15 Content Marketing Mistakes You’re Still Making and How to Avoid Them

Content marketing aims to grab a customer’s attention by supplying them with free, high-quality content. Content is of many types; however, the two main brackets all content comes under are written word and audio-visual.

Content marketing is the most effective online marketing strategy. It is because content supplies the means to build a deeper relationship with your audience. People on the internet are starving for relevant, high-quality content, and they want it served to them in a consistent basis.

It means that content marketing is a long-term strategy, and when executed right, it leads to massive growth in traffic.

Each day, well over 5 million blog posts go online. With such a concentration, it is highly essential to create compelling content. High-quality, practical, and targeted posts will help you cut through the noise and reach your audience.

Making mistakes when marketing is common, but some cost you more than others. Failing to recognize these errors and not fixing them will stall your websites’ growth.

Here are 15 Content Marketing Mistakes That People Make and Ways to Fix Them

#1 Focusing on Multiple Niches

Every successful blog and channel has its focus on one or at most two niches. It is because audiences consume content by niche, and when they find someone creating and putting up quality content consistently, they tend to stick with them.

However, if one keeps switching niches—say from technology to business to education, the crowd will not be able to tell what your niche is and what it is that they should subscribe to you for.

Fix: Pick a niche before you start your blog or channel. It is not difficult to find a profitable niche that you enjoy posting.

Use Google Trends to figure out if a particular niche is popular enough for you to participate in. Let’s say you want to blog about luxury cars. What do the trends say:

Image: Using-Google-Trends-to-figure-niche.png

We see that it is very popular among US-based audiences. Therefore, you can readily devise a content marketing plan around it and expect some results.

Also, try and avoid niches whose markets have already saturated; it will make your content much more difficult to find.

#2 Quantity over Quality

Putting up posts in a rush is another very common mistake content marketers make. You mustn’t forget that the idea behind content marketing is not to load your brand with content; it is to connect to your audience through it.

Pumping a large volume of low-quality posts will affect your brands’ reach—people do not want (or need) to consume mediocre content anymore.

Fix: Plan out your posts. Start with four a month, or whatever number you can manage. However, make sure that all your posts are SEO-optimized, insightful, and make a compelling case or argument that adds value to your readers’ lives.

Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush will help you optimize your content and enable you to drive more traffic to the blog.

#3 Overlooking Customer Need

Content cannot be created with a “one-size-fits-all” ideology. Problems that you face or products that you need may not necessarily be universally required and appreciated.

Overlooking your customers’ needs is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. It gives your customers a reason to not come back to your blog, channel, or page.

Fix: If you think you have an excellent idea for a post, research it. Using Google’s search engine, its keyword planner, and Trends is one of the best ways to determine the market for ideas.

The keywords that are popular in your niche are the queries your traffic is typing into search engines. Let’s extend the luxury car example here:

Image: Google-keyword-planner.png

As we can see, there are numerous ideas one could work with.

You’ll instantly know if an idea is worth exploring.

#4 Underestimating the Power of Proofreading

As mentioned earlier, low-quality posts destroy your chance to connect with your audience. Furthermore, your ranking on SERPs will drop every time you put up a low-quality post.

This can be a significant setback for your blog.

Fix: Proofreading fixes most of the grammar and optimization mistakes that exist in every piece of content. Therefore, once you finish your posts, always read them line by line again.

Use tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid to eliminate any grammar errors and to make sure that no content is accidentally plagiarized since plagiarism also affects your SERP ranking.

Let’s take this post itself, for example.

Before editing with Grammarly:

Image: Grammarly-Finding Errors.png

After editing with Grammarly:

Image: Grammarly-final-report.png

#5 Wasting Time in Always Creating New Content

If you encounter a writing block or can’t find the time to curate a detailed, quality post, you must avoid creating new content.

Pushing yourself and rushing it will only make things worse, and you must avoid putting out low-quality posts.

Taking a break from writing will make you feel guilty. However, there are other things you can do to increase your sites’ ratings. 

Fix: Put on your editor’s hat and optimize your older posts. Fix the broken links that are around no more.

Maybe there’s a typo. Possibly, keywords aren’t used frequently enough. Perhaps an older post deserves up-to-date stats and content.

Going back to your older posts will help you optimize your site as a whole and give you a glimpse of how far you made it.

Furthermore, your blog or website will always be up-to-date and provide only relevant information to readers.

#6 Sticking to One Single Channel Like Blogs

Blogging is great, and so is YouTube and Instagram. However, just sticking to one of these will do more harm than good.

It will limit the number of people you reach, which will, in turn, slow down the growth of your channel, page, or blog.

Fix: Your primary objective must be to pull all the traffic you can. To do this, you must leverage all the platforms available to you. Create a linked cycle of online assets. Maintain consistent profile data over all of them!

Leveraging different platforms will allow you to spread the word about your content to different kinds of audiences.

Content marketing in 2019 requires you to be flexible and versatile. Therefore, if you primarily make videos, post a picture about it and blog about your experiences.

If you primarily blog, tease your content on Instagram and go over your process of creating posts in a video.

#7 Considering a Good Writer Is a Good Content Marketer

Writing well is different from marketing well. A post that is an enjoyable read will not always make money.

Writing for marketing is different from writing for reading; they are two completely different approaches to writing.

Failing to write in a way that motivates readers to act—make a purchase, sign up to your newsletter, etc.—should be considered as a loss, not a win.

Fix: You must avoid writing flat articles that manage to hook the reader but do not drive a sale.

Older content can also be crafted to appeal to the audience so that readers act on their impression of the products.

The ideal way is to arrange an excellent team of writers on the one hand and editors/marketers on the other. This way, high-quality content can be tweaked to become marketable. 

#8 Taking Time for Perfection

Perfect content does not exist. It may be accurate in your eyes. However, a reader halfway across the world may think otherwise.

Getting into the perfectionist mindset will hinder your sites’ growth; you will keep rewriting articles and refuse to try new ideas since you value the idea of perfection over connecting to your audience.

Fix: Just create. Nothing must stop you. The quality of your content will increase on its own with time. Don’t let the idea of perfection hold you back.

All you need is to be knowledgeable and well versed in your niche. Sooner or later, you will start delivering top-notch content that provides genuine solutions to problems and brings in good traffic.

#9 Underestimating the Power of E-mail

An e-mail list is a collection of addresses. Every blog can create one by supplying readers with quality content. If you think that e-mail marketing has lost its potency, then you are wrong.

59% of B2B Marketers cite e-mail marketing as their top revenue source.

Creating a subscriber list is an excellent way of connecting to your audience consistently over more extended periods. You can offer them bonus contents, special offers and discounts, or even digital tools that will aid them in daily life.

Building a loyal subscriber base is one of the most powerful tactics one can employ for the growth of their brand. Not using an e-mail list only means that you miss out on this opportunity.

Fix: Create a subscriber list using tools like OptInMonster and Optimizely to build an audience interested in your niche.

#10 Revealing Your Master Plan in the First Go

Letting it all out in one or a few blog posts or a single page is a drastic error many new content marketers commit.

Planning is an integral and essential part of content marketing. You must not only plan what content you will create and when you will post it.

Publish your posts step by step and use other advanced funnels to carry out different steps of your plan. For instance, don’t use a blog post to promote an e-book or software that you developed.

Instead, build content around it, provide information, and then create options and pop-ups for your products. These funnels make the entire process consumer-friendly and avoid you looking like an online salesperson!

Use content marketing funnels and other techniques that will help you plot out and understand how to pull in more visitors and generate new leads without revealing your entire blog strategy!

#11 Overconfidence on Your Content

Regardless of if you’re a veteran marketer or are just starting, you will agree that nothing feels better than getting a piece of content to reach and connect to your target audience. It is a rush.

However, it can be easy to get carried away when your strategy sticks in the first go. A lot of marketers then get too confident, even though they might not completely understand why their content worked.

Just because a piece of content worked wonders once does not imply it will be successful another time. Being overconfident and just winging it will ruin your brand image.

Fix: Don’t blindly trust your content. Always follow best practices, and work hard to market it appropriately.

Once you are done publishing, strategize and integrate your marketing activities over Google, Facebook, and other media outlets. Don’t just sit and wait for traffic to come. There are millions of creators with talent, and it’s a race of who markets best!

#12 Forgetting Old Content

Almost every niche has specific trends that keep on giving. For instance, in the field of technology, retro gaming devices are mentioned time and time again. It is because it is a topic that will always stay relevant.

Forgetting about your older content is one of the worst things you can do as a marketer. Regardless of when your content was put up, it always has the potential of becoming popular and going viral in the future. 

If you leave your content outdated, chances are no one will ever come across it.

Fix: Check your published library at least once in three months. The chances are that you are missing out on a trend. 

Old content can be a gold mine; make sure it’s ready for quarrying. For instance, you may have written something around AI back in 2012 when it was not that much talked about. You could find that piece, revise it, and relaunch it. AI is a top trend today and will likely bring you a gold mine of traffic when marketed right!

#13 Taking Your Audience for Granted

Different people have different opinions and ideas. Your audience doesn’t need to agree with what you’re saying. You should consistently keep looking for what answers people seek and draft content accordingly.

• Read comments and churn out ideas from there
• When these idea-based posts are done, share privately in those comments
• Gauge interests through tools like Facebook Ads
• Interact with potential audiences to find what they are looking for

#14 Forcing Products to Sell

Putting up posts that only exist to sell products all the time will hinder your growth. Your current visitors may even find it annoying and may unsubscribe. Practices like keyword stuffing, irritating pop-ups, and ad overloads don’t work anymore.

Content provides a means to connect to your audience; it must be utilized wisely and not be abused.

Fix: You must market your brand first, then think about selling products.

Establishing a trusted brand image will help you become a credible source. Only then will you be able to market products effectively.

#15 Sticking to the Same Plan

Getting your strategy to work in the first go is a fantastic feat. However, you mustn’t let it get to your head.

If you keep trying the same strategy under the impression that it worked out the first time, the chances are that your efforts will backfire. It’s a dynamic interface, and trends change daily. So should your plan. 

Don’t change your ultimate goals and targets. However, your delivery and marketing strategies must always change in real time according to traffic needs and SEO updates.

This is because your audience continually changes and evolves, and you must grow with them.

Fix: Trying different strategies is critical to creating success in the field of content marketing.

Whenever you start a new marketing campaign, formulate a new strategy. Sticking to older plans will only impede your growth. Use tools like SEMrush to see what your competition is doing. Stay up to date!

These might not be the only mistakes that marketers make, but they are certainly the most common ones.

Avoiding these mistakes and fixing the ones you’ve made will improve how online audience receives your content.

Doing it right will help you find the breaking point to your success.