Content marketing is essential for modern businesses looking to promote their brand and connect with their target audience on the web and across social media platforms. However, despite being a smart investment that can bring rapid growth rate to the organization, that doesn’t mean it’s bulletproof. Seemingly small errors can have big consequences that can render efforts ineffective. Fortunately, these are completely avoidable, which is why we’ve compiled this handy little guide to help you avoid the top 10 content marketing mistakes and stay on the path to success.
Mistake 1: Never Refreshing Your Content
Anything outdated loses value, relevance, and engagement with each passing day or week. This doesn’t mean evergreen content aren’t a good idea – these contain foundational, high-impact, never-changing basics of what your brand represents, and who your target audience is. Just don’t rely on that as the only part of your content offering.
What To Do Instead
- Produce different content types based on current events, industry trends, and breaking news.
- Update the site’s evergreen content periodically.
- Make sure blog posts contain statistics and information that are accurate and verifiable from reputable sources.
Mistake 2: Neglecting to Develop Relevant Content
When you fail to sufficiently research your customer base, the specifics for your brand offering, and industry trends, it is still possible to craft compelling content that completely misses the mark. It’s not enough to rest on the conventional wisdom of your trade. You have to understand the problem your audience is having and develop relevant content that offers solutions rather than push people to get your product/service right away.
What To Do Instead
- Create customer profiles for your core audience.
- Test different kinds of content on social media for early insights into what grabs the most attention.
- Look at what your most successful competition is doing.
Mistake 3: Not Going All In
Going all in represents a devotion to making your content one level better than your competitors’. Make your content the gold standard against which your industry compares itself, and customers will notice.
What To Do Instead
- Add more data to your content. It lends authority and credibility.
- Don’t just settle for blog posts. Create newsletter content, infographics, white papers, videos, audio, and other content type.
- Reproduce content similar to the pieces – whether it’s on your site or your competitors’ – that perform best.
Mistake 4: Not Identifying KPIs
KPIs (key performance indicators) are the numbers that gauge the success of your content marketing. Without the right KPIs, you will spend more resources in the wrong places and produce content your audience doesn’t want.
What To Do Instead
- Find out how your audience most avidly engages with content.
- Define your intended outcomes for each type of content you produce.
- Identify in even greater detail what you want each step in the funnel to achieve.
Mistake 5: No CTAs
Every piece of content must include a clearly defined next step. Your CTA (call to action) must lead readers to make a purchase and become your clients. If the trail isn’t clear and easy to follow, this renders any well-written piece of content useless.
What To Do Instead
- Make it obvious what’s in it for the lead to follow your CTA.
- Get creative with different kinds of CTAs.
- Use CTAs throughout your content – not just once.
Mistake 6: Ignoring SEO
The combination of changing algorithms, ever-evolving practices, and new machine learning technology in the world of search engine optimization can be overwhelming, but you can’t just close your eyes and hope for them to go away. When content isn’t optimized, this will fail to get attention from new leads who are googling for precisely what you offer.
What To Do Instead
- Make keyword research an integral part of planning every piece of content.
- Know the best keywords for each of your customer profiles.
- Interlink your content to improve traffic and performance.
Mistake 7: Ignoring Email Marketing Opportunities
Did you know that a successful email marketing campaign outperforms search engine marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, and social media? If you don’t leverage on this opportunity, you’ll miss out building a potentially massive subscriber base and you’ll have a hard time keeping your brand and service fresh in readers’ minds.
What To Do Instead
- Make emails mobile-responsive.
- Use custom social media links.
- Put time into creating an awesome subject line.
Mistake 8: No Master Plan
Each piece of content in your funnel should turn warm leads into dedicated, loyal clients. But more than that, there must be an overall strategy that determines how each piece of content interacts with the others. Content creation without a master plan won’t be able to achieve its intended goals.
What To Do Instead
- Your website should have a variety of content that addresses client life cycle, from awareness to purchase to advocacy.
- Create a piece of content built to make the sale for the best first purchase for each customer.
- Determine what content you already have and where you see holes that need to be filled.
Mistake 9: Setting And Forgetting It
You should know what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong. If a blog post is underperforming, it won’t do so much on pulling the right kind of traffic your site deserves to get.
What To Do Instead
- Find out your best (and worst) performing content at the start of each quarter, to help establish benchmarks for future pieces.
- Reoptimize old content with long-tail keywords.
- Focus on the user intent. Make sure it answers the user’s questions.
Mistake 10: Giving Up Too Early
Many businesses expect instant gratification, but content marketing is a long-term game. Fight the urge to expect that a single piece will go viral and turn your venture into an overnight success.
What To Do Instead
- Identify the most important metrics for tracking content performance.
- Focus on building the trust of your audience and developing a relationship with them.
- Keep reaching new people to replace those that are outgrowing your site.
Back To You
There’s a lot here so consider this course of action: Commit to working on one of these mistakes each month or every quarter. It might take a while, but this kind of slow, steady, and systematic approach will win the race. As you revamp your content strategy for 2020, make sure you use the best content marketing tool that can help achieve your business goals. Check out Cabana today – it’s FREE to sign up!
