The importance of creating high-quality content for getting visibility online is growing by the day. The creation of engaging, informative, and conversion-oriented content has rapidly evolved as a key to success in digital marketing. It can boost traffic to websites and is a great tool for collecting leads. Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that creating any type of content is enough to reap benefits from content marketing. This causes them to make major content marketing mistakes, which can ruin all their efforts.
Creating content randomly is a major Content Marketing mistake. It takes time and lots of effort to be successful in Content Marketing.
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Some major content marketing mistakes and how to avoid them
The following are some of the very common and major common content marketing mistakes that can ruin your efforts:
1. Lack of patience
Content marketing is a long-term strategy. It often takes months, if not years to see any noticeable difference in traffic from writing good content. The reason is simple. Initially, no one would know you. But when you start creating articles, blog posts, guest posts, etc. regularly, you will get noticed. This will only be possible when you persist and create well researched and lucidly written content that adds value to the readers. When the readers start loving your content, they will keep coming back for more. Slowly you will be able to create a loyal audience and thereby establish your position as an authority in your field.
It takes time to create enough content that can get you noticed and establish you as a trusted expert. If you feel that creating a few articles and blogs is going to increase the traffic to your website overnight, then it is not going to be so.
2. Creating content around random topics
Content marketing revolves around topics that the audience is talking about. It is better not to take a contrarian view on this. Of course, established brands can afford to adopt a disruptive strategy and be sure that their loyal followers will eagerly listen to them. But till a new organization establishes its place as an authority, it is safer to talk to the customers about topics they are interested in.
There are several ways to find out the trending topics and content. Tools like Google Trends show you the current trending topics in a country of your choice.
It also lets you compare the search traffic of different keywords on Google.
3. Vague and shallow content
A critical part of the creation of content is doing thorough research. Never create content just for the sake of creating it. Spend time deciding on the topic and researching it in detail before even starting to write something. Creating content impulsively will make it vague and shallow, and will have little or nothing of value to the readers.
4. Creating content only to sell
Creating content that talks too much about your products or services very frequently is likely to irritate your readers and get rejected by them. No one likes to read content that is solely created with a singular purpose: to sell. So, stop being over promotional and give them content that the readers will find useful.
Guy Kawasaki, the eminent marketing expert has a great solution for this. He suggests that organisations should follow a 20:1 ratio. For every 20 non-promotional content, they can create one content that talks about their company, products and services or simply about what they have achieved.
5. Distributing content in wrong channels
Once you have created the content, it is time for you to post it. Many content marketers make the mistake of creating content and posting it randomly on various channels. This often results in even several high-quality contents going unnoticed.
Not every content works on every social media platform. For example, LinkedIn is a platform for business and professional networking. Posting some tips and tricks for preparing for your dream vacation might not be appreciated by the users of LinkedIn. Thus, you need to do some research before choosing the distribution channel for each content. Better still, find trending topics of your interest in your target social media platform, and then create content around it.
BuzzSumo is a great tool to find out which topics are working on each social media network. It also allows you to find out what your competitors are creating content around. Just search for the keyword you have chosen, and BuzzSumo will show you the contents that have been created around it, and also platform-wise engagements that each content has received.
6. No content marketing strategy
Content marketing is a process-oriented activity. Unless you are systematic with it, you will not see any difference. You need to draw up a content marketing strategy and follow it thoroughly. This strategy should focus on how to create content, distribute it, build engagement with the readers and thereafter influence them to purchase the product or service that the organization sells.
7. Not having a content calendar
The content marketers should draw up a content calendar which will be a schedule of the creation of articles, blogs and social media posts by the company. It should preferably define the topics, who will be responsible for writing it and where it will be posted. In the absence of a calendar, the creation of content becomes unsystematic and irregular.
8. Not being consistent
Many content marketers create content sporadically, making their efforts ineffective. If you are serious about content marketing, then you have to be consistent in content creation. Irregular content creation shows a lack of focus, and you will run the risk of your readers getting tired of waiting and moving away. In this way, your organization will slowly lose the audience that it has built over time. Never assume that they are going to stick with you forever.
9. Ignoring the data
Like every other digital marketing activity, content marketing also needs to be data-driven. See the number of page views, likes, shares, tweets, pins, etc.
Many marketers create content and never analyse its performance. This is one of the major content marketing mistakes to avoid.
When you see the performance data of your content, you will instantly know which topic or subject is generating the maximum responses and readership. This will enable you to focus on the high performing topics and abandon the ones that aren’t catching the fancy of your audience. You can also see platform-specific responses and intensify your content marketing efforts for the platform which is getting you good engagement.
10. Not creating a sales funnel
Content marketing is not only about creating content. It is about leading the readers to take a profitable action in your favour. Content marketing can be an excellent lead aggregator. Many content marketers mistakenly think that if their content goes viral, and attracts comments or likes, they have done a great job. But till the time you can monetize those actions, you haven’t gained anything from content marketing.
Conclusion
So, go ahead and create a sales funnel. Gather the email addresses and contact numbers of the loyal audience of your content and contact them to see how you can engage with them more. You may give something valuable to them for free. After this, you are ready to pitch your product to them. Since they trust you by now, they are more likely to take out their wallets to buy. Once this happens, you will know that your content marketing efforts have finally paid off!
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