Flaws in content marketing strategies can cost you a lot; time, energy, money, and brand image as well. In the race to be on top, many people keep making the same mistakes again and again. You might be trying to improve your content marketing strategies but still overlooking some common mistakes.
If your content marketing strategies are failing to attract the target audience, then chances are you’re making some of the very common mistakes. Such flaws in content marketing strategies can affect any kind of business. From a local service to an online B2B marketplace, anyone can be impacted by such mistakes.
So if you want to overcome the hurdles and make your content stand out in the crowd, you need to stop making these common mistakes right now!
The Most Common Mistakes Content Marketers Make
Although there are many common flaws in content marketing strategies that often content marketers make, we have narrowed down a few most overlooked mistakes.
Chances are you must be making one of these mistakes as well if your content is not doing as well as you expected it to:
- Limiting Content to Blog Posts
- Having Unrealistic Goal
- Concentrating on SEO Only
- Publishing Content That Doesn’t Any Value
- Not Understanding Target Audience
Let’s get into details and see how you can overcome these common mistakes in content marketing!
1. Does Content Mean Only Blog Posts?
Many people center their content around blog posts only. It is useful but you have to expand the variety in your content. A lot of people might enjoy reading the blogs but it’s still not for everyone or your entire target audience.
Every day, 60% of content marketers produce at least one piece of content. Their content is limited to text, images, and audio only. There’s an enormous variety of content that you are missing out on. You can create diverse content such as
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- YouTube Videos (Detailed, Long Videos)
- TikTok Videos or Vines (Short, Quick Videos)
- Memes
- Checklists
- Guides
- Case Studies
- GIFs
- Animations
- Social Media Posts
And any other type of content that fits your business, industry, and target audience. With such diverse content, you can engage any age group or buyer persona.
2. No Clear Goals Means No Clear Outcome!
Many people just grind on creating content without having any kind of definite goal or vision. To create effective content, you must have a definite & achievable goal.
To make it easy for you, start off by following the S.M.A.R.T goal model:
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Assignable
R: Realistic
T: Time-Based
The easiest way to explain a S.M.A.R.T goal; you plan on generating $30,000 revenue in six months instead of $3,000,000 in 3 years. Although the latter might seem attainable if you’re optimistic enough but the time frame is too long and there’s no surety of it.
Set attainable, clear goals and work on them. You will have positive results for sure!
3. SEO is Important but It’s Not the Only Thing!
Many newbies would tell you that SEO is everything in content marketing. That is not the entire truth. It’s an important thing, and you should focus on it but it’s not the only thing you should focus on.
10 or 15 years ago, solely focusing on SEO might have been beneficial, but it’s not the case anymore. You have to breathe life into your content, make it interactive, interesting, and entertaining.
If your SEO is strong enough to rank your content on the first page of the search engine, you have to create appealing content. You can use comics. Memes, infographics or any other trending content type to make the visitor stay and enjoy it.
Once your content becomes appealing, your reach will also start to rise.
4. A lot but Invaluable Content
If you thought writing for SEO purposes was the only bad thing, you’re wrong. The content has to be more than just thousands of words shoved into the reader’s face. We suggested that you widen the variety of the content but it doesn’t mean to just start producing irrelevant content.
Your content has to add value to the reader’s knowledge. The reader should leave with answers, not disappointment. Make it easy to read and scan by adding graphs, bullet points, and avoid jargons.
Instead of creating 50 blog posts in a week, try to produce as low as 20 blog posts in a week but add good value to each.
If you’re outsourcing the content writing job to a freelancer or hiring an in house writer, it is better to spend more on an experienced writer that brings value rather than a budget writer with just filler content.
5. Target Audience… Who is it?
The reason behind producing content is addressing the market gaps, educating your audience and providing them with answers. You have to understand who you are targeting with your content and what their demands are.
For instance, if a reader wants to learn about the Hong Kong B2B marketplace, provide them as much information as you can. But before you give them the information, you need to understand what exactly they want to know about it. Ask yourself a few questions:
- Are you writing for a seller?
- Are you writing for an investor?
- Are you writing for a buyer?
- Is the content easy to understand for the reader?
- Is your information valuable for the reader?
- Is your content relevant?
Considering all these aspects can help you understand the audience in a better way and provide them with the answers they are looking for.
Bottom Line
Create content to add value to your brand image, product, services as well as customer’s understanding of the topic. SEO is crucial, but it’s not everything, writing for the readers is as important as writing for the search engine.
We hope you understood these common flaws in content marketing strategies thoroughly and learned how to overcome them as well!
