Mistakes Every Content Marketer Should Avoid

The idea behind content marketing is sound — create genuinely useful, timely, informative content and get it in front of the right people, and those people will become customers. But just because content marketing is one of the best things you can do for your business doesn’t mean that it’s foolproof — here are a few mistakes to steer clear of.

Failure to Define Your Reader

First things first — who’s reading your content? A marketer’s worst nightmare is a client who says that their target audience is “anyone and everyone.” Lots of companies will have more than one buyer persona, but everyone has to have at least one specific, ideal client at whom they’re directing everything they create.

Creating a buyer persona (and actually using it) comes first, before you publish any content at all. Consider the budget, job description, location, age, preferred social platforms, and so on for the customer that you’re targeting, and keep those things in mind before you get started on your strategy.

Content Without a Goal

In addition to writing content toward a specific type of person, you need to be writing content for a specific purpose. Is this particular blog post designed to drive clients who are on the fence about buying toward making a decision? Is this email purely informative, establishing you in the industry as an expert in your field? Is the purpose of this social post to drive traffic to a specific offer on your website?

Every piece of content should have a specific aim, directed at some particular part of the buyer’s journey. Either you’re turning a visitor into a lead, a lead into a customer, a customer into an advocate, or an advocate into a repeat customer. Writing for a reason will make all of your content more effective.

Ignoring SEO

The truth is that you’re not writing just for people — you’re writing for their computers. Specifically, you’re writing for search engines. The good news is that Google has put an enormous amount of time and effort into making sure that the search engine has the same priorities and sensibilities as the average human searcher.

To that end, Google emphasizes long-tail keywords, conversational speech, and truly useful content. The old days of trying to work out a way to game the system with tricks like keyword stuffing, white text, and extra-long metadata are over. There are a lot of ways to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your SEO game, but as always, content is king. Make sure the content is up to snuff and the rest will follow.

Setting and Forgetting

Your work is not done the moment that your blog post or whitepaper gets published. In fact, the industry uses what’s called the 80/20 rule, which means that you should spend 20 percent of your time creating content and the other 80 percent promoting it and re-using it. Repurposing your content to fit different channels, media, or audiences is a crucial step in making sure that you’re getting the most mileage possible out of your work.

The other mistake that some marketers make is to publish their work without making the effort to examine the analytics on your content. You need to know who’s reading your content, how much they’re reading it, where they’re coming from, and how to create more content that everyone will keep coming back for. 

Content That Isn’t Evergreen

It’s tempting to write about trending topics — stories that everyone else is talking about at the moment. Of course, if there’s a news story that concerns your industry or your business specifically, it makes sense to talk about it on your social media accounts and your website. But don’t put too much stock into that kind of content, since it’ll be out of date before too long.

Instead, focus on trends that will never fade — the content that’s always relevant to the people you’re writing for, no matter what time of year or where they are in the buying process. Guides to your industry, broad topics, and general informational posts are all likely to be interesting for a lot longer than a specific news story.

Ignoring Your Users

One of the best sources of content about your product and your business is your customers. After all, who knows the product better than the people who use it every day? In even better news, your potential customers and leads tend to trust other users and customers more than they trust the messaging that comes straight from you.

You can take advantage of that trust, in addition to the goodwill of your satisfied customers, by soliciting and publishing user-generated content (UGC). Go through your social channels, solicit reviews and feedback via email, and publish the best UGC you can find on your site. It’ll make your customers feel heard, and it’ll boost your credibility for your prospects going forward.

Focus on the Content

When it comes down to it, creating top-shelf content is the most important thing you do. Write content that’s relevant to the people that you want buying your products, informative, easy to read, and genuinely useful. Content marketing isn’t about throwing your materials in your customers’ faces, it’s about bringing the right people to you. Keep these things in mind and your content marketing will create a solid foundation for everything else you do.