15 Typical Content Mistakes Marketers Often Make #MarketingMonth

Content marketing has become an indispensable aspect of digital marketing strategies, offering businesses a powerful means to connect with their audience and drive engagement. However, amidst the complexities of content creation and distribution, it's easy to fall prey to basic mistakes that can undermine the effectiveness of your efforts.

In this article, we'll delve into some fundamental errors commonly encountered in content marketing and explore how to avoid them. By recognising and rectifying these blunders, marketers can optimise their strategies to achieve greater success and audience engagement in the competitive digital landscape.

Beginning without a clear vision and strategy

Which themes and subjects will your content delve into? Who is your target audience? How do you foresee the development of your blog over the forthcoming years? These are essential questions that should be tackled before naming your blog, brainstorming headlines, or embarking on the writing journey. While technical aspects hold significance, they rely on the clarity and direction of your vision. Allocate time to conduct market and competitive research, acquaint yourself with content marketing strategies, and devise an initial plan detailing how you plan to launch and grow your blog.

Writing for an excessively broad audience

It's essential to pinpoint a target audience for your content, yet many marketers make the mistake of tailoring their material to a demographic that is overly broad or generic. The logic behind this is comprehensible; the broader your audience targeting, the greater the potential audience you may allure. Nonetheless, this method involves a trade-off: although you may reach a larger number of people, the pertinence of your content diminishes. In content marketing, preserving specific relevance is paramount. Start by focusing on a narrowly-defined niche; you can expand your scope later if necessary.

Never establishing a distinctive tone of voice

Two crucial elements that play a vital role in building and retaining a devoted readership are consistency and originality. Uniqueness captures users' interest, while consistency keeps them engaged. Your brand voice, characterised by a specific tone or personality in your writing style unique to your brand, is a potent tool for meeting these requirements. Without a clearly defined brand voice, your posts risk appearing inconsistent or failing to resonate with your target audience. Therefore, it's essential to invest time in honing your voice. Consider whether you convey energy or tranquility, youthfulness or maturity, stoicism or emotional depth, friendliness or professionalism, adherence to political correctness or a more relaxed stance.

Neglecting to define essential metrics for evaluation

How do you intend to measure your progress? While this question is significant, an even more crucial one comes before it — what does "success" mean to you? Various marketers pursue different objectives with their content strategies, including increasing website traffic, improving conversion rates, or strengthening customer retention. Naturally, you may opt to pursue a combination of these goals. However, before moving forward, it's vital to establish clear targets and identify the metrics by which you'll assess them. Without this groundwork, defining success becomes elusive, let alone achieving it.

Not conducting keyword research

Content marketing and SEO are closely intertwined yet distinct strategies. Simply embarking on a content campaign doesn't mandate investing in SEO, though it's advisable due to the peripheral benefits it offers. However, even if SEO isn't your primary focus, it's wise to engage in some level of keyword research before beginning to write. Utilising tools such as SEMRush, UberSuggest, and Moz Keyword Explorer enables you to brainstorm keyword ideas, evaluate factors like search volume and competition, and ultimately compile a list of topics and keywords that deliver the most value to your audience.

Insufficiently detailed content

Detailing specifics rather than discussing vague generalisations is essential. Instead of using terms like "most users," strive to provide precise figures such as "75 percent of users." Furthermore, support your statements with examples to clarify their validity. Attaining this level of detail may necessitate conducting original research to substantiate your claims or depending on external sources for information. Highlighting specificity and elaboration is crucial for ensuring the completeness of your posts.

Not dedicating sufficient time to headlines

You've probably heard this before, as it holds true universally: your headline is one of the most crucial aspects of any piece you create. For the majority of readers encountering your syndicated article, the headline serves as their initial impression. It determines whether they will click through or simply continue scrolling, irrespective of the content's quality that awaits them. Surprisingly, a study revealed that 59% of all links shared on social networks are not actually clicked on, indicating that most article shares are based solely on the headline. While this isn't an ideal scenario, it underscores the importance of investing extra time in refining those headlines.

Failing to respond to commenters

Even small-scale blogs are likely to draw occasional commenters. When you distribute your post through social media channels, you'll attract even more comments. It's easy to assume your task is complete once the post is live and the comments start pouring in. However, every ignored comment represents a lost chance. Initially, commenters often provide valuable feedback about your post, whether intentionally, such as critiquing your argument, or inadvertently, such as expressing confusion about a point you believed was clear. Moreover, engaging with comments demonstrates your concern for your audience and, consequently, will attract more readers to your blog.

Neglecting to promote completed posts

Regardless of how exceptional your content may be, it will go unread if it remains unnoticed. This analogy applies to your blog too. Even if you're crafting digital masterpieces, without promotion, they'll remain undiscovered. Dedicate additional time to syndicate your posts on social media, submit them to content networks, or employ other means to publicise their existence. You can also share the content with people in your network by embedding the links in your digital business card. Anyone who clicks on the link will have easy and direct access to the content thus boosting your reach.

Not including calls to action

In a content marketing campaign, you may have various objectives, but ultimately, you'll want your readers to take action at the end of their content journey — whether that's purchasing a product, booking a consultation, or subscribing to your email list. Users are unlikely to take these actions spontaneously, which is why you need to prompt them in the body of your blogs. Omitting calls-to-action (CTAs) in your content means squandering potential with each post, so ensure you incorporate a callout in every one. 

Being overly pushy with sales

Like many strategies in content marketing, it's essential to strike a balance here. If you inundate all your posts with CTAs and bombard your users with popup ads, they'll quickly become frustrated and seek content elsewhere. Consumers typically distrust advertisements and aggressive sales tactics. If they perceive your blog solely as a sales pitch, they'll be disinclined to invest their time in it. While it's important to include some sales elements, such as CTAs, in your work, pushing too hard will drive your readers away.

Not using enough visuals

It's crucial to integrate both written and visual content separately into your strategy. Even your written content should feature some visual element. Social media posts accompanied by an image garner significantly more shares and likes than those without. Therefore, incorporating a header image alone could substantially enhance your overall engagement rates. Additionally, it's beneficial to include illustrations and drawings — even if they're just doodles — throughout your piece. This helps to break up the written content and effectively illustrate the principles you're presenting.

Failing to diversify your content length

Just as you'll aim to vary the mediums you utilise in your content strategy, you should also vary the length. Brief posts (and videos) can swiftly capture users' attention and prompt them to share almost instinctively. However, in general, longer posts tend to generate more engagement, shares, and links. Each length type has its own advantages and drawbacks, so strive to incorporate both long-form and short-form content into your campaign.

Publishing inconsistently

To retain your readership, you must provide them with consistency. This entails producing posts that maintain a consistent level of quality, focus, and posting schedule. While occasional deviations from this consistency may be necessary based on your strategy, it's crucial to strive for steadiness wherever possible.

Not asking your audience’s feedback

Your readers are the ones who sustain your content strategy. If they enjoy your writing, they'll remain loyal and likely attract more people to your brand. Conversely, if they're dissatisfied, they'll leave. It's essential to continuously gauge your readers' opinions of your content strategy. The most effective way to gather this information is by directly asking them. Pay attention to their comments on your blog posts and social media, and consider going further by conducting polls or surveys to inquire about their overall satisfaction with your material. Tools like Typeform are particularly useful for this purpose.