Content is king… they repeat, over and over again!
Yes, we know that content is very important but if you’re doing it wrong, it’s not king – oh it’s not even princely. It’s more like the court jester.
So how do you make sure that your content is working for you?
Well, you can start with avoiding these five terrible content marketing mistakes…
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The more content the better
Wrong. Now that the days of endlessly stuffing keywords into an article until it’s longer than the Great Wall of China are over, the focus is on quality rather than quantity.
And while you need enough content to get your point across, there’s no need for everything you create to contain more than 500 words. Trust me, less is more.
Make your point eloquently, but concisely – you want people to get the information quickly, so if it looks like it’ll be an effort to read, they won’t.
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Blog posts are all you need
Nooo. Everyone is different and we all process information in our own way. So your content needs to appeal to each type of person within your audience.
Some people will happily read a piece on ‘How to unblock your sink’ when they need the information, but others would prefer to watch a video showing them how it’s done. You could also show the unblocking process in a diagram and share it on Facebook.
The same piece of content can be recycled in many ways – you just need to work out how to target your customers.
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Forgetting to include a call to action
So people are coming to your site. Excellent. They’re reading and watching your content. Fantastic. But then they’re leaving because there’s nothing else for them to do which can affect your bounce rate (the amount of people who visit just one page) and as a direct result, your search engine ranking.
Yes the content is interesting, maybe even helpful, but if you don’t give them any clues as to what they’re supposed to do next then it was a wasted exercise.
You shouldn’t shove sales pitches in their face, but you should have some form of suggestion, whether it’s to share the content on social media, enjoy additional content or sign up to your newsletter. Make it obvious.
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Trying to be present on all of the social networks
Be sensible. We know that social media is incredibly important for businesses, but ask yourself why you’re trying so hard?
If you’re a plumber, you probably don’t need to be on Pinterest and if you sell kids’ clothes LinkedIn may not be the best solution for your business.
Do some research and look at the demographic of each social network. It’s much better to have a strong follower base and interaction on one network, then a few disinterested people on ten. Use your common sense and pick wisely.
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Failing to analyse the results
How will you be able to improve your content marketing if you don’t know the results of your current strategy? It doesn’t have to be time consuming – there are plenty of platforms, like Google Analytics that show you where your traffic is coming from and how long they’re spending on your site.
Most of the social networks have their own statistics that you can monitor to see what type of posts were most successful and if people clicked through to your site.
If you know why people are finding your content, you can enhance it and gain more credibility and more customers.
Remember…
Good content marketing requires a lot of time and effort, but if you create the content and market it well, the results will speak for themselves.
[bctt tweet=”5 content marketing mistakes you need to stop making. Right now.”]
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