5 Content Marketing Pitfalls
5 Content Marketing Pitfalls was written to help you strategize and improve your online marketing efforts.
Content marketing pitfalls are plentiful. There is a lot to juggle! Not only do you need to keep your customers engaged and informed, but you need to outsmart your competition.
In this article entitled 5 Content Marketing Pitfalls, I’ll walk you through the challenges my clients have faced in the past. Whether it’s a lack of content strategy, inconsistency, a focus on quantity over quality, ignoring SEO best practices, or a lack of patience, there is a solution.
Read on!
Lack of Content Strategy
What is your content marketing strategy? Did you even have one?
Many businesses focus on creating content without a clear plan. The result is a jumble of content that sends mixed messages.
I tell my clients that online competition is fierce. That’s why it may take customers a while to understand your message. For example, a single social media post about a weekly promotion is unlikely to capture the attention of its target audience.
People are busy. You need to convey your message repeatedly in different ways.
The first step, if you aren’t already implementing this, is to develop a content calendar. Work ahead by at least a month or two and think about each step of your marketing plan in weekly segments.
Which blog posts will you write this month? How will you promote these? Set out your topics, formats and publishing schedule in advance.
Let’s say your content calendar is for your chain of shoe stores. At the end of July, you have set out a clear focus on summer sales. Your blog, pre-posted for the week, may be about Trends in Summer Sandals.
Repurpose your blog posts into social media content and email copy to promote the same topic throughout the week. This way, customers see the same message in many different formats.
Utilize tools like Google Analytics to determine what resonates with your customers. Keep notes. Keep track. Continue to strategize.
Lack of Consistency
Everyone has been there. With a new business, there is a whirl of content creation to spark interest and sell products. Your website consistently features weekly blog posts, accompanied by daily social media posts and links that direct users back to your website.
Then, suddenly, all your hard work pays off. Customers start buying your products and services. It takes a great deal of time to give your clients what they want. Suddenly, you feel overwhelmed, and your content marketing becomes inconsistent.
What can a business owner or manager do? This isn’t the time to give up. It’s time to streamline your content marketing to promote tangible consistency.
Look at your analytics. Which blog posts are bringing in the most traffic? Can you write more blog posts like these? Streamline your blogging efforts.
First, look at your social media accounts. Dig into which ones are working for you. You don’t have to be on every platform. Be selective.
If you are truly overwhelmed, it may be time to hire a content marketing writer to assist you.
Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
In direct opposition to a lack of consistency is mass production. Focusing on quantity over quality is a huge mistake!
It isn’t about how many blog posts you create. It’s about the quality of your posts and how they resonate with your customers. Yes, businesses feel pressure to create more content, but quality matters.
Low-quality content damages your credibility. This is especially true with blogs that live on your website. Customers do not want to read a poorly written post. Once you have a blog post you are pleased with, repurpose it into additional content.
Think of developing a Content Guideline, especially when working with content marketing writers. This will help establish your brand’s voice, tone, style, and format while maintaining consistency.
Ignoring SEO Best Practices
Okay, let’s talk Search Engine Optimization.
Good SEO is crucial for attracting readers to your website. After all, that’s where they will find out everything about you before buying your products and services.
As mentioned earlier, high-quality content is crucial for maintaining readership. However, search engines like Google also reward websites for producing excellent content by placing it higher in the search results.
Google uses the (E-E-A-T) approach when ranking content. Here is what it stands for.
- Expertise
- Experience
- Authoritative
- Trustworthy
SEO also utilizes keywords, enabling readers and search engines to understand the content of your post. This will take some research. Numerous other best practices in SEO involve titles, alt tags, header tags, meta tags and more.
Read 10 Ways to SEO-Friendly Blogs
Additionally, if you are using WordPress or Shopify for your website, I highly recommend installing Yoast. It’s a plugin that will guide you through the complexities of SEO.
If you need help understanding it, feel free to schedule a 30-minute consultation with me. It’s called The Big Marketing Brainstorm. During this time, we can discuss the best online marketing practices.
Lack of Patience
This is a good one! I’ve had clients come to me after making a three-month content marketing effort and exclaim that it’s not working.
Content marketing takes time.
Consider the California-based company Goop, owned by American actress and business mogul Gwyneth Paltrow. The wellness and lifestyle brand started as a weekly newsletter back in 2008, when the actress was living in England. Later, the company expanded into e-commerce.
Today, Goop has a net worth of 6.9 million. Imagine if Paltrow had given up six months after writing her first newsletter!
This illustrates how content marketing builds and snowballs over time. Content marketing is not a short-term fix. It grows and develops with your business over time.
Marketing is built on trust. Customers need to be nurtured. It’s the long game.
In Conclusion
In the meantime, set small, attainable business goals to show your gains through content marketing. Strategize and keep moving forward.
What’s Your Content Marketing Strategy?
Need help with your strategy? Check out The Big Marketing Brainstorm. It’s a 30-minute Consultation to set you on the right track! Find out more.
