More and more businesses are involved in the world of content marketing these days – and for a good reason. It has all sorts of practical benefits to companies, including helping with an overall search engine optimization strategy, establishing an authoritative voice, and keeping a loyal audience of followers coming back time and time again. However, while some businesses are successful in getting it right, there are plenty more out there who commit some egregious errors. It is these that are going to be the focus in the following blog post.
Not Using Data to Come Up with Content
While it is all well and good to creatively brainstorm a few ideas of what could make an interesting blog post, you also need to ensure that this is backed up with hard data. Essentially, you need to search for what people are interested in and what they are searching for. Also, if you understand your target market just a little bit better, you are much more likely to be able to create posts that interest and engage them. It is also worth doing your research on the top-performing articles in each subject area. This way, you can work out whether they are addressing the topic well enough and which areas you are going to improve when you create your own piece of content.
Not Protecting Your Content Well Enough
Unfortunately, there are some nefarious characters out there who would prefer to steal your content rather than create your own. Brandfolder’s guide on digital asset management can end up being enormously useful in addressing how you can deal with this particular issue. Making sure that the content is properly copywritten can also help to give you the necessary legal recourse if you happen to need it along the way. Generally, if people are going to copy and paste things directly from your site, they are going to be the ones who are punished for it. However, you may want to do a manual search with your more popular articles through some plagiarism software to see if you get any hits. If any companies are repeat offenders in stealing content, you can always send them out a warning message and continue to pursue further action if you find that this is at all necessary.
Failing to Determine the Goal of the Content
When you produce a piece of content, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from it and what the reader can gain from it. There are several different possibilities here. First of all, you may want to simply raise awareness that makes your customers realize that they have a problem that needs to be solved. Secondly, you may be providing them with solutions, which may be via the products and services on your website or elsewhere. This provides a great opportunity to use backlinks effectively and link up with some partner businesses or organizations. While some pieces may be announcements or purely for entertainment, the majority of your content is likely to need to be in full problem-solving mode. Consider carefully who the target reader is supposed to be and write down everything that you possibly can about them.
Missing Out SEO
It seems like a cardinal sin, but you simply cannot miss out on SEO from your thinking when you are creating content. This means doing plenty of research to determine some keywords that you can look to target within your posts and articles. It also means optimizing your title tags and imagery. If you do not have your own in-house SEO expert, there are plenty of external outsourcing companies that you could look to approach. Alternatively, you can attempt to learn the practice yourself, but there is plenty that you need to be aware of.
Not Putting in Backlinks
While link building is an extension of your overall SEO strategy, it is worth talking about in its own section. How do you go about creating a link-building strategy? Well, there are several different components of this that are worth bearing in mind. First of all, you need to take the time to build up strong relationships with other websites with similar aims and content strategies. You can also rely on your existing partnerships and ask them to provide mutual backlinks in each other’s content. Also, there are bound to be sites that are more general yet authoritative that you can link back to. Further down the line, if you can establish yourself as a strong voice in your industry, you may be able to give interviews and write thought pieces in the established media outlets whose backlinks are very valuable to gain.
Failing to Review the Performance of Your Content Marketing
Along the way, you also need to have a clear idea of how successful your content marketing strategy is and what it is achieving. Otherwise, you are not going to be able to make the necessary tweaks and improvements that will bring you up to the next level. With this in mind, you will want to get your hands on the raw data, such as how many people are clicking onto a particular piece of content, how many shares you are getting, how many comments you are achieving, etc. You should get into the habit of conducting a review on a semi-regular basis. This way, you will be able to achieve the goal of boosting your strategy as necessary.
These are just a few of the traps you should avoid falling into when it comes to your content marketing. By sidestepping these common issues, you are much more likely to be able to create the type of successful content strategy that stands you in good stead for a long time to come. Remember, it is an ongoing process, and the world of content is one that continually shifts over time, so you need to be on your toes.
