4 Common Content Marketing Mistakes You're Probably Making
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Content marketing is one of the most powerful tools a company can use when promoting their products or services online. As the fuel that propels your online presence forward, your content needs to be strong and make an impact with your target audience. If you're missing the mark, you'll struggle to make long-lasting connections with potential customers and clients.
Because content marketing is so important for the success of your business, you can't afford to make careless mistakes. Unfortunately, companies in all industries fail to recognize the true value of the content they're creating. Instead, they slap together a few blog posts, repost content created by their competitors, and put little effort or energy into creating truly engaging pieces.
If you're making content marketing mistakes, you're going to find it difficult to make a name for yourself or your company. Luckily, recognizing where you're going wrong doesn't need to be difficult. Because many companies fail at content marketing in the same area, it can be easy to find what you're doing wrong and make the necessary changes to get your marketing back on the right track.
Take a look at four of the major content marketing mistakes of which you're probably guilty:
1. You're Not Mapping Out a Plan
If you're marketing a company online, you probably know how important it is to stay active on your website and social media pages. However, simply posting new content isn't enough. If you're sitting down to your computer and banging out a blog post or two whenever you get the chance, you're probably not making much progress with your target audience.
Customers and clients like consistency. They like to know what they can expect from you and when they can expect it. If you're not uploading a new blog post at the same time each day, week, or month, your audience may not know when to check back for new material. Additionally, if your content doesn't seem to follow a clear path or train of thought, you're going to struggle to get repeat readers.
Creating a content calendar is a great way to stay on track and ensure you're uploading new, relevant content consistently. Not only does a content calendar save you time and ensure you know what you're going to post before you complete the material, but it can also help you develop a big-picture plan of how you will present the content on your website to your audience.
When creating your content calendar, it is nice to get as detailed as possible early on. While this may involve spending a bit more time during the planning phase, you can save time in the long run by mapping out your ideas before you need to create your content. That allows you to spend some time thinking about what you're going to write and gives you the opportunity to do adequate research before you begin creating.
Keep in mind that your content calendar doesn't need to be set in stone. If you come across a topic that is more relevant to a specific time or date, go ahead and post that instead. You should view your content calendar as a penciled outline. Feel free to make changes as you see fit.
2. You're Trying to Market for Free
One of the biggest benefits of online marketing is that you're able to push a lot of materials for a very low cost. In some cases, you can get away with promoting marketing materials completely for free. However, if you're trying to rely on the power of the internet to help your content take off organically, you're going to have a hard time getting noticed.
While the internet can sometimes sweep a piece up and make it go viral, the truth is this doesn't happen often. With millions of pieces of content uploaded every day, your pieces need to stand out. That means you may need to give your content a bit of a boost by spending some cash.
Your content marketing budget needs to consider a few different areas. First, if you want to create superb content, you may need to outsource or hire a professional to become a part of your team. You also need to consider how you're going to promote that content once created, which may be through traditionally paid advertisements on search engines or social media platforms.
To make the most of the money you're spending on your content marketing, you need to know your audience. Because you want your investment to bring in the highest return, you don't want to throw your cash into a social media platform or search engine where your audience isn't active. Instead, turn to your most popular platforms to promote your content.
Remember that you don't need to pay to promote every piece of content you create. Instead, you should focus on boosting the evergreen pieces that you know are capable of attracting a lot of new leads. Developing a few strong pieces that have the potential to go viral can help you bring in new customers who will explore the rest of your content organically.
3. You're Not Promoting Your Content
Have you ever uploaded a new blog post or video, then sat back and waited for the views to roll in? You were probably a bit surprised when the numbers crawled instead of skyrocketed. While your content may have been strong, it doesn't bring you any benefit if you're not making your audience aware that it is out there.
Many companies upload new content consistently, but they fail to let their target audience know it is available. Instead, they hope that past customers will return to their website to see what is new or that the power of social media or SEO will help the post take off. Unfortunately, because of the mass amounts of content available online, content usually becomes lost in a sea of similar posts.
For your content to truly be beneficial to your marketing, you need to have a strong promotion plan. That means you need to think beyond just what content you're going to create, but you also need to consider how you're going to deliver it to your intended audience. This includes considering the context in which you're going to frame the content.
Many companies turn to social media, forums, or their community to help share their content with their target audience. While this is a powerful way to let your intended customer know it is out there, you need to promote it in a relevant and helpful conversation. If you're simply posting links or inserting quotes here and there, your audience is probably going to ignore you.
When creating your content promotion plan, look for seemingly organic ways to bring up the pieces you've created. If someone within your target audience is looking for assistance or has a question, share a piece of content that may help them. Additionally, craft social media posts that frame your content interestingly and engagingly. When you're able to build a conversation around your content, you can make longer-lasting connections.
4. You're Creating Content for the Sake of It
If you're reading this, you probably already know how important content is to your marketing. However, this doesn't mean just any content will improve your online presence. If you're creating content just to upload something new, you're only wasting your time and money.
Your content is going to act as the backbone for all the other marketing strategies you do online. From your social media to your search engine optimization, if you don't have great content, you can expect your other strategies to be successful. Because your content is what your audience will engage with and share, you need to consider the strength of the pieces you're creating.
When creating content, you shouldn't be focusing on search engine algorithms or crawlers. Instead, you want to put your readers and target audience at the center of each piece you create. When you create content that speaks directly to your intended customer, you're able to get more attention, higher engagements, and will improve your shares and search engine rank.
Each piece of content you create should have a purpose. It should answer a question, provide entertainment, or persuade your target audience to make a purchase eventually. If that content does not bring your audience closer to becoming a loyal customer, then it isn't necessary.
Before you put the time and money into creating a new piece of content, sit back and think about what value it would bring you. If you're unsure of how it will help your company succeed, then put it on the backburner. Instead, you want to focus all your time and energy on creating pieces that will build and enhance your brand's community.
When creating your content marketing strategy, don't waste time on anything that isn't going to bring you value. If you're making careless mistakes, you might as well be ignoring your content completely.
Keep these four common mistakes in mind the next time you're refining your content marketing strategy. If you find that you're guilty of any of them, make the necessary changes to bring your content back to high-quality.
⭐ Recent Articles ⭐
In case you missed them, here are some of my latest blog posts from several of the websites/publications that I write for:
How to Collaborate Effectively with Your Team on Content Creation — (Guest Post for Letterdrop’s Blog)
Substack Recommendations (New Substack Product Feature!)— (Blogging Guide Blog)
Best Web3 Blogging Platforms in 2022 — (Blogging Guide Blog)
Substack Income Report March 2022 — (Casey Botticello Blog)
Medium Partner Program Earnings March 2022 — (Casey Botticello Blog)
How to Get Approved for Mediavine — (Casey Botticello Blog)
7 Best Types of Content Marketing: Create, Connect, Convert — (Medium, Digital Marketing Lab)
⭐ Personal / Business Updates ⭐
I’ve been experimenting with new blogging automation tools. One of the tools that I’ve been using over the past few months is Tidio, which is a chatbot and live messenger system that appears on Blogging Guide. The idea was to test the chatbot functionality to see if it could successfully “sell” some of my courses, eBooks, or my Substack newsletter. To my surprise, the automated chatbot has managed to make a few sales in each of these categories. It’s a pretty neat tool, and most importantly, it does not require any coding or technical expertise. Since creators (and bloggers in particular) are always pressed for time, this seems like a very useful tool, as it functions completely autonomously once added to your website (basically acting as your robot customer service agent). You can try Tidio for free (they have a free “forever” tier, which I like). Otherwise it will end up costing between $35-$50 per month for the unlimited option. Still, one or two sales per month for most creators would justify the unlimited tier).
I retrofitted the motorized component of an older sitting/standing electric desk, adding a new piece of beautiful wood as the desk table top. It’s huge! Roughly 76 inches wide, but relatively shallow (25 inches), so it still fits in my relatively small place. It is so large, it actually distorts the size of my two colossal desktop monitors (which previously looked somewhat comical on my smaller desk). But most importantly, with the click of button, it increases from on set height to another:
I hope you found this newsletter issue useful!
I’m planning on sticking with this new format (including roundup of articles published and some personal/business updates, in addition to an article) for at least a few weeks, so let me know if you like this new format!
Until next time!
—Casey
In a world of content overload it is so hard to get noticed. Thanks for sharing your insights about what not to do.