Content marketing is the most effective marketing strategy available in 2021. In the competitive B2B environment that we’re currently living in, continually producing quality content can offer you a one-up over your competition, grow audience engagement, increase your brand’s online presence and drive sales. It’s no surprise that 64% of marketers are wanting to learn how to build a better content marketing strategy.
What makes good content?
Although blogging and frequently posting to social media are likely to bring you some degree of increased traction, your focus should be on the quality of your brand’s content. Good content comes from understanding your audience, engaging users, and thinking outside the box. When your content has value, customers will continue relying on your brand to meet their needs. When done right, content marketing can also generate over three times as many leads as outbound marketing while costing 62% less.
Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Understanding the benefits of investing in content marketing and analyzing what makes quality content are the first steps to take toward growing your audience and increasing your brand’s online presence. However, equally as important is having a firm understanding as to why your current efforts aren’t delivering positive outcomes. If you’re not seeing results from your digital content strategies, it could be that you’re guilty of one of these six content marketing mistakes.
1. Your content is unoriginal
Lack of originality is one of the top mistakes that marketers make when writing blog posts and creating content for social media. While unique content increases visibility, duplicate content does exactly the opposite. Google can even remove sites that include replicated information. Improve your site’s search ranking by producing unique, high-quality content that’s both relevant and informative.
2. You’re not researching what content your audience wants to see
When it comes to creating content, it’s important to first evaluate whether or not your content marketing strategy is helping attract or drive away your audience. If you find the latter to be true, then it’s time to change your approach. Researching your target audience is a great first step to accomplishing this. Catering your brand messages to specific demographics can allow you to narrow in on a target market’s wants and needs.
3. You’re creating content that isn’t reusable
Much of what you post to your business’s website should be evergreen (content that will always remain relevant). If you choose to write a blog post on a popular trend, it’s more than likely going to gain traction for a few days, then become a dud piece. By creating content that can consistently be re-promoted or tweaked and re-published, you’ll likely drive more traffic over a longer period of time and save yourself the trouble of constantly cranking out new content..
4. Your content includes grammar errors and mistakes
Basic grammar errors are a huge credibility killer. If you don’t have the time to edit your content, then you probably shouldn’t produce any in the first place. This goes back to the importance of developing quality content over quantity. Simple mistakes such as using “your” instead of “you’re” seem harmless, but can actually give your audience a poor first impression of your brand and distract them from your overall message. If you find that you’re too busy to create quality content, consider hiring a digital marketer to help.
5. You’re not reviewing content performance
Some marketers and small business owners mistakenly believe that as soon as they publish content, their work is done. However, without reviewing the data, it’s impossible to know whether your efforts were even worth the time. It’s important to review the performance of your content on a regular basis. Analyzing engagement metrics such as page views, clicks, and social media shares can help you better understand how you can improve your marketing strategies and deliver the content that your audience wants to see.
6. You’re not promoting your content enough
When it comes to creating content, it’s important to follow the 80/20 rule. You should be spending 20% of your time creating content and 80% of your time promoting it. Your main focus should be to place content in front of the noses of your audience so that there is zero likelihood of it going unseen. If you write a blog post, you should be sharing the link on all social media platforms. If you create a social media post, make sure that it’s shareable so that you can reach a greater audience. Developing a solid marketing strategy is a great first step to take when determining how to drive sales with content.
We hope these six avoidable content marketing mistakes will help you know when to consider re-evaluating your strategies and how to place your audience’s expectations at the forefront of your brand messaging. For more information, contact us today.
Resources:
- 85 Fascinating Content Marketing Statistics To Make You A Marketing Genius
- 9 Stats That Will Make You Want to Invest in Content Marketing
- In The Know: Why a Digital Content Strategy is Important
- Top 10 Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2019
- 305 Tasks Digital Marketers Do
- 5 Key Elements of a Successful Marketing Strategy
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