that it appears more prominently during searches.
- Looking for Cheap Content Creators
Remember, you often get what you pay for. Many businesses will go for cheap content creators to save money, but this strategy can hurt you in the long-term. If you want quality content be prepared to pay a fair amount for it. While you can hire newer writers and build them up, keep in mind that if you are not compensating your writers fairly, they may not put in as much effort. Create a system for cultivating newer writers and compensate experienced creators fairly.
- Publishing More Content to Get More Traffic
While this seems like a logical thing to do, as you would show up on the most recent searches, there is little research that shows the quantity of content has any effect on traffic. Most readers do not read the majority of content posted to sites, and only look for what interests them. Instead, focus on quality, not quantity.
