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Don’t Make These Content Marketing Mistakes

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Content marketing – helping your target audience to learn about you through great online content – is one of the best investments a company can make. It increases traffic, creates and reinforces brand awareness, and brings in business! Content marketing mistakes can result in missing these and other opportunities.

Content marketing is challenging. Many businesses are sharing content, making it hard for you to be seen. Marketers have to get it right in order to achieve optimal results.

Here are five of the biggest content marketing mistakes, and what you can do to avoid them.

One and Done Approach

Creating quality content requires time and resources. You are creating an asset, and you need to maximize the mileage from that asset. Content should be repurposed.

  • Repurpose a blog post into an infographic or video
  • Aggregate several pieces of related content into one post or page
  • Update content to add or remove key points

Content should also be used across more than one platform. Make sure that you edit and optimize to fit each platform, and that you space out publication dates at least two weeks.

Assuming All Readers Are Invested

There are many phases of engagement with your target, from introduction to customer and beyond. Don’t assume everyone who sees your content knows who you are or is ready to act on everything you present. Provide content for people at all stages of engagement with your brand.

Expecting Content to Promote Itself

Content marketing doesn’t stop when you click post or publish. You have to help people to discover your content. Yes, you need to market your content marketing!

In fact, spend more time promoting your content than creating it. Many suggest the 80/20 rule: Spend 20% of the time creating content and 80% to promote it via social media, blogs, email, and other channels.

Discounting Content that Isn’t Your Own

You are not the only source of content about your industry, area of expertise or even your own business. In the social media age, anyone can create and publish content.

Resist the temptation to ignore all content that isn’t your own. Engage with content created by others. A simple “like” will do. Comments and shares are even better. When you participate in the larger conversation around your area of expertise, it elevates your connections online.

Anecdotal (or No) Measurement

One of the biggest mistakes is not taking time to review the performance of your content. Measurement is more than counting likes and direct feedback. Without looking at the data, there’s no way to know what is or isn’t working.

The data will tell you what content performs well and what isn’t worth the investment.  There are tools that give you measures on individual platforms as well as across platforms. Engagement metrics like page views, social media shares, and the time visitors spent looking at pieces of content can help you improve the impact of your content.

 

Contact Page Best Practices

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People visit websites to connect with businesses. So, a Contact Us page is an essential element of every website. The right content on this page can improve both customer satisfaction and SEO.

The best practices list starts with having a contact page. This is a basic and critical way you engage with site visitors, signaling that what they want or need is as important as what you want to share.

Make sure it’s clear how they can get in touch. Don’t get fancy with the navigation label – call it “Contact” or “Contact Us.” Add the menu item to your main and/or footer navigation.

A contact page needs to offer more than a form. There will be people that don’t understand the form, who can’t work it from a small screen like a cell phone and/or are just naturally averse to submitting any information online.

Provide more contact options, like an email address, phone number or social media. Only list options that you want people to use and that you will commit to monitoring. Don’t ask people to tweet if you never monitor your account!

Keep the page current. Like all your other web pages, your contact page needs maintenance. Make sure your information is accurate at all times. If you have a form, periodically test it to make sure it still works.

How Not to Be an Email Spammer

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You spend a lot of time composing email marketing. It’s painful when people unsubscribe and even more so when they flag your messages as spam. If that happens too often, you may not be able to send any messages to anyone. That would kill your email marketing strategy.

You need to avoid doing things that can lead you to being labeled as a spammer. Here are some common mistakes that can result in your emails being marked as spam:

Mistake 1: Not asking for permission to add people to your list

No one wants to be added to email lists without their permission. You need to ask people if you can add them to your list. You can do this at the time you get their email, or send an invitation email that lets them make the choice.

Mistake 2: Taking control away from subscribers

You want to keep people on your list, but you can’t hold subscribers hostage. You need to make it easy for them to change subscription preferences and even opt-out completely. People who feel trapped will lash out by reporting your messages as unwanted spam.

Mistake 3: Sending irrelevant content

Make every message valuable to the reader! That’s perhaps the most critical part of keeping your subscribers happy. Great content makes people want more.

Mistake 4: Breaking promises

Make sure you respect the rules you create for your list. Did you promise to only send messages once a month? Then don’t send more. Did you promise not to share emails with others? Then don’t. Set expectations and stick to them.

Mistake 5: Overwhelming your audience

Don’t jam your subscribers’ inboxes. We all struggle to keep up with email messages. If turning off your messages will make a big dent, people will likely unsubscribe. Be judicious in what you sent and make every message valuable to recipients. Be sure all messages are targeted to the right portion of your audience.