The Biggest Mistakes in Content Marketing You're Likely Making (And How to Avoid Them)
Do you feel you're getting enough out of your content marketing strategies?
Have you thought about changing behaviors with your content marketing to get a better ROI?
Are you publishing dozens or hundreds of content pieces per month only to find it's not working like you thought it would?
Does your content employ the right strategies to persuade or engage readers?
Content marketing errors will cause lost opportunities for your business to gain the best outcomes, marketers must do everything in their power to get it right.
How to Achieve Content Writing Perfection
Brand identity is made up of what your company stands for, your values, the way you market your goods, and the feelings you want customers to have when working with you. Your brand identity can be thought of as both the character of your company and a promise to your clients.
Have you studied the reason they may want to do business with you? If not, you may want to change the ways you are producing your content marketing. You must learn as much about your your customers as you can.
Do Your Research
Your content is going out to hundreds or thousands of people via an e-mail list or publication. Make sure you really know your audience. Invest in surveys, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and check consumer behavior data. Look at your competition on social media and see how people react to the brand.
Concentrate on a single purpose. Before you start writing your content, you should decide on at least one important idea that you want to get through. When writing, keep this in mind and make as many references to the core idea as you can.
Write Engaging Headlines
Create a Hook That Grabs Their Attention
Sub headers should be highly SEO optimized
Write in a Unique Voice
Writers utilize the passive voice far too frequently. Because the subject (authors) is acting (using active voice) rather than taking a backseat, active voice, as in the previous line, is more direct and stronger.
Make sure your subjects and verbs match to avoid incorrect subject/verb agreement.
A solitary subject should not be followed by a plural pronoun, and the opposite is also true. Examining your subjects and verbs outside of the phrase is the greatest approach to make sure that they agree, as is making sure that your writing is consistent and doesn't change across your paper.
Avoid using pronouns incorrectly or in excess.
Overusing pronouns can make your reader confused as they may not understand who you are referring to. Additionally, you should make sure that the pronoun you use corresponds to the word it is replacing. Make sure you can clearly identify the subject of a pronoun by reading your sentences aloud.
Avoid being disorganized.
To help your reader navigate easily through your content, prepare your outline and the structure of your document in advance. Outline your headings, subheadings, bullet points, numbering, and other formatting features to keep your ideas organized.
Do not split infinitives.
An example of a split infinitive is "He seems to really like it," which consists of an infinitive with additional words, such as an adverb, put between to and a verb. Most of the time, dividing the infinitive with an adverb or another word just lengthens the statement by one more word. If you have a split infinitive, go back, and look at your statement to determine if the splitting word makes the sentence better, if you can omit it, or if you can move it before or after the infinitive. Move it or do without it if you can.
Watch the Overuse of Quotation Marks.
Using quotation marks to emphasize a point or express a thought will simply complicate the phrase and cause misunderstanding if you use too many. You can highlight a particular part of your text using a variety of other methods. As an alternative, try to choose words that clearly state your meaning and exhibit emphasis on their own.
Avoid Dangling Modifiers.
A word, phrase, or sentence that modifies the meaning of another word, phrase, or clause is known as a modifier. A dangling modifier is one that is either tied to the incorrect subject or has no subject at all.
Make Sure Your Verb Tenses are Consistent.
You should make sure that the verb tenses you use throughout your work are constant. You can choose whether to write in the past or the present tense, but you must be consistent throughout your paper.
Until You Understand the Things That Make Your Audience Tick- Don’t Waste Time Writing Content.
Afterall, you want your audience to stay on your trail and find the treasure they seek. But does your content move mountains? Most likely not. It may not have to have that “ I Found Heaven” moment on the first try but it sure should come close.
Nowadays that’s highly impossible. Why? It’s due to so much competition, short attention spans, and duplicate types of content being produced repeatedly.
Are you rolling the dice with your content marketing? Each dice has six sides. So, we can have six outcomes. A dice that rolls perfectly on the right edge is probable, but not likely.
In a single roll of two dice, the chance of getting a double-six is 1/36 or 0.028. The chance of getting a double-six on every toss is 3 percent.
So, you see craps isn't a game of skill and the odds are 50-50. So many marketers don’t use the proper tools available to them to write content and they end up playing the slot machines which have the worst odds. Content marketing is not a game of let's see what sticks. It’s a game of proper planning and preparation to get to a win.
Do you understand the odds and probabilities of your project? If you don’t look at both, you can’t successfully make the content work. Why? Because you need to look at what makes an audience interested and what makes them dis-interested.
Once you understand both sides, you won’t have to write content blindly and bet on an outcome that is less than desirable. Simply put, you must know what your audience is looking for.
You must keep thinking strategically to illicit a reaction from an audience that leads to a relationship, then a sale.
Sending the right message to your audience goes a long way. Discovering clients who are like you is the most logical thing that can help you succeed. Your audience should be the people who are looking for you.
You won't be able to grow your business unless you can identify high-value customers and link them to your ad spending and other budgets for content marketing.
You must go deeper to understand your audience's past demographics and generic personas. Look at your current clients and ask them what drew them to you. What is their lifestyle, what makes them feel good about buying, and what did they expect of you?
Stop thinking, you must convince people all the time on the first try. Refrain from the hard sell. It's better to nurture and build trust. Educate people and nurture them so they are convinced to become your customers.
The Pitch- Give them something to open.
LinkedIn has higher quality business leads than any other form of social media. Any business should be bringing awareness to their brand on the largest business social network site.
On LinkedIn you can capture followers and an email list by publishing a newsletter or hosting live webinars. In return you will grow leads to be part of your email list. It’s a perfect start to lead your customers through your sales funnel to your brand.
People are at various stages of the buying cycle, therefore content used at the beginning of a buyer's journey can't be appropriate for everyone. Don’t make the mistake of using the same content created to raise awareness for a new client unless you are introducing a new product.
Multiple products make it easier to add more revenue. Develop and market more than one product. People love the ability to choose. Offering different price points also attracts more customers. Build landing pages and informative articles for each product or service to drive extra revenue for your business.
Content Types That Can Help Your Brand's Credibility
Many big brands already own their media content strategy. They're in the news, large industry publications, and have an extensive following on social media.
Even if you're a small or medium sized business it's easier now than ever to compete with big brands on social media. Make sure the content you share is authoritative, linkable, shareable, and engaging.
Social media is an open space where you can bring brand awareness even if you have a low budget. And, by producing great content you will gain followers organically.
There’s more to it than just writing content-
Link building, outreach, and relationship management
Given the changing nature of internet content, you must invest to build up your Search Engine Results Pages (also known as “SERPs” or “SERP”).
Email marketing is also a crucial resource to build your base of new clients and keep current ones in your hemisphere. On your blog or website, segmenting your target audience might be challenging (though attainable with content personalization), whereas email segmentation is quite easy.
Don’t forget about newswriting. Guest posting on a major news site or industry publication is key to getting as much visibility as possible and helps to build your credibility.
In final, there’s a lot of work to do. You’re busy running your business and don’t have the time to write content. Let an experienced marketer help you with the challenge of content marketing. For a free assessment, click here
