A successful content marketing and SEO strategy is not only a question of “will” but also of “Can”. Many content marketing campaigns fail abruptly because although companies start with full of enthusiasm but fail on correct implementation and lose a track of their goals mid-way. This leads to wastage of time and resources on a campaign that never bears the expected fruits.
In such cases it is necessary to learn from the mistakes for the success of future content marketing campaigns. Here is the list of the common mistakes businesses make while running a content marketing campaign. These mistakes must be avoided to ensure high quality results from your efforts.
Content marketing mistake #1 : Forgetting to do preparatory work
Before you start a campaign you should be clear about what are you doing it, and what your goals are. Without a clear idea on goal of the content marketing SEO campaign it becomes very difficult for the businesses to measure the effectiveness of the effort and resources they put into it. While starting a content marketing campaign this is the biggest mistake businesses make. That’s why the prequisite of any content marketing campaign is to make a identify your readers, and make a solid strategy around their interests, and use tools to measure the efficacy of the campaign. If you find your efforts are not giving you the desired results, quickly change the strategy.
Content marketing mistake #2 : Unfocused content
Too many marketers create content which sounds good to their ears and the ears of their advisors. The content they create focuses mainly on their corporate interests. Now, many people say why shouldn’t we put our business interests on top while creating a content, after all we are creating the content to promote our business. Although it sounds good, its counter-intuitive. content marketing is not a matter of showing how good we, our products, and services are. Good content marketing revolves around the need of our target audience. It should offer them something substantive, improve their knowledge, and be engaging.
Content
Content marketing mistake #3 : Talking too much about your product
This is one of the most common mistake content marketers make. Many times content sounds like a sales letter. As you are promoting your products, its obvious that you should definitely talk about it, however, you should put visitors interest on top. For example, you own a florist shop, you can create a wonderful article about value flowers as gift, origin of the customs, different additional gifts that can be given with the flowers, occasions etc and as a end note to the content, inform the readers about your website and how can it help them with flowers are gifts. Etc. Produce content that solve readers day to day problem around you product niche, and enhances their knowledge.
Poor quality content
Content marketing mistake #4: Using poor quality content
Poorly researched articles that are bursting with misspelling and wrong information is the safest way to scare off the hard-won readers. Therefore, do not consider your content marketing strategy as annoying accessory to your Internet marketing and SEO campaigns that you can easy complete on the wing, take enough time for full research and use high quality writers for writing your contents.
Content marketing mistake #5 : Using outdated content
If users have to wait for weeks before he hears from you once again with something new, sooner or later they will stop visiting your blog or website. Not everyone has the resources to hire an editorial team to create articles every day. However, one update once a week should be minimum for any business wanting to succeed in SEO with content marketing.
Content marketing mistake #6 : Creating too much content
Timeliness is important. As long as you don’t overdo it! Many blogs and business pages on social media lose their readers and followers because they don’t know the difference between regular engaging updates, and pushing lot of content which is not creative or engaging. Keep your subscribers up to date, but do not get into their nerves, as no one liked to be spammed with content.
Content marketing mistake #7 : Not using call-to-action
Each communication has a goal. Sometimes we just want to give information, however mostly, we want to trigger a specific action from our readers. The words, graphics, or signs that prompt the reader to take a particular action is called call-to-action.
Looking at the entire customer sale cycle, call-to-action help the user with taking decision on buying or send you their information in the form of lead. To ensure that your visitors don’t leave your website after reading the content, place a call to action prompting the buyers to go to product page or lead capture page. You can also use it to create subscriber list by placing a subscription sign up form at appropriate place around the article.
Content marketing mistake #8 : Not diversifying the content
Majority of your content is probably in text format- and this is mostly justified. However, do not forget that there are other formats that you can use for content marketing – some of the most popular formats are, videos, info graphics, podcasts, slides and presentations, etc. They are particularly well suited for different circumstances and to convey specific information.
To improve your content penetration among the potential clients, you can create one content and publish it via different platforms. For example you can write an ‘how to’ article, create an animated video, create an infographic, and create a slide show, providing the information using animation and graphics. This results in improvement in reach of your content to the potential buyers.
Conclusion:
Good content marketing is not a one-time investment, but requires ongoing commitment. By avoiding these “don’ts” you can ensure long term content marketing success and achieve sustained commitment and loyalty from your target audience.
