It’s not easy to get content marketing right. Many businesses struggle to sustain an effective content strategy that not only engages their audience, but also satisfies search engines. However, with dedication, flexibility and a little patience, you can produce content that communicates the value of your business, demonstrates your credibility and helps you gain more loyal customers.
First, you need to be aware of the most common content marketing mistakes. If you’re new to the content marketing game, or you just want a quick refresher, here are seven common errors and some ideas for how to avoid them.
1. Creating Purposeless Content
The growing recognition of the value of content has resulted in a flood of brand-related content online. With so much saturation, your job as a content marketer is to ensure your content rises above the crowd. This means producing content that is aligned with the needs and interests of your target audience and serves your business goals rather than just for the sake of having content. Tools like Google Analytics and Cyfe are now indispensable for informing your targeted content strategy.
2. Addressing a Generic Audience
Failing to address the challenges faced by potential customers is a lost opportunity to gain new fans. To understand what is relevant to your specific audience, use analytics data and solicit direct customer feedback.
For example, where are your customers located? What questions do they frequently ask relating to your service? How do they find your website? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can develop content that is more personalized, engaging, relevant and up-to-date.
3. Using an Inconsistent Brand Voice
Your brand voice can set you apart from the competition. If you’re using multiples channels, it’s important to maintain a consistent voice that resonates with your target audience. It’s a simple way to strengthen your credibility and amplify your key marketing messages, wherever your audience comes into contact with you. Your website, social media channels, blog, email newsletters, videos, ebooks and white papers should all be in line with your company’s style and philosophy.
To keep it consistent, develop a style guide that clearly represents your brand’s image, describing the tone, language and visuals that should be used.
4. Distributing Through the Wrong Channels
Many businesses are often guilty of sticking to the channels they know or where they think their audience might be. It is important to do some preliminary research into the types of platforms and channels that your specific audience prefers and the best time to reach them. Do they prefer Twitter to Instagram? Facebook to LinkedIn? Find out where your prospects are and target those channels.
5. Focusing on Quantity, Not Quality
Delivering quality content not only boosts your credibility, it also helps improve your search engine rankings. Google recommends publishing in-depth content that answers the questions of your target audience. To keep Google’s algorithms happy, stick to one topic per webpage, don’t repeat keywords too often and use internal links to help people find out more information. These are just the basics, but they’re still vitally important.
6. No Call-to-Action
Without a clear marketing objective in mind, your content can be less valuable in the long run. For example, an air conditioning company might post an article about how to improve air quality in the home, but fail to communicate what the reader should do after reading.
To make the content more valuable, the company could include a clear call-to-action at the end of the article, encouraging people to contact one of their experts about air conditioning solutions. A call-to-action can be as subtle as a link to another page on your site or anything else to lead potential customers in the right direction.
7. Giving Up Too Quickly
The main reason some marketers don’t succeed with content marketing is because they give up too easily. But it takes time to see results. If you’re struggling to produce fresh content on a regular basis, hiring experienced writers to write on your behalf could be the boost your content strategy needs. You can determine the topics that will engage your readers and arrange a price that suits your budget.
Five Essential Questions
In order to produce effective content, content that will actually contribute your marketing objectives, you must first ask yourself some questions:
- Do you understand the needs of your audience?
- Does your content have a distinct brand voice?
- Do you know where your prospects consume content online?
- Do you use analytics to track your progress?
- Does your content contribute to your ultimate marketing objectives?
If you can master these techniques, you will be in a better position to start developing more sophisticated strategies for your content. The writers at Constant Content are here to help!
