We’re all rushing to create piles and piles of content to serve our customers, upkeep an online image, and create more brand awareness. Despite that, few organizations have it really figured out when it comes to content marketing. The people they’ve targeted aren’t “taking action”. Visitors come and go and analytics aren’t as great as they should be. What could have gone wrong??
Content marketing is a tricky game and unfortunately, there are a number of ways you could mess up your content marketing success. Here are some of the worst and most common mistakes made by content marketers that you should avoid making.
Not Writing up Your Goals and Plans: First of all, you need have clear goals and content marketing strategies to begin with. Secondly, you need to make sure you outline and document and every single one of these goals on paper. The importance of taking this step is to have a clear idea of what worked, what didn’t work, how long it took to work, etc. Not only will you know which goals to focus on currently, but you will also have clear idea of when to change your methods and stick to the ones that are actually working.
Not Being Consistent: Whether you are writing up blog posts, uploading a fresh stream of videos, or promoting a new product, it has to be consistent! They say consistency is the key – and in this case, it couldn’t be put more accurately. It takes months, maybe even several years, to create regular fans of content and not being consistent means that you’re not being predictable enough for your loyal fans to come back regularly.
Not Providing Value: If you’re too focused on sales and conversions, you’re missing the point. Content marketing cannot be all about your company and fulfilling company needs. Agreed, that this is the “ultimate goal”, however, that’s not how it should seem to your online visitors. Get rid of excessively promotional content because that is a major turn off for an online audience. Instead, focus on providing value to customers by knowing exactly what they care about. What issues, challenges, and problems does this target audience face? What makes them tick? Choose those topics and write inspiring content that somehow solves, addresses, or capitalizes on these issues, ideas, or topics.
Choosing Only One Form of Content: Sharing inspirational blog posts is definitely a plus for content marketing, but since online visitors are particularly fond of diversity, it’s not always enough. The idea behind content marketing is not only to craft large chunks of text, contrary to what many amateurs may think. Quality content can be in the form of videos, images, infographics, and other forms of visual content. A large portion of online visitors prefer visual content to readable forms content. By ignoring that lump of potential visitors, you run the risk of alienating them completely.
Participating on Every Social Media Platform: Believe it or not, but content marketers actually run the risk of damaging business reputation by signing up for more networks than they can manage. Trying to occupy as much “social media space” as possible is an overwhelming and ineffective strategy. Not every social media platform is best for a particular business.
Instead start out with just one or two social media network(s). Give some time, thought, and consideration to answer questions such as, “How does this platform contribute to my end goals?” and “where would I expect to find my target audience?”. Pick one that fits the needs of your business and customers best. Posting frequently and consistently on those selected networks is important to ensure that your customers stay in the loop.
Ignoring Your Customer’s Questions: Ask yourself what could your target audience want to know—not from About.com or Wikipedia—but from you and you only? These are the topics, problems, or questions you should be addressing. For example, if your business provides auto-repair service to customers, you may write about the latest car event, which is fine. But there are some crucial questions your customers may have about your business which should be a number one priority. For example, they might want to know about your service plans, how long a certain repair service would take, or who you’ve partnered with for your products. Never ignore this type of useful, valuable, and audience-oriented content.
Promoting Only Once: There is no rule that says you have to share a certain piece of content only once. Given that your subscribers could be following tons of other individuals as well, there is no guarantee that your message has been heard by all of your followers. Consequently, there is nothing wrong with giving your blog post or video a second or third round. Share it in different ways on different times, using different platforms. Share it again a month later. There’s no reason to put down a valuable piece of content just because has already been shared once.
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1O3rHgw via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1XklaVV
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