As the business world continues to grow with the age of the Internet, Blog Content has become a powerful tool. However, many small businesses are making a lot of avoidable mistakes, and they are missing out on many opportunities to make the most of the existing content.
If you own a website or blog, you’ll know how expensive and time-consuming quality content is. So make the most of your content and avoid costly content mistakes below:
1. There is no plan
The first and most obvious Content Marketing issue is the lack of planning. Most companies have the best short-term plan – they may know what the next few blog posts will be or which pages on their site should be added.
But what about the big picture? How is your content more valuable? Does your content train a prospect in and through sales channels? Are you tracking feedback for your content so you can improve it? The problem is to get a plan on paper that exceeds the content value in the next few weeks.
2. Don’t know your audience (Buyer Personas)
Not understanding your buyer personas is one of the biggest mistakes regarding content marketing. By not taking the time to research and understand your audience, how can you tell which topics catch their attention?
There is a chance you have no idea.
A great way to learn more about your audience is to not only develop buyer personas but also personas readers. Not all of your readers will be your buyers.
However, the topics in your blog should depend on the goals you want to achieve. For most companies, they see their blog as an opportunity to educate and nurture potential customers and hopefully push them down the sales funnel.
Ask yourself questions about your readers:
- What is their age?
- What are their job titles?
- What is their financial status?
- Their educational level?
- What are their hobbies?
- What is their pain point?
- To really hone your buyers, do a buyer interview.
3. Wrong purpose
Content writers may fall into many of the traps that are far from the true goal of the content. Writing content is not about the writer, a random topic or a selling point. All of these types of texts will discourage and alienate your readers.
The goal of content writing is to convey sound professional advice on a topic relevant to your business. Think about your audience. Whose content do you want to read? Then ask the audience what topics they want to read about. Your readers can then become customers if you establish yourself as an expert in your field of business.
The goal is not to sell fast. This may look like a Frequently Asked Questions section of your website, troubleshooting tips, or general information about the industry. Avoid selling content at all costs.
4. Not professional
Businesses in some cases disregard creating their content writing is professional. Writing content needs to be grammatically correct, clear, and valid. Your content must be interesting, engaging, and meaningful to your readers.
Hiring an advertising agency or PR is not always a good way to solve this problem unless they are specifically trained in content writing.
5. Does not provide quality
The main goal of content marketing is to provide your readers and potential customers with useful quality information that helps them solve the problem they are having. To keep your content fresh and maintain a readership, it’s important to publish regularly and consistently.
When you do not post a blog post for a significant period of time, readers will stop visiting your site. Post as often as possible, while making sure you’re publishing quality content.
If you can only post once a week, it is ok. Focus on quality over quantity. When you start littering, you start losing readers, leads, and ultimately customers.
In addition, with Google’s search algorithm, constantly developing, creating quality content is the only reliable way to be found and ranked.
Also Read: How to Write a Guest Blog Post
6. Lack of an SEO expert
One of the many reasons to join Content Marketing is to improve your search engine rankings – a process called search engine optimization (SEO). But a common problem with a Content Marketing campaign is that it does not incorporate the latest SEO techniques.
This is an industry in and of itself. Very few inexperienced employees will be able to take full advantage of updated SEO information. At a minimum, you should have an SEO specialist to give you some policies regarding how to publish content and best practices for any social media content you publish.
Ideally, you can have an SEO expert engage from start to finish so they can track the progress and adjust SEO Strategy for your online shop quickly, otherwise, you should hire an SEO consultant.
7. Not exploit well available internal resources
Another common content marketing mistake is not using your company’s resources (professionals, technical experts, software architects, product managers). Get creative with your content and find a way to incorporate the specific strengths and expertise of your business.
Have your staff come up with ideas and even write articles for you. The more you set your company apart, the more likely it is that your customers and readers will get behind your content and ultimately your company.
8. Do not reuse and reuse
If your company has created content for a while, it’s likely that you’ve published a ton of content covering many different topics. The best part about all that content is that you can use it many times.
Ideas for Content Reuse and Reuse:
- If you have a report, it can be divided into many blog posts
- Create a video or slide presentation from your tutorial articles
- Have your audio and video documents converted into written format
- Building on existing content by expanding certain points, introducing new ideas, etc.
- Share older, more popular content with new members in your audience.
A great way to promote your eBooks is to provide your readers with an excerpt from one of your blog posts. Just don’t forget to add a call to action at the end of the blog post telling your readers to download the full eBook.
Do not let your hard work disappear. Keep your content working for you instead of reusing it.
9. Lack of a call to action
When it comes to content marketing, many marketers forget to add a call to action (CTA) to various places on their marketing channels. If you did not tell your visitors or potential customers about your service or product, how did they know you provided them? They most likely won’t. That’s why you should add CTAs that send them to those pages or information. Whether it’s to get a quote for your IT services or the opportunity to get a free checklist, that doesn’t matter.
Consider placing CTA:
- On your blog
- In your email
- On your Facebook page
- On every page of your site
- In your ebooks and webinars
- In the presentation
- In your email signature
10. The title is not attractive
The title of your content often acts as the first line of communication between your customers and your brand.
If you’re looking to format your headlines to make sure they get the attention they deserve, consider analyzing your site. By looking back at past titles that have performed well, you will discover information that can be used to form future titles.
In addition, social analytics will help you pick out the titles your audience will receive on social media platforms. Social sharing is valuable in terms of content distribution, as it opens up a new path for your content to reach untapped audiences.
11. Do not share Social media
The writer will have one of two issues with social media. Either they will never use it and lose all the potential marketing benefits or they will depend too much on it to do all marketing activities for them.
The content needs to be consistently transmitted through social media, but it must be valuable to your readers and professionally written.
Encourage readers to share your content with social media buttons on your site using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media techniques to share your news. But you have to understand, they will only share high-value content.
12. Talk to the wrong crowd
When creating content, many marketers are confused by the idea that they have to please everyone. They realize that creating relevant and engaging content has the ability to attract, convert, close, and delight customers – which is why they are afraid of alienating potential customers.
The problem with this approach to content creation is that you simply can’t please everyone and do it well. Write about what you know, what you understand, and what you feel strong.
If you try to wear too many hats, it will be hard for you to attract a loyal audience, because your content will be everywhere, instead of focusing on the interests and needs of a specific group.
To create truly resourceful content, you must know what motivates your buyers. If you are well versed in their consumer behaviors and business / personal goals, you will find creating and providing internal content. the content they will like and share will be much easier.
13. Selfish just wants to talk about himself
There is nothing worse than someone who just wants to talk about themselves. They will stuff you in the ear for hours and will not allow you to say a word, while you are still standing there, glaring, agreeing with everything they say.
Often you leave the conversation with a bad taste in your mouth because you cannot understand how someone can be very egotistical. Yes, the same thing applies to content creation.
No one wants to be stuck reading a blog article written by a self-service writer, so avoid creating content that is all about you, you, you.
Instead, focus on directing your content around the needs of your audience. Think of your blog posts as an opportunity to give potential customers a valuable resource, rather than a sales purpose.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when creating new content is that it must address the needs of the intended audience, not yours.