You will want to make sure you are getting everything right with your content marketing this year. 2018 is too crucial a time for your business if you will be taking full advantage of content marketing.
If you have gone through the golden rules of content marketing that I earlier talked about, here are some common mistakes in content marketing that you will want to do away with.
1 Poor Content
I am starting with this because it is the most important. The aim of content marketing is to use a well-crafted copy to make something happen. If such a content is then poor, what does that say about your conversion potential? I don’t know about you, but no one is going to be taking any action at the end of the day.
Neil Patel, an industry expert in the subject of content marketing, even believes it is better if people don’t get to read your poor copy at all. They might decide to share it just to make fun of you. If they don’t, they won’t come back to read another poor piece from you. Either way, you lose at least one customer.
This year, put more focus into the quality of your content, not just the frequency of churning it out.
2 Usefulness
It is not uncommon to see people put up posts such as ‘the 9 problems in XYZ,’ ‘how you are getting ABC wrong’ and the likes. Where the problem lies is when the article ends without offering the reader information on how to turn the situation around.
You have just confirmed the problems they are facing, not helped them. Who needs one more person telling them how they are wrong?
Instead of leaving your readers to go elsewhere in search of a solution, provide it right inside your own post.
3 Partnerships are not everything
One of the things I personally endorse when doing content marketing is guest posting. One of the biggest mistakes in content marketing though is associating with the wrong brands. While you could have leveraged each other’s resources to push the respective brands forward, it could also make you lose a ton of fans.
For example, a business promoting the black community would not want to leverage the resources of another whose management is known to be racist. That would be utterly counterproductive. In this business of content marketing, you should choose your friends wisely.
4 Statistics can be everything.
45% of the time, the statistics that are published on websites are false. If you don’t believe me, I should inform you that the figure in this section is wrong as well.
While you might not have noticed, some meticulous individuals would check it out. If it doesn’t pan out, you have lost your credibility and that of their friends. See that as losing referrals and word-of-mouth sales, all in one fell swoop.
There are a lot of numbers around these days, and we don’t know about half of them are come about. You can still be in the game safely if you would only reference reputable organisations when mentioning statistical figures.
5 Shorter is always better
No matter the kind of content marketing you are doing – be it text or media – you will find out that longer content is more appealing to the audience than shorter ones. You will know this, of course, only if you have set up analytics for every content you send out.
If you are doing videos, make them longer than the traditional 5 to 10 minutes you have been doing. Take your time to write a longer blog post. If it’s an explainer, extend it to include all the little details. In short, as long as it is useful content, the audience would stay glued to it.
6 Lack of Analytics tools
Leading from the above point, it is a sorry case that people who call themselves content marketers would send out content and not set up metrics for such a material.
For every content sent out, you should know that there is the possibility of a conversion, sale, follow-up, etc. If you don’t measure how well it is doing out there on its own, how then do you know what to improve upon, tweak or concentrate on?
One of the most important tools I use for this myself is the Google Analytics tool. The best part is, it is very free and user-friendly.
Which of these common mistakes in content marketing have you made? Better still, which mistakes have you made in your content marketing that does not appear on this list? Share with the community and let’s get talking in the comments section.
