Is your company performing content marketing correctly? Is your brand a publisher? Are you totally lost with my line of thought here? If so, let me back up.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that the term “content marketing” started to go mainstream. Content marketing is when businesses produce content (fancy word for articles, videos, audio) about topics of interest that don’t hawk the company’s brand or product.
For example, a real estate company may host a running blog on decorating tips. Or a coffee shop may publish stories on its site about positive study habits. Or a pet store may put out articles on best practices in dog training.
Content marketing is an incredibly effective way to attract potential and existing customers to your website and social media pages. The better the content, the more likely they will be to visit and think of your company when they need something that fits into your industry.
The concept is catching on so rapidly that there are even content marketing conferences and magazines dedicated to the idea. So before you launch your next marketing campaign, take note of the following content marketing mistakes.
Top Content Marketing Mistakes
Selling, Selling, Selling
Your content should not be about you or your company. This sounds counterintuitive (you may wonder why you would spend time writing something that wasn’t going to net you customers), but it is the only way to go.
By providing articles, audio and video that interests your base, people will start to come to your site as a trusted source of information. For many of those readers, that trust will eventually turn into dollars for you.
Sporadic Posting
If you want to hold an audience, you need to post content regularly.
Don’t have time to post every day?
No problem. Try twice or three times per week but keep it up – people will notice if you lag.
Exhibiting Lack of Focus
As the leader of your own CPA firm, one day you post an article about tax tips and the next day you post something about your dog’s trip to the beach. This lack of focus is a common mistake.
Try to stick with a theme in line with your industry. Your content should have a purpose. It should be useful to readers, not just an outlet for your personal thoughts or opinions.
Creating Boring Posts
The content you put out there doesn’t always need to be in text form. Change things up every once in a while with video posts, infographics or photo-heavy posts with captions.
Your effort to keep things fresh will help attract readers.
Loading Up on Keywords
Keywords are important to enhance the search engine optimization (SEO) of your content. But peppering in too many of them can get annoying.
Lets say you are a CPA writing an article about how employers can fill out 1099 forms for contractors. Your keyword phrase may be “1099 tax tips,” so anyone who Googles that phrase comes to your post first. That is all well and good, but try to mention your phrase only a few times in your piece. It will get redundant otherwise.
Using Bad Grammar or Making Typos
Don’t publish anything with less-than-stellar grammar. Remember that typos are a turn-off and can even decrease your company’s credibility in the eyes of potential leads.
Mistake Photo via Shutterstock
Yaniv Masjedi: I have been “guilty” of sporadic posting, during the years, but please give me some slack! 😉 I have been blogging since 2002… 🙂
Great tips! Providing quality and relevant content to your traget audience is a key factor for a successful web marketing. You don’t need to sell your products or services all the time but focus on providing articles that will solve your web visitors’ problems or answer their needs.
You might also remember that no matter how good your content is, your efforts might be pu to waste if you don’t know how to present it the right way. Keeping your website mobile friendly is a must since more and more people are browsing the internet looking for information via mobile phones. Making sure that your articles can be shared is also a good thing to be able to have a wider audience reach. The points you’ve highlighted in your article are very timely and useful especially these days when social media is on the rise.
Thanks for your comment, WizardTech. I’m glad you found these points useful. I agree that having an mobile-enabled site is important as is making content sharable.
You cannot succeed in blogging until you update your website regularly. I noticed some people who are very energetic when they start blogging but after couple of month they fed up with blogging, that’s why it is recommended to choose such niche in which you have good command and be patience. Along with regular update of your blogs, writing interesting and informative posts means capturing the attentions of more people. Those people who write boring contents are just trying to kicked away people from their blogs. The 6 mistakes highlighted by you are important to control today and have bright future in blogging 🙂
Yes, to your point, it is incredibly important to start a blog with a solid strategy. Without a game plan, it can be easy to lose steam and forget to post. Or post items not relevant to your readership. Thanks for your comment.
I agree hard selling doesn’t work in content marketing. If one provides relevant content that helps the website visitor solve their pain point, you may have a won a future customer.