Content marketing is the type of marketing that involves using content in various forms, i.e., written or images, etc., to promote a certain brand or its offerings. Nowadays, this type of marketing is very important and pivotal. It helps businesses and brands grow and make themselves available to a larger audience/clientele.
But, when it comes to content marketing, there are a lot of things that many brands and businesses can get wrong. These mistakes can cost them a lot, and it can make their efforts amount to nothing.
In this post, we will be analyzing some of the mistakes that people can make in content marketing as well as the ways in which they can be avoided and resolved.
Common mistakes in content marketing
1. Writing general content for a general audience
One thing to keep in mind about content marketing is that you can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, you have to create your content plagiarized free specifically for your particular audience so that it can resonate with them and bring the results you need.
Brands and businesses typically have a specific clientele. In some cases, the specificity of the clientele could be a certain geographic area. In others, it could be an age group.
As a brand, when you create content to market something, you need to tailor it specifically to the people who are expected to read it. Not doing this is a mistake many people make, and it negatively impacts the results they get from their marketing campaigns.
As for providing some actionable tips in this regard, here are a few that you can follow:
- Firstly, perform thorough audience research to evaluate who the consumers of your content are going to be. We won’t delve into too many details about it, but you can do things like conducting surveys, doing an email campaign, etc., to get information from your customers.
- Then, once your research is done, create a user persona on your audience outlining things such as their average age, gender, income level, etc. You essentially have to compile such information about your audience so that you can easily refer back to it when needed.
- When creating the content, you then have to use the information about your audience to specifically adjust things like:
- The length of the content you’re creating. The more time your audience has, on average, to spend on the internet, the longer you can make your content and vice versa.
- The readability and complexity of the content. If your audience largely involves mature and grownup individuals, you can likewise make your content likeably sophisticated. On the other hand, if your audience involves people such as teenagers and young adults, then you’ll have to keep it simple.
And so on. We won’t talk about more stuff here since it is possible that your particular content may or may not contain them. But length and readability are inherent attributes in any content – which is why it makes sense to discuss those.
2. Creating poor-quality content
Moving on to mistake number two, creating poor-quality content is a blunder that many a content marketer can make and which can spoil many a content marketing strategy.
When you’re marketing anything via the medium of content, it makes sense to make that content as high-quality as possible. Nowadays, in a lot of marketing strategies, the main type of content used is of written kind. And it is in this type of content that quality can be the hardest to maintain yet the most rewarding.
It’s not really of much practical use and importance to highlight the downsides of poor content. Suffice it to say that poor content means poor results.
What can be helpful for you, on the other hand, is to learn about how not to make your content low-quality. Let’s take a look at some tips in that regard.
- One of the things that you have to do for quality content creation is proper audience research. We’ve explained that in detail in the point above.
- When creating content for marketing, you have to make sure that it is readable and understandable. While you can adjust this a little depending on who your audience is, your content should ultimately be easy to understand regardless of who it is read by. To ensure readability, you have to do things like:
- Using easy words
- Keeping the sentence structures simple and straightforward
- Keeping the paragraphs short
- Keeping the content well-organized and segmented
- If you are writing for SEO, you should also ensure that you follow the right practices for it. You should use the right heading tags, keywords, backlinks, etc., to make the content SEO-friendly.
- You should take care to check and proofread the content after writing it to make sure that it doesn’t contain any grammar or spelling mistakes.
- It is also important to look for plagiarism in the content. This can be easily done with the help of an online plagiarism checker. If you use the checker and find plagiarism in your content, you can take the steps to eliminate it.
- In your written content, you should use images and visual aids to explain your points better. Images can help make the content look more aesthetic while adding value to it.
You can follow these steps to create high-quality content.
3. Not using the right distribution channels and methods
You can have high-quality content, and you can have your audience research down and everything – but it won’t amount to a lot if you don’t use the right marketing channels.
There are different ways in which content marketing can be done. For example, one way to market stuff via content is by using blogs. Another way is to use newsletters, emails, etc.
All of these methods are excellent in their own regard. You have to pick the channel that is most frequented by your target audience. Consider the example of a middle-aged audience who is not in the habit of surfing the internet but is definitely in the habit of reading emails.
With such an audience, using emails and newsletters would be more effective.
On the other hand, if your audience includes young adults and teenagers, then it would make more sense to publish content on social media.
You have to choose the right channel according to the preferences of your audience – something you can learn via audience research.
Conclusion
While there are a lot of other mistakes that content marketers can make, the three mentioned above are some of the most lethal. If you cover those areas and do not make those mistakes, you can expect good results from your marketing strategy.
