Although some companies are quite skilled at content marketing, even the best of them can make mistakes while running campaigns.
But even seemingly inconsequential mistakes can damage your brand’s reputation.
Creating content can be a delicate process for brands, who need to take care to avoid making avoidable mistakes.
The following are some of the most common mistakes made by brands when it comes to content marketing.
Let’s find out how these pitfalls can be avoided.
Not Creating And Publishing Good-Quality Content Consistently
The biggest mistakes brands make in their content marketing are:
- Not creating good content
- Not publishing content consistently
This undermines the purpose of your content marketing campaign.
If you have read a blog post that seems to have little useful content, is poorly structured and has many spelling and grammar errors, it may have been written with the sole purpose of keywords.
This is not how content is supposed to be.
Excellent content is:
- Easy to read and understand: Keep your post-jargon-free. Technical terms are great only for academic publications and whitepapers, where your audience already has specialized knowledge of the field. So either completely replace the jargon with common vocabulary or avoid specificity altogether
- Not too short, not too long: In 2022, the ideal blog post length is between 1,760 and 2,400 words
- Optimized for featured snippets if possible: Snippets are one of the most important ways to improve website first impressions. In addition, they affect site CTR and traffic
To optimize your post for snippets, you should…
- Write inverted pyramid style – start by giving the crux of the information, followed by not-so-important supporting details, and ending with background data or promotional content
- Use the right words that usually generate featured snippets
- Make sure your content is free from spelling and grammar errors and factual mistakes
- Limit yourself to 3-8 keywords total in the entire article. Implement common keywords reflected in the “People also ask” section at the bottom of the search results
- Have a good mix of wordy and visual content: Ideally, there should be at least 1 image per 200-300 words. Having at least 1 video (under two minutes) in an article can also help you improve your SEO. Explainer videos are one of the best options since they’re both entertaining and educational
The main reason that content is often poor quality is because those creating it lack expertise.
If you want to create a good-quality blog post but don’t have the resources or knowledge to do so, find experts who can help you.
Apps like Narrato and Evanto Studio can be helpful in this situation.
If you’re looking for someone to produce high-quality, original content, Narrato is the platform for you. With a pool of experienced writers, you can have custom content created that is both well-researched and creatively written.
Narrato uses technology to match your project with experts who are best suited for the job.
The 4-tiered pricing structure is designed to be affordable for companies of all sizes.
The job will be completed within 24-48 hours after it is picked, and you can ask for as many revisions as you want.
Envato Studio connects you with freelance professionals who can create unique visual content for your brand, including graphics, web development, and videos.
After you log in, you can go through many profiles to find designers whose skills and previous work fit your requirements.
After finding a designer you’re happy with, you can commission them by providing your specifications and paying them.
It is important to post content consistently and regularly. A study by HubSpot showed that posting content 3-5 times a week increases site traffic 3.5X for B2B companies and 4.5X for B2C companies.
This means that not only will more people be exposed to your brand, but they’ll also be more likely to trust it since it’s coming recommended from a friend. When people read content that they enjoy, they are more likely to tell other people about it. This word-of-mouth advertising will help your brand to grow. More people will learn about your brand and trust it more because it was recommended by a friend.
Not Investing In Content SEO
SEO is very important for how much exposure, ranking, and engagement your content gets. However, a lot of companies make big mistakes when it comes to SEO.
For example:
- Tom Ford’s website had a terrible web design with bad navigation and slow site-loading time, which deterred customers from visiting it for a long time
- ToysRUs forgot to consider the long-term implications of the 301 permanent redirects on-site traffic when they decided to forego toys.com URLs in favor of their URLs, post-acquisition of Toys.com
- A famous brand deliberately replaced all branded keywords and image alt tags with porn keywords to “increase site traffic”. It helped, but only temporarily
Poor SEO can harm your brand by damaging your search rankings and traffic.
If you make mistakes with your website, search engines may lower your ranking, push you out of the first few pages, or penalize you.
If you make bad decisions regarding your SEO, you could lose customers and site traffic.
Recovering from this can take years.
You can reinvent your SEO practices. Here are a few steps you can take:
- Use search engine-friendly URLs to increase the user experience
- Create content that addresses the search intent of specific users – separate landing pages for each target market will help
- Conduct a detailed on-site search to understand site usage behaviors
- Use the Google Search Console to get topics and keyword ideas
- Make sure you are present on a knowledge base or Google My Business. They’ll help strengthen your digital presence
- Bring down page load time to 2 seconds, or risk losing visitors
- Keep a minimum of 5 links to high DA sites. But avoid overseas links where possible. Search engines often don’t trust cross-country links, unless the link comes from a reputable source
- Follow the social media pages of marketing agencies and learn tips and tricks on how to optimize your websites
Not Promoting Published Content Enough
Although having great-quality and SEO-optimized content is a great start, sometimes it isn’t enough to get noticed by potential customers. You may need to explore other marketing techniques.
This is where people like Shivesh Bhatia, a celebrated food blogger and author of two cookbooks, come in.
He’s a micro-influencer who regularly works with brands that sell baking ingredients and utensils. He incorporates them seamlessly into his craft, helping brands get exposure to the right audience.
Hiring an influencer can help to make your campaign more successful and have a greater reach.
Not Knowing Your Audience
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is not knowing your audience’s profile, demographics, and aspirations. This can cost you dearly in the long run. Knowing this information enables you to get the most out of your content and get better results.
Polly Kay, Marketing Manager, at English Blinds said that she accidentally hurt the company’s reputation during a marketing campaign. She was trying to appeal to a younger, more ambitious generation who are looking for a good deal, but the company’s actual buyers are older and wealthier, and are looking for luxury instead. Because of this, she has been trying to fix the damage she caused.
If you don’t have a good understanding of who your potential customers are and what their demographics are, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to expand your target audience. You might even end up losing the customers you already have.
Not Knowing Your Goals
If you’re just starting your content marketing journey, this one is for you. Make sure you know your goals and objectives before you start creating content. A lot of times, you might write great blog posts, but they might not stand out from the crowd.
Roman Zhyvitski, an SEO expert, explains that he initially made a mistake with his first website by not deleting old content. However, he was able to quickly fix this by writing new blogs and taking advantage of the existing popularity of his website. Zhyvitski emphasizes that generating profit should be the main goal of a website, and traffic is simply one of the metrics used to measure success.
Not Writing for Your Audience
If you don’t create content that appeals to your audience, they will eventually stop paying attention to you. Find out what your audience wants, what their pain points are, and what they need to solve their biggest problems. Talk to them directly or use surveys to get this information. Not having this information before creating content is a recipe for disaster.
It’s important to know what your audience is looking for, and to create content that matches their needs.
The content of your website is important, but it is meaningless if it is not the content that your readers want to see.
Tonya Davis from ThoughtLab says that if someone has a clogged drain, they would want to figure out how to fix it themselves before hiring a plumber. They might also be looking for ways to prevent clogs in the future or for recommendations on the best drain clog remover. So, if your target audience is looking for DIY posts about how to fix a clogged drain, you should provide that content to them.
Brett Downes from HQSEO noted that in the early days of content marketing, not writing for their target audience was a big mistake. At that time, they published good content weekly on a variety of topics that were too technical and included a lot of SEO jargon. However, their target market of business owners found this content difficult to understand.
They were receiving very little traffic that was converting into sales or leads, causing their sales to decline. They investigated and found that most of their traffic was coming from other SEO companies or independent digital workers. Their visitors were mostly men under 30, while their target audience is business owners, i.e. men and women over 35.
They reduced the complexity of their content to make it more understandable for their target market. They found that using language their audience would easily understand would help them attract and convert them.
“Content is king, but it’s nothing if it’s not the content your readers want to consume!”
Know What Your Business is Known For
It is important to know how your visitors are landing on your webpage. This means focusing on the niche markets that you want your business to be known for. Trying to rank for too many keywords and spreading yourself too thin can hurt your chances of being recognized in your niche.
Mike Z, Chief Growth Officer at Zima Media, believes that it is more beneficial to have a content strategy that is focused and narrow, rather than trying to cover too many topics. He recommends eliminating content that is not on-brand for your company goals.
Adam Hempenstall from Better Proposals says that you should look for the searcher’s intent when trying to rank keywords on your website. He explains that a keyword with 100 searches per month could convert better than a keyword with 10,000 queries if the searcher’s intent matches the marketing collateral on your website.
“A keyword with 100 searches per month could convert better than that with 10,000 queries.”
Tapping the Wrong Distribution Channel
Make sure you understand where your target audience is coming from when they visit your website. Use tools like Google Analytics to track this information so you can see which marketing materials are bringing people to your site.
However, small businesses advertising on Reddit rarely find much success. The site’s ecosystem doesn’t really lend itself to driving purchases or leads.” Jimmy McMillan from Heart Life Insurance believes that investing on the Reddit platform is a mistake. He stated that from an outsider’s perspective, Reddit seems like a great opportunity for small businesses due to the high traffic and recent changes to the ad platform. However, he has found that small businesses advertising on Reddit rarely find success because the site is not set up to drive purchases or leads.
Although they did not foresee the reaction they would receive, people saw them as a corporate entity. They are a small company, but they were still treated with the same contempt as if they were a large bank.
Even though they put a lot of effort into this experiment, it didn’t work out in the end. They didn’t get many responses, and the ones they did get were angry or not useful.