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Anyone in the content
marketing world knows how tough it can be to produce stellar, consistent content that does so well that it
knocks it out of the park. From thinking about blog topics, writing the
content, proofreading, editing and then finally publishing, content marketers
do a whole lot more than just publishing content.
But it wasn’t always like
that, and today I am going to share the 10 mistakes content marketers make and
some of the things you can do to avoid them. Funny enough, I have made most of
these mistakes and I would rather you learn from my mistakes instead of making
the same ones repeatedly.
1. Not focusing on
quality but just on quantity.
The number one rule of
content marketing lies in produce quality, consistent content over rushed
infrequent pieces for your customers.
An example I love to give
is if I were running a cooking show such as Martha Stewart’s on the Food
Network. If Martha pushed content out inconsistently and her shows did not show
the full preparation of the meal her show would be a flop.
Let’s bring this example
to your content marketing strategy. Most customers that produce weak content
and infrequent amounts of content suffer in creating a powerful lead generation
machine for their business. The rule of thumb I use is to start small and high
quality.
For B2B businesses 1,500
words or more usually do the best such as the KISSmetrics
blog. If you are in the B2C business
700 words or more will convert the best. Similarly, if you can only commit to
one blog post per month stick with that and continue pushing great content and
increase from there.
2. Not proofreading
your work.
I get it it’s hard to be
a good writer and editor. When I first started out I would get messages from my
friends offering to help me proofread my content before I published them.
You really have two
options when it comes to making sure your content is error free.
1.
Use Grammarly, a free tool that is a chrome extension as
well as an app. All you do is insert your content and Grammarly will find
errors. If you publish a lot of content like me, buying the premium version
will give you access to things like editing sentence structure and premium
tools.
2.
Hire an editorial team. Obviously, this is a more
expensive option, but this individual will do a much better job making sure the
content is error free. I use my editorial team to proof read all my content and
add any relevant examples to make my content more relatable.
3. Not doing
research on your topics.
Have you ever run across
a topic and said to yourself “I want to write about that!”? Well, that’s a great way to run into trouble early on.
The best way to combat this is to use tools like BuzzSumo that help you analyze
which posts do the best by keyword or URL.
Buzzsumo becomes a boon
for content marketers because they can analyze and see what articles did best
instead of guessing. You can even sort through which posts did the best
one which social channel over others.
4. Not writing
content that is in-depth.
Content marketing may be
a sexy term, which is why more than 78 percent of marketers believe that
content is the future of marketing. But there is a major difference between
fluffy content and in-depth content that teaches you about a topic.
I tend to stick to the
mantra that content marketing should be an opportunity to inform someone about
something, and is a way to give away everything you can for free. You may say
that it could mean that people could steal your ideas, but the reality is most
people don’t care enough to implement what works and don’t have the interest to
go through the errors in the process.
The way you can create
content that is in-depth or evergreen content is to share everything you know
about the topic. For example, I wrote this article about Twitter growth and how I grew my Twitter following to
50,000 followers in one year. To date, this is the most viewed article on my
blog because it informs the reader. I’ve actually received six to eight clients
a month that needs help with growing their social profiles even though I’ve
taught them exactly how to do it themselves.
5. Not building your
readership.
Have you ever started a
blog and realized that no one is reading the content you are publishing?
Unfortunately for me, that story is something that is more apparent than not.
In fact, a little trick I
learned is that promotion should be 80 percent of content marketing and 20
percent should be writing. What this means is if you are spending two hours
writing a meaty blog post, you should be spending almost eight hours promoting
that content to influencers, people who you have linked to on your website and
even reaching out to people who could use your content.
I love using a tool
called contentmarketer.io which helps me find influencers email
addresses quickly instead of wasting time manually finding them. It even lets
me send emails quickly from the interface.
Secondly, a tip I learned
is that your list is everything when it comes to building readership. According
to HubSpot, your email marketing database degrades by almost 22.5 percent every year. This is why
it’s incredibly important to make sure that you are actively using techniques
to add to your readership.
6. Not writing consistently.
The moment you start
writing an article is the beginning of a relationship between you and your
readers. And just because you stick to a schedule doesn’t mean you will
actually follow through with it.
The moment you stop producing quality content is the moment that engagement drops
bringing up suspicions of the blog or business being out of business. The best
thing you can do early on is starting small when it comes to the amount of
content you are trying to produce.
7. Not outlining
your work.
Some of the best pieces
of content I have seen are articles that flow with the thought process of the
actual writer versus jumbled up content that doesn’t speak to what a reader may
be thinking about.
I’m not here to take you
back to your high school AP English Class, but studies have shown that outlined
content does significantly better than content that is written on the fly.
I publish about 10
articles a week, and my process for outlining is simple. First, I write out the
introduction and write out the points that I will be listing in the articles.
Then, I write out the conclusion and start adding in elements of the article
that I know without having to do extensive research. Once the body of the
article is completed, I can then use a series of tools to come up with enticing
titles that will do for the article.
8. Not learning what
content works and what doesn’t.
The biggest mistake that
a marker can make is not A/B testing their content. What does that mean in this
context? This involves constantly working with your content and seeing which
pieces work better than others.
For example, try writing
a short article that’s only 300 words and then a few longer, in-depth articles.
You can track metrics like click through rate, visitors, social shares, and even
comments on the articles.
The key to successful content is testing it.
9. Not writing for a
specific niche or audience.
Similar to selling a
product, writing content can have it’s on hurdles. Let’s say you are trying to
sell ice cream. If your target market for that ice cream is everyone, you will
learn very quickly that there won’t be a solid base of people that consume your
content.
Similarly, focusing on a
specific niche is incredibly important to attract the right types of readers
that will end up buying your products or services.
An easy way to do this is
to get to know who your readers really are by using great tools like Qualaroo
to see what your reader’s concerns and struggles really are. That is what they
will search for most and what will get read on your website.
10. Not optimizing
your website.
Believe it or not, but
website design, feel and performance are major factors that influence whether
people will actually visit your website or not.
In the beginning, I
thought creating a basic design wouldn’t affect the way my readers affected
with my website but I was dead wrong. In fact, I started modeling off of the
best websites out there to learn more about how they laid out their website
with a call to actions, and opportunities for readers to put in their email
address appropriately.
Secondly, it doesn’t hurt
to pay for a good hosting plan. At first, a shared hosting plan works well but
after some time you will find that your website speed slows down tremendously.
One of my favorite hosting services is Digital Ocean which is self-managed
hosting.
Content marketing, if
done correctly, can be one of the most profitable customer acquisition channels
for your business. But the reality is nothing comes without hard work and
dedication and that's what you can do to succeed in content marketing,
especially by avoiding mistakes that I have made.
Written by: Chirag
Kulkarni
Credit: entrepreneur.com
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