Generating the content you need for your business and your SEO efforts can be demanding and expensive. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it – but it does mean that it’s important to make smart choices about how to use your time. Mistakes are easy to make, and can cost you precious resources in terms of both time and money.
The good news is that with a bit of advanced preparation, it’s easy to avoid the most common content marketing mistakes. With these issues in mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating content that’ll attract new visitors and convert them into clients.
1. You’re lettering for the wrong audience
Every efficient piece of copy or content that you develop needs to begin with the question: “Who are you writing for?” accepting your audience helps you choose topics, structure arguments, find forceful back up data and graphics, and helps you set the appropriate tone. Without a clear audience profile, you’re adrift in the sea of content without a compass.
This translates in a very direct way into content marketing mistakes. Many professionals are really eager by their work – that’s a great thing. We read blogs, follow accounts on social media, subscribe to trade journals, and look forward to conferences and events where we can geek out over the next big thing with our generation. The challenge happens when we realize that much of what we consume is geared at other professionals in the industry. It’s too technical, trade focused, or industry specific to be of interest to a potential customer.
Unfortunately, the company found that their luxurious efforts weren’t converting. After doing reconsideration, they developed a strategy that was more appropriately targeted at their audience. They focused on topics like How to choose a bookkeeping Package, How an Accounting Package Simplifies Tax Time, and Why an Accounting Package is Necessary for Top Customer Service. These topics were straight relevant to their prospects and quickly got grip. By simply refocusing on topics that directly related to their customer’s most vital concerns, it was possible to turn their content marketing efforts into a resounding success.
2. You’re focused on the wrong metrics
Mounting a content marketing strategy is a time-intensive effort. It’s significant to measure how effective your efforts are. But knowing the right metrics for your business can at first seem like a challenge.
Early in a content marketing movement, many businesses focus on metrics that measure outputs rather than results. This makes sense because committing to a content marketing effort and following through can be hard. Content marketing often falls into the “important but not urgent” category in the day of a capitalist who’s constantly working to put out fires. Tracking the number of words you write, comments gathered, or articles posted is a great way to make sure you’re on target with your meeting and content goals.
The problem arises when your metrics don’t evolve with your business and grown-up as your content marketing schedule develops. Over time, it’s important that you look at other indications of whether you’re getting a real return on your asset. Creating tons of content – even great content – without a focus can hurt your efforts in the long run.
Another factor is conversions. If you have existing content that’s very popular (check Google Webmaster Tools for quick insights into your content’s performance) and aren’t doing your best to use that content to move people to the next stage of the connection, you’re missing a big opportunity. Does all of your content feature clear, compelling calls to action? If you do have calls to action, are they featured prominently and with incentives (where needed) to move people to action? Focusing on this one point will help ensure that you’re converting customers.
3. You’re failing to focus on branding
Evergreen content refers to the idea of creating content that’s timeless. Because these pieces address key questions that most of your audience is interested in and that don’t change over time, these pieces can be major draws to your site. They can help build your authority and get people through the gate to your more branded content. But this still raises an important question: does your content support your brand development?
The focus of your brand development can be threefold. You can be focused on building your company’s brand as a leader in your space. You can be focused on building the reputation of a specific product or service as a trusted solution in your market. Your branding efforts can also focus on improving your personal brand and positioning as a thought leader in your industry. Any of these are valuable and viable goals, depending on how they tie to your company objectives and your personal development plans.
4. You’re only developing content for your own channels and not leveraging guest blogging
There’s been a great deal of conversation about the importance of content strategy to help your site’s link profile. Basically, your content can be broken into 3 spheres. These include:
• the content on your own site;
• your social media content, and;
• The content you create for other channels.
Many site owners make the slip of only creating content for their own website.
In the wake of Google’s Panda updates, many site owners realized that the quality and frequency of the content that they created and published to their site was dangerous. Indeed, the whole focus of the update was to improve users’ experience as much as possible. Regular high quality content not only helps your site to rank well in the SERPs, but it also gives your readers a tangible reason to come back and visit your site again.
But your onsite content growth should not cause the exclusion of developing content for other websites. While some feel that the term and tactic of “guest blogging” is being overused and abused, I oppose. Guest blogging, when done right, is still a fantastic way to build links and build your audience.
Guest posting is simple in principle: it relies on your ability to find sites in your niche accepting content and to create articles that these publishers want to post. In reality, it requires tenacity. You need to research opportunities, evaluate sites, and then pitch them. If your post does get accepted, it’s time to write something unbelievable. The quality needs to be top-notch, and it needs to be well-targeted toward the site’s audience. A good guest post requires a important amount of work.
5. You’re missing trends and chances for influence
The term news jacking refers to taking a trending topic or hot news event and using that as an angle for a post you write or other piece of content that you create. Newsjacking is smart because hot trends generate search traffic. By having a timely post or other piece of content, you can capture a piece of that search pie.
There are several ways to tune into this issue. The first is to simply develop a nose for what topics are popping up time and again in the publications that you read. Staying on top of social media trends using tools such as Twitter search can help you quickly identify topics that you should be talking about. Google Trends lets you see the current hottest searches, as well as helps to understand a term’s presentation over time.
Conclusion
A great content strategy will open up a world of option for your business. But it’s important to note that great content is timely, under attack to your audience, and helps build your brand. If you take the time to develop a solid content plan, you’ll be better positioned to achieve your business goals. Have you made any critical content mistakes in your own marketing? Let me know in the comments below. I’d especially love to hear how you corrected course, and what lessons you can share for other business owners.
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