A survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute found that 92% of marketers say that their company considers content a valuable business asset. It’s no wonder that content marketing has evolved as one of the best investments a company can make. Many organizations are using content to increase traffic and bring high-quality leads.
Content marketing is a crowded market, and there is little or no room for mistakes. Hence, you need to make sure you are doing everything right to maximize the returns on your content marketing efforts.
Here’s a list of 6 most common mistakes content marketers make and what you can do to avoid them:
6 Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake #1: Not Knowing Who Your Audience Is
Many businesses make the mistake of creating content without knowing their audience. This attracts leads that are never going to convert. So, take time to define who you are writing for and what type of content your audience expects.
Listen to your customers’ pain points and create content targeting their pain points. When the right content is targeted to the right audience, you’ll attract customers that will convert and also share your content on social media.
Mistake #2: Not Creating Content Your Audience Expects
55% of people who receive content from brands say that it’s either not interesting or relevant to them!
Some businesses are so focused on creating keyword-targeted content for SEO purposes that they forget the intent of the content. If your content is just throwing out keywords for the search engines and not actually adding value for the readers, your readers will unfollow you. So, create content that is balanced with the right amount of keywords with no compromise on the quality and readers’ interest.
Mistake #3: Not Setting Goals or Measuring Performance
Your content needs to have goals, and its performance has to be measured through key performance indicators (KPIs). Setting up goals helps you figure out why your content is doing good or why it isn’t. This helps you create content that is focused on serving its purpose for your target audience as well as your business.
For example, if the goal of your content is to create brand awareness, the KPIs that can be used to measure its performance are visits, impressions, likes, shares, time spent on the page, etc.
Mistake #4: Not Optimizing for SEO
While completely focusing your content on SEO is a mistake, you cannot completely ignore SEO. Do keyword research so you can insert the keywords in the content for it to rank better on search engines.
Ideally, your article should contain a mix of content designed to engage your audience as well as rank in the search engines. A balanced mix will increase website traffic and also generate leads.
A lot of what goes into writing quality content that is aligned with the best SEO practices. Some tips:
- Create descriptive title and URL
- Add relevant images
- Do keyword research
- Use a tool for content production and optimization
Mistake # 5: Making it Salesy
In an attempt to generate leads or sales, some businesses insert a sales pitch into every piece of content they write. While a call to action in your content is an absolute necessity, overly salesy content is a mistake. When you sell too much in your content, your reader becomes skeptical about the information and doubt your authenticity.
So, try to limit your sales pitches to the bottom of the funnel; the chances of people converting are high when the CTA is placed at the bottom of the blog post.
ProTip: You can also try adding a call to action to articles that are already getting high traffic every month.
Mistake #6: Ignoring CTAs
Your content has a purpose – to make your readers take action. Your content has to connect to potential customers, build a relationship with them, and generate leads.
But, if your content doesn’t tell your potential customers what they need to do after they read your blog, then you’ll have a lot of missed opportunities on your plate.
The CTA in your content provides the next logical step for potential customers to follow. It encourages them to take action, whether it is signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form, or scheduling a demo.
Although content marketing is a challenging aspect of marketing, it can help you grow your business if you don’t fall into the trap of making the above content marketing mistakes.
Author Bio:
Sofia David is a digital content marketer at Contenteum where she heads and executes the content creation strategies. Contenteum is a holistic platform that helps SEO agencies and content teams in planning, researching, creating, optimizing, and publishing content to help with rankings. Sofia believes that good content is what offers true value to the reader and that is why she creates content with a reader-first mindset. When she’s not working on new content, she finds pleasure in gardening and loves to play Scrabble every chance she gets.
