10 Mistakes that Can Hinder Content Marketing

It’s never particularly nice to be told you’re doing something wrong. Nevertheless, research would seem to suggest that most smaller businesses face the same common pitfalls with their content marketing strategy.

The good news being that in all instances, the following errors and oversights are easily corrected. It’s simply a case of identifying them where they exist, implementing the necessary corrective measures as required:

1. Prioritising quantity over quality
Both quality and quantity matter, but it’s quality that should be given priority. It’s far better to have lower quantities of stellar content than excessive quantities of garbage.

2. Not establishing realistic goals
It’s impossible for a content marketing strategy to achieve its objectives if no objectives have been established. Prior to setting the wheels in motion, it’s essential to establish a series of realistic and measurable goals.

3. Insufficient platform consideration
When publishing your posts, you need to think carefully about the specifics of the platform in question and its audience. In a working example, LinkedIn users respond better to detailed and professional posts, while Twitter users are simply after fast-hitting soundbites.

4. Blanket posting
In keeping with the above point, it’s never a good idea to pen a single post and publish it across every channel you operate. Create it with one specific channel in mind, before editing it to suit any other channels you intend to make use of.

5. Poor proofreading
The best approach to proofreading is to have someone else cast their eye over your work, before allowing it to go public. In any case, you need to ensure every post is comprehensively checked to the finest detail, prior to publishing.

6. Brand identity inconsistencies
Every post you publish should further emphasise your brand identity. Changing your voice, tone or general approach to attempt to appeal to individual audiences achieves the opposite. Treat every post as a valuable opportunity to let them know who you are, what you do and what you stand for.

7. Overlooking usefulness
It’s worth remembering that in most instances, readers are on the lookout for content with some kind of practical value to them. As such, the overwhelming majority of posts you publish should be in some way useful. If it carries no value, it doesn’t need to be published.

8. Lack of variety
No content marketing strategy should ever revolve exclusively around written content. It’s important to occasionally change things up with a few images, video clips, infographics and so on. Anything you can do to keep your work engaging is something you should be doing.

9. Extensive gaps
Consistency is one of the most important contributors to a successful content marketing strategy. If you get into the habit of posting on a daily basis, you need to continue posting on a daily basis. If you expect your audience to take kindly to extensive periods of silence, you can forget about it.

10. Ignoring the evidence
Last but not least, analytics provide all the data you will ever need to make a success of your content marketing strategy. What’s working, what could stand to be improved, what’s falling out of favour with your audience – the information is right there for the taking, it’s up to you to use it.