Content marketing is the digital marketing buzzword you hear everywhere these days.
Bloggers, vloggers, social media gurus, and digital marketing agencies are always churning out content to receive visits, shares, likes, retweets, and comments.
Image courtesy of i New Media
Everything else will quickly drown in the millions of words, images, and videos created every day. You won’t be able to achieve the desired objectives, and valuable investment of time and money will be useless.
Here we share with you the content mistakes you must avoid at all costs:
1) You create bad content
Creating content is a process, not a solution. A bad process will not take you anywhere. Many creators post content that is poorly produced, has spelling and grammar mistakes, has audio problems, and images that do not load properly on mobile devices.
The problem with creating content with such mistakes is – it not only fails the objectives you wanted to achieve with your content, but it also makes the audience view your brand in a negative light. This means you create content that does you more harm than good.
2) Your content’s primary objective is to sell
People are constantly bombarded with advertisements already. Do not expect people to spend time on your content if you are continually asking for their money. Engaging content is either informative or entertaining.
For example, this online leather jacket store keeps user-generated content and ‘Shop our Instagram’ section on its website to give ideas to potential customers. It is an additional incentive for the person who wishes to buy a leather jacket because they also learn how to style it.
An ideal video will answer people’s ‘why’ or ‘how-to’ questions. Give people reasons to keep coming back to your website. Solve their problems. They will trust you as a thought leader and problem solver, and start trusting you more. In no time, these same visitors will gradually convert into paying customers.
3) Your content is tone-deaf
How many times have you left reading books and articles that sounded too tone-deaf for you? Your online audience is real people; you must keep your audience in mind when curating content for them.
Have an engaging, inviting tone. Hold the reader’s attention with your style while delivering the information they are looking for. This will also result in lower bounce rates on your webpages. Speak to your audience as you would to a person sitting in front of you; it is necessary if you want your audience to build deeper connections with your brand.
4) Your content is not relevant
Creating good content alone means nothing if it is not delivered to the right audience. For example, a brilliant visual about rocks under the sea will not mean much to a specialty coffee enthusiast.
Identify your target audience. Create a model personality. Identify their pain points and interests. Understand what answers they could potentially be searching.
Once you have pinned down the specific segment you want to reach, create content that will appeal to this segment. This makes people much more likely to engage with your content and help you achieve your content goals.
5) You are using the wrong platforms
You have written a thoroughly researched article about precious gemstones for your jewelry business, added some stunning photographs, and posted it on your LinkedIn business page. You are now waiting to see engagement. Sadly, you might have to wait forever.
Not all online platforms are created for all types of content. Your jewelry business could get better engagement by sharing your entirely designed article on your Facebook page. Alternatively, you could extract the pictures and some excerpts from the text to create the perfect Instagram posts.
Similarly, an online mental health counseling business will do better at Facebook and LinkedIn as compared with Pinterest and Instagram. Know the platforms your audience mostly use, and leverage them accordingly.
6) Your content is not optimized for different displays
This is a classic content mistake that throws your efforts off despite everything else being perfectly in order. Not everyone will view your content on the same devices. The mobile audience is now more important than ever, and businesses that do not optimize content for mobile, lose a major segment of their audience.
For example, Logo Design Valley makes branding and designs that go well with a desktop display, mobile display, and tablet display at the same time. It saves you from the additional effort because the visuals are curated to fit the right screens from the get-go.
Make sure all the crisp images you have added in your perfectly curated blog article, render properly and quickly across all browsers and devices. Moreover, the call to action buttons placed in and around your content are sized and work properly across all devices your audience will be using.
7) You don’t know your content targets
Many businesses create content without clearly defining their desired objectives. Creating content only for the sake of creating some content will not help your business much.
Businesses can have several content goals. Identify yours like increasing website visits through calls to action (CTAs), higher search engine rankings, more Facebook page likes, etc. Once you have established your goals, you can create content that helps you build up towards them.
Make sure you establish measurable and achievable KPIs to monitor your progress and to alter your content strategy if necessary. Successful businesses continuously adapt and evolve according to audience response. Having a target based content strategy will save you from wasting time and valuable resources, and increase ROI on your content generation.
Key takeaways:
No matter what business you represent, content is critical. This fact has been valid even before the internet played a huge part in our business and marketing. When looking to create content, always consider your business model.
Your content marketing will appeal to the customer when it is targeted towards the customer, designed to match their likes and then executed only to reach the target customer. Once you apply all these tips on your business, you will notice a significant difference. If you have any more ideas, we would love to discuss it in the comments section.
About the Author: Alma Causey
Alma is a Freelance writer by day and sports fan by night. She writes about Fashion and Tech. Live simply, give generously, watch football and a technology lover.
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