When doing content marketing, focusing only on sales without caring about what users really want is one of the most common mistakes. In the following article, we will learn what is content marketing in digital marketing and analyze some common content marketing mistakes to avoid as a content marketer.
What is content marketing in digital marketing?
Content marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies, but it depends on the content. The content may be blog posts, articles, social posts, podcasts, videos, etc…
The goal of content marketing is to attract people to read, engage and retain with the content. In content marketing, content is the king.
The content marketing approach aims to promotes brand awareness, get traffic, generate sales, and keeps your business in the others’ mind.
Common Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
We all fall in mistakes. This is normal. However, we have to learn from these mistakes. Here are the 9 common marketing mistakes to avoid while creating content to your website, social accounts, emails and more:
1- INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT
One of the fundamental mistakes when doing content marketing is writing about topics that potential customers are not interested in. To overcome this, you need to understand your audience, what they need, and when.
Many tools help you develop content, like Answer The Public and Google Trends. These tools give you insight into what potential customers search for online across specific topics.
2- COPY CONTENT
A common cause of your content being underrated is copying from others. Duplicate content will cause significant damage to your SEO results. When detecting websites with similar content, search engines will not be able to determine which content is original to rank higher.
Content is a tool to help websites achieve higher rankings. Therefore, if you use other people’s content, link back to their site and see it as an opportunity to get backlinks from them.
In addition, if you “steal” another site’s ideas, you will gradually lose credibility. Instead, show that you are an expert, a consultant in that field, and create content that is not duplicated.
3- ONLY WORRY ABOUT MARKETING, INSTEAD OF “EDUCATION” CUSTOMERS
The main goal of content marketing is to educate, provide information to potential customers about your products or services, and then sell. First, you must “educate” your readers on how to solve the problems they are facing. For example, if users want to know how to change batteries for electric cars, they must learn how to do this by the end of your article.
4- BUSY SELLING, INSTEAD OF BRINGING VALUE
Current users are very smart. They know how to filter out sales “smelly” content. If you produce content with the sole goal of selling, the results will disappoint you.
Remember that content marketing is more than just copywriting. Instead of figuring out what content can be created, focus on what benefits that content can bring to customers.
Never create content just to talk about yourself. By focusing on producing content that engages and delivers the best value to your customers, you’re building trust in their eyes. Sooner or later, they will “pocket their wallets” to buy your products and services.
✅See also: COPY AI Review: How to Write All Your Content in Minutes?
5- UNABLE TO IDENTIFY TARGET
You should set specific goals for the content you will deploy for the business. For example, when making a video, you need to determine whether to use it for viral social media goals or landing pages. If your goal is to go viral, your video must have a substantial emotional impact to get viewers talking and sharing. If you’re using it for a landing page, you need to focus on marketing your brand or the product you’re selling.
6- NOT TRACKING AND MEASURING RESULTS
If you don’t monitor closely, it will be difficult for you to know how effective the content on your website is, how to improve the low-performing content, and make the most of the content that is performing well. For more convenience, you should take advantage of monitoring software.
After all, the content you create is not only for entertainment purposes but also has to bring economic efficiency and success to the business; for example, generating more conversions on your website, increasing sales, increasing brand awareness, etc. Once you’ve defined your goals, you’ll determine what metrics to track to achieve that goal.
7- WRITE CONTENT FOR SEARCH ENGINES, NOT FOR HUMANS
Keyword research is one of the essential elements for designing marketing tactics. But keywords are only a tiny part. How much research but trying to stuff keywords will cause side effects, also known as “over-optimization,” leading to a high probability of being penalized by Google.
Writing high-quality content will be a top priority. Today’s search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated, aiming to understand the real search goal of users. Therefore, it is not necessary to insert a lot of variations of related search terms.
8- DO NOT PROMOTE CONTENT ( important Common Content Marketing Mistakes)
The next mistake many businesses make when marketing content is a lack of publicity for that content. Having an effective content strategy, you are only half successful. The other 50% is down to how you promote that content. Otherwise, potential customers won’t find the content.
Marketers need to focus on building a content promotion plan that users can regularly reach, including guest posting, link building, social media plans thanks to influencers sharing your articles, etc.
To maximize your reach, promote your content across different channels, find websites or communities to share ideas with potential customers, connect with influencers by sharing their content, and add more. Enter their names in your posts, interact in groups, organize online webinars, reach out by email, and share content with paid advertising.
9- DO NOT MAINTAIN ONLINE CONTENT DISTRIBUTION
In the digital era and social media networks, you need to focus on the following three factors:
– Email list
– Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
– Search engine
✅See also: How to Write a Blog Post that Ranks in Google
Content Marketing Mistakes VS 3 Ways to increase website traffic
To increase website traffic, you can get help from these 3 types of traffic:
A.PAID TRAFFIC
If you have a budget, invest in PPC (pay per click) like Google Adwords, banner ads, Facebook ads, re-targeting…
B.SECURED TRAFFIC
This takes more time and includes traffic coming from social networks, referral traffic (traffic through referring pages) from people linking to your blog or page, and organic traffic (natural traffic) from search engines like Google.
C.OWNED TRAFFIC
Owned traffic can be email lists and call-to-actions like calling for membership registration and subscriptions. With an email list, you can reach your customers anytime without depending on Google or Facebook.
Above are some mistakes that marketers often make when doing content marketing. Hopefully, with the solutions suggested above, you will minimize the risk when planning content marketing tactics.
