Don't Fall Foul Of These Common Content Marketing Mistakes
Content is a big deal these days. After all, you will have no doubt heard the saying “content is king” over and over again, and there is a very good reason for that - content really is king as it can help to boost your marketing prowess and help even more customers and clients discover your company. However, content marketing isn’t simply writing and publishing a few blog posts every now and then. There’s actually a lot more to it than that.
Content marketing covers the various ways you use words in your business, both online in blogs and on your website, as well as offline in traditional marketing methods such as flyers and leaflets. So, as you can see that the scope for content marketing is so huge, there is no wonder that there are so many pitfalls that you could end up in. it’s important that you try to not make any mistakes with your content, as once it is out there, it could be out there for good. Even content that can be edited, such as online blog posts and copy, could still have a detrimental effect even if they are corrected, as they will impact your site’s SEO.
To make sure you never make any mistakes with your content marketing, here are some of the most common ones and how you can prevent them.
Failing To Define Your Audience
First of all, you need to define your audience right from the start. There isn’t any point in creating content before you do this, as you would run the risk of creating content that doesn’t catch your target audience’s attention or that isn’t suited to their needs and wants. So, it really is worth doing a bit of market research on your audience and carefully considering the type of content that will appeal to them. This becomes even more important if you start to sponsor social media posts so that only certain demographics will see them. Your content needs to be expertly fine-tuned to the best audience for your products then, or else it could fall flat.
Trying To Do It All Yourself
You might be tempted to keep your content creation in-house to try and save some money. This can be a good idea if you already have a content marketing team on board. However, if you don’t have experts in your company, then it’s worth thinking about outsourcing all your content to freelance content writers. To bring down costs further, you might want to even use a content creation site, like the zag.ai platform or a similar site. Whatever your current workload, though, it’s wrong to think that you will be able to write all the content yourself. You might end up pushed for time, and this will make it more likely for spelling and grammar errors to make it into the final copy, which is never a good look.
Pushing For The Hard Sell
Some entrepreneurs and business owners think that the content on their website and elsewhere gives them another chance to pitch their company and products to potential clients and customers. However, this really isn’t a good idea at all. In fact, this hard sell could come across as extremely off-putting for most people reading your content. They will switch off and take their money elsewhere. So, be sure not to use your content to push for the hard sell. If you do want to pitch a product in a blog post, for example, it’s best to keep it really subtle. Instead, try to use your content to entertain and inform all your readers - you might be surprised to find that this can be equally persuasive and could motivate them to buy your products.
A Lack Of Consistency
Consistency is the key when it comes to content marketing. If you have a professional blog, you need to make sure that you are publishing new posts on a regular basis. Ideally, you should be posting at least once a week on a regular day and at the same time. That way, your followers know when to expect your new content. You also need some consistency between the language in your blogs and on your website. The best way to achieve this is to create a style guide that everyone who writes for your company can follow.
Not Editing Before Publishing
You can’t just write a blog post and then publish it straight away. If you do that, you are guaranteed to spot some grammatical and spelling errors once it has been published. So, make sure you always re-read your content and carry out any essential editing before you do publish it. This goes for blog posts, social media updates, and copy on your website. If you don’t have the time to commit to all this editing, then you might want to hand over the task to a freelance proofreader to take care of it all for you. If you don’t perfect your posts before they are published, then you might find it puts clients off working with you. After all, a poor quality of written language in your content could reflect really badly on your company’s work as a whole.
Forgetting About SEO
Without optimizing your content for SEO, there is no point to your content at all. You need to make your content to work for you so that it can help to improve your website and blog’s SEO. This will then mean that they both rise through Google’s search rankings. The higher you are up in these rankings means that you will get a lot more traffic to your site from search engines. The easiest way to optimize your content is to add plenty of keyword phrases to it. It will also help to add a few links as well. It’s also a good idea to post all your published posts to social media, like twitter.com, as this will help your SEO ranking grow as well.
So, now you don’t have to worry about making these mistakes!