4 content marketing mistakes you absolutely have to avoid making

A detailed content marketing strategy can be defined in plain English as the planning, writing, delivering, and measurement of informational content online. A good content marketing strategy helps businesses achieve their goals such as an increase in sales or new customers by getting a wider presence on social media channels and on Google search.

In simple terms, it is about generating targeted traffic to your business and to make your business stand out from a noisy digital world. These days with the big trend regarding content marketing, many businesses are making mistakes with their strategy and not getting the results they are after. Here are some of the biggest content marketing mistakes that should be avoided at all costs.

1. Not knowing your target audience

Before you start with your content marketing campaign, you will need to determine who your target audience is. Writing content that is focused around the target audience you would like to reach will do much better on the search engines and social media channels that you are using.

If you write great content that is engaging and interesting, others may link to your content, which helps you spread the reach of your campaign. Writing content for specific audiences can generate huge amounts of traffic to the content source and this is why it is so important that you study your target audience before you start writing content.

Don’t expect that you are only going to see good results on the content that you write and publish to your target audience. Writing magnetic content that draws in interested readers is a great part of SEO, and adding additional social interaction and link diversity should always be considered.

2. Low quality content

Poor or low quality content may cause your target audience to ignore your message and go straight to your competitors. Make sure that what you write is easily read and that it makes sense. Don’t make it sound like a block of sales copy. Your content should always be free of spelling and grammatical errors.

3. Use great content on your website
Don’t publish your best content on any third-party sites such as article directories that makes money via the content that others publish on their channels. Although social media helps spreading your message and awareness about your company, they are really not the place to put your best pieces of content.

If you have a blog, you can use it as the starting point of your content and then share that content to your social media channels. That way your best content always originates from your own source. Always invest your effort into your own website and blog first before going to produce content for your social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Google+.

4. Ignoring multimedia

Pictures and videos can speak a thousand words. Don’t limit your content marketing strategy to only text. Do thorough research on your target audience to find what type of content they like to consume and engage with the most. When you have done your analysis, add meaningful images to your content so that it can retain the interest of your readers and improve the clarity of the content.

Use modern tools to create good videos and images that you can post to the content on your blog, website, and the social media channels that you are using.

Content marketing is king, but context is God. Content stays just “content” if it doesn’t have meaning or a purpose. Don’t just create content for the sake of creating content. Use content to build up your brand online and to help your target audience make informed decisions.