Top Content Marketing Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)

Top Content Marketing Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)

Content marketing is what makes inbound marketing such a profitable marketing strategy, as that particular subcategory of inbound marketing can make or break websites and companies that are attempting to gain traction online. Content marketing has the ability to pay enormous dividends, but can also simply be performed very badly and actually harm rather than help. With that in mind, it is important before embarking on any kind of content marketing that you learn the killer mistakes of content marketing and how to avoid them—in order to save yourself time, effort and money.

So without further ado, here are some of the most common and most deadly content marketing mistakes you can make—and how to sidestep them.

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The Quality of Your Content is Poor

Content marketing is not just about generating backlinks: it is about genuinely creating helpful content that pleases visitors enough to engage with your company or website. If your name becomes associated with content that is obviously poorly written or spun, then you are damaging your brand and aren’t exactly doing yourself any favours. Don’t waste your time and money on content that is poor: the fractional amount more that quality content costs in terms of both cash and effort are worth it.

Not Enough People Are Seeing Your Content

What’s the point of producing awesome content if nobody sees it? If your own blog or social media profiles are not popular enough to bring your content sufficient attention, then work on getting guest posts on other blogs or on getting more popular social media users to share or retweet your content. You don’t need to go viral (although it certainly helps): having just a few friends in high places is enough to drives visitors to your content, and from there to your website.

Your Content Placement is Poor

Keenly related to the above point, you need to be very careful as to where you place content affiliated to your site. Content hosted by websites with a bad reputation or with poor metrics can actually harm you in the long run, even if they are easier targets in the short run. Quality always pays, so don’t settle for less than what your business and what your content is worth. If you wouldn’t want to be associated with a particular website in a year’s time (or even five years’ time), just keep looking.

Your Content Isn’t Helpful or Interesting or… Anything

A blog post can be well-written, with perfect English and perfect grammar, and can be perfectly related back to your business… and still be boring. Content shouldn’t be there just to exist: it should be helpful or interesting or unique (or quite possibly all three). If your content isn’t actually doing anything or serving any kind of purpose, then don’t create it. Content should always have a purpose and an audience.

You Aren’t Varying the Type of Content You Produce

When online marketers use the word ‘content’, most people read it to mean ‘blog posts’. Yet blog posts certainly are not the only kind of content that one can make, and indeed content marketing should really encompass everything from YouTube videos to free ebooks. Vary up your offerings and cater both to your own skills and to the appetites of your visitors. If you don’t have the time or the skills, bring in a content marketing agency to do the job for you. Whatever you do, just keep it fresh. Doing the same old, same old is boring and gets old fast. By mixing it up, you can keep your visitors engaged and derive the maximum benefits.

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6 Comments

  • avatar

    Even if you produce excellent content if no one reads them it’s like publishing a book that no one is going to read.
    Knowing where to get targeted traffic is one of the things that bloggers should be aware of. Traffic is essential for generating views and quality is vital if you would like your bounce rate to improve.
    Posting tips and bulleted lists helps quite a lot to keep readers on the website and appreciate the content.

  • avatar

    Hey CHARAHOME,
    Thanks, glad you found the article interesting!
    Mark, that’s a good article, fun images are a great plus too 🙂 Keyword mania is definitely a really annoying phenomenon… Thanks for sharing!

  • avatar

    Very good article. It makes clear sense that content, not just to create links is important. Great content mixed in with quality, not quantity of exposure can help boost traffic.
    Very well detailed and explained.
    I like the option you provide for upworthy. I am a follower of their content. They do provide some great links to great articles.

  • avatar
    Mark Donington 

    on 

    Great article Kate. I think people are slowly starting to realise the importance of content marketing. I think you might find this similar article interesting: http://goo.gl/QtUPKs

  • avatar

    Hey Shawn, thanks for commenting! I’d say creative use of content and maybe coming up with creative opt-in options on your site (like what you’ll find on http://www.upworthy.com/) could help direct readers to your Facebook page. With the rest of social media pages with their own special features, it’s pretty much the same story – I’d say creativity is key.

  • avatar
    Shawn Gossman 

    on 

    I understand that getting your content on social media is very important. However, how would you go about getting people to your social media pages? I think that is what a lot of bloggers tend to struggle with these days.

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