Content Marketing Mistakes Which Will Ruin Your Business in 2019

Content marketing has become an essential part of online marketing strategy for any business. It can play a crucial role in reaching your target audience and create a positive brand image.

However, despite the great potential that content marketing has, many businesses are struggling to get the most out of it. This is primarily because businesses often make mistakes and take wrong steps when it comes to content marketing. The outcome of these mistakes can be costly.

Here are 5 content marketing mistakes that every business should avoid:

1. Not having a well-researched strategy

Every marketing effort needs a solid strategy, to begin with. If you are not sure how you’ll create, distribute, and promote your content, then it’s a futile exercise.

You need to use content marketing in the most effective way, and for that, you have to plan in advance. Ask yourself the following questions before creating an effective content marketing plan for your business-

• Will your content marketing gain the trust of the visitors?
• Have you defined your audience?
• Will your marketing build brand awareness?
• What is your marketing plan for content sharing on social media?
• How your content attract your buyers?
• What format does your audience like to receive the content you are providing? Is it infographics? Videos? Text? Blogs? Live Streams? Webinars?

Content that is helpful, informative and actionable helps build a strong relationship with your customers and gain their trust. So once you have figured out what content your audience is seeking and where to distribute it, you are closer perfecting your content marketing strategy.

2. Stealing other people’s content or using duplicate content

Plagiarism should be strictly avoided while creating content. Don’t use already published material from other sources in your marketing campaign.

Always do thorough research to come up with original content ideas. Include the facts that support your arguments and claims. Use high quality and trusted sources to pick your facts from, and provide references from which you are quoting important information.

And if you are going to quote your competitor’s facts or figures, then you must do it without violating any ethical guidelines. If you are targeting a similar audience as that of your competitor, then you can copy topic ideas and content structure. But you still need to keep enough originality.

Make sure that you only use content you’re authorised to use else you can get DMCA notice to take down your materials. This can be especially the case for visual contents.

Be simple, effective, concise and honest while providing informative content without complication. This is how you can create a post that helps grow your brand awareness, improve fans and followers on social media. Furthermore, you can use tools like  BuzzSumo , ClearVoice etc. to enhance your marketing campaigns.

3. Using limited marketing channels

Content is king, but only when you know that how and when to use it. Don’t limit your content marketing campaign with fewer techniques. Just go beyond a guest post and think what and where your targeted audience can find your valuable contents. Make a list of activities and compose content based on them.

You can reach out to influencers in your niche and request them to share your contents. Influencers these days are playing a critical role in disseminating information among people due to their trusted suggestions and recommendations.

According to a Tomoson report, influencer outreach is the fastest growing online customer acquisition channel.

You need something different from others to make your brand stand out. Take a look at how Hostpresto is targeting its audience. They are using so many channels to produce and publish contents.

However, if your content marketing strategy is not aligned with the overall marketing goal, then you will not get the best results from a multi-channel approach.

4. Expecting instant results

Patience and perseverance always pay.

There is no shortcut to getting instant results in content marketing. If you are expecting them too soon, then you are putting yourself in trouble.

Content marketing needs a lot of efforts – from creating high-quality content to utilising different methods in distributing those on various channels. Short-term results like traffic could be seen during early stages, but a slow and steady approach always creates substantial results.

According to Zazzle Media, 60% of companies struggle to produce content consistently, and 65% find it a challenge to create engaging content. As a matter of fact, relevant and informative content creation takes time, and you need to hire an experienced writer or content creator who specialises in your industry niche.

5. Producing weak, empty, or thin content

Google released its Panda algorithm in February 2011 and penalised thousands of websites due to thin or duplicate contents. The purpose of this algorithm is de-valuing low-quality content from Google search and rank high quality and informative content on the top in SERP’s.

Low-quality content can negatively affect your entire website’s rankings. High-quality content, on the other hand, pulls in leads by educating prospects about the brand.

The most important on-page SEO factor for ranking on Google is adding informative, unique and user-friendly content on your website.

If you are using thin content as part of your content marketing strategy, neither your published materials will be ranked on Google search, nor will your landing pages see any visitors.

Conclusion

Content marketing is one of the most popular and effective forms of digital marketing. Your contents should not only promote your brand but also convert people into customers through proper call-to-actions.

However, you must avoid the common mistakes mentioned above to get the most out of your efforts. Creating well-researched conversion-friendly contents for a targeted audience is the key to success here.