If you are ready to take your content marketing to the next level, then this is the blog you need to read! It can be very easy to take one step forward and two steps back when it comes to content marketing, so we have put together this guide on the common pitfalls and how you can avoid them.
1. Not publishing content regularly
With millions of blogs on the World Wide Web, only around half of these are still active today. It is incredibly important, not only from a user perspective, but also for SEO that your website and blogs are updated on a regular basis. Take the time to schedule in content marketing at least once a week, and you will start reaping the benefits.
2. Failing to hit the right target audience
All too often people write content for the sake of it, or because they feel it is something they should be doing. This is even more obvious when marketers repurpose old content that ranked well, as part of their SEO strategy. However, you really need to think about the needs of your target audience. Is the content you are writing about going to benefit them, or increase your rankings for a random keyword? Rather than focusing on themes and topics, carry out some customer research and develop personas based on their interests. By the time you have developed the personas, you will have an in-depth understanding of your target audience, so content creation will be easy.
3. Ignoring SEO best practices in your content
SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand. The best content in the world is never going to have any impact if people can’t find it on search engines! Before you even begin writing content, it is important to carry out keyword research. This will give you a topic to write about, but make sure you don’t ‘keyword stuff’ within your content. Keyword stuffing is when you use too many keywords in an unnatural way that makes the content hard to read. Neither search engines or customers will appreciate content that reads like that!
4. Focusing solely on content marketing for sales
So many people get stuck in the habit of writing content specifically to drive sales. You only have to look on social media to see this. Most audiences are intelligent and can quickly distinguish an ad poorly disguised as a blog, and they will leave your website very speedily. Rather than producing content that promotes your products or services, think about the pain points of your customers and how your products or services provide a solution to that.
5. Creating content in a single format
There is nothing more dull than a really long blog post that is text-heavy with no images or infographics to break it up. A website visitor will take one look at content in that format and quickly scroll past without even reading it. What a waste of time writing the blog in the first place! A great tip to get more leads out of your content is to actually repurpose an old piece of content, rather than starting completely from scratch. For example, you could swap some of your long-form content into infographics that are easy to read. This could then be posted on social media, so one piece of content is then used three times.
6. Forgetting to proofread
This may sound like a really basic tip, but so many pieces of content end up going live with mistakes in them! We don’t just mean spelling mistakes either, grammatical errors like using the wrong ‘their’ or ‘there’ are all too common in content marketing. With so many tools out there like spellcheckers and the Grammarly extension, there really is no excuse for putting content out with mistakes in it. Nothing beats a human pair of eyes scanning over the content too, don’t rely solely on technology.
7. Neglecting evergreen content
All businesses should stay on top of the latest industry trends, particularly if you are wanting to be at the top of your game. On-trend content expires quite quickly, and if you only focus on content that is in the limelight right now, it will age and be irrelevant the next day. Now you shouldn’t avoid writing timely content about subject matters that are happening at the time, but try to create evergreen content that is always relevant and doesn’t become old-hat. Google Trends is a great tool for gathering inspiration about topics or keywords to base content marketing on if you are struggling.
8. Overlooking storytelling in your content
People love a good story, and this is becoming a really popular type of content. By creating content based around a story, you can resonate with your target audience and they will be able to relate to your brand. The idea is to create engaging content that connects with your reader, using real-life stories and experiences. We aren’t saying you have to write a complete story, but think about using real-life examples within your content of how your product or service helped solve a problem in one of your customer’s lives. Add images and visuals too, as this can help illustrate your stories if they are hard to describe with words.
9. Ignoring feedback from your target audience
You know that old saying ‘the customer is always right’? Content marketing is all about listening to your customers. Take the time to gather data from your social media channels and your customers directly, and see if there are any correlations at all. If lots of your customers have the same questions about your products or services, write a blog or news article addressing this. It is a great way to create content that your audience are already looking for!
10. Not measuring the ROI of your content marketing
Writing content for the sake of it is a waste of time. You can’t just write it, make it live on your website and hope for the best. While you won’t be able to directly calculate the ROI from your content marketing, there are lots of other KPIs that you can use to assess its effectiveness. For example, have you seen an increase in website traffic since focusing on your content marketing? Have your social media metrics improved? Has your conversion rate increased? By tracking these metrics you can really understand whether the content you are creating is engaging your audience or not.
Avoiding Mistakes With Content Marketing
It is important to remember that we are all human, and it is really easy to make mistakes when it comes to content marketing. By being aware of these common pitfalls that we have discussed, you can make sure your content marketing strategy is heading in the right direction. If you need extra help with this, contact the team at DBS Digital to see how we can help your business.
