6 Mistakes That May Be Sabotaging Your Content Marketing
Content is the soul of your marketing campaign. Without a proper content strategy in place, it is difficult to generate leads and conversions.
Around 64% of marketers believe that their content marketing is moderately or minimally effective. These statistics indicate that many marketers are yet to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Here we give you a list of 6 things which don’t work and which might be sabotaging your content marketing:
1. You Are Not Testing Your Content
By not testing your content, you are setting it up for failure. It is a good practice to put your content through a testing phase.
The various content elements that should be tested include headlines, images, call to action buttons and signup forms.
This is how CrazyEgg has A/B tested its headline:
As you can see, there is a clear winner. Result? Guesswork eliminated. They know which headline is more effective.
Takeaway
When testing your content, experiment with different scenarios. For images, you can try using two completely different images or simply change the subject in the image (for example, test with the image of a man instead of a woman). For Call To Action buttons, test with different text on the CTA.
2. You Are Not Making Your Content Shareable
You have created great content and it is time to put it out there. But have you provided social platform sharing options? There are so many websites that do not pay attention to this aspect.
Poorly placed buttons can be a huge drawback as the user is not really going to spend time looking for them. However, it’s clearly worse not having any social sharing buttons at all.
Ensure that the sharing buttons are available even as the user scrolls down the page.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that you should allow multi-channel sharing. The key is to strike a balance between too few and too many.
Consider a case where you provide Twitter and Facebook sharing buttons but your users are on a different platform. In such a scenario, your strategy won’t work well despite having these sharing features. Similarly, if you bombard the user with all possible buttons, the user might feel confused and lose the urge to share your content.
Takeaway
When it comes to placing social sharing buttons, as per this study, the top left of the page is the most viewed section. Additionally, too many social sharing buttons can backfire. So always think of giving only what is necessary.
3. You Don’t Focus On Creating Engaging Headlines
Despite all the controversy around clickbait, it is proven that they are effective.
Clickbait headlines stand out from the generic ones and create curiosity in the mind of the reader. As a result, the user ends up clicking them. Instead of saying “top 5 reasons why people leave your site”, you might say, “Here is the secret to making visitors stay”.
As long as you are not using clickbait to serve bad content to your audience, it works effectively in bringing more visitors. Using clickbait as a cover for bad content is never a good idea.
Takeaway
Optimise your headlines. Remember these facts: digits in number format perform better, odd numbers in headlines outperform even numbers by 20%. Also, people dig negative titles.
4. You Rely Entirely On Text
If your content marketing strategy relies heavily on text and is devoid of visual elements, this is clearly going to sabotage your content marketing.
Not using multiple forms of content is a serious mistake. With a constant increase in the consumption of videos, images etc. visual content has become a necessity rather than an option.
Additionally, when you use different forms of content in your marketing, it allows you to repurpose it and publish more consistently. Consistent publishing is the key to keeping your audience engaged.
Takeaway:
If you haven’t yet incorporated visuals in your content plan, it is the time to jump on this wagon and make the power of visual marketing work in your favor. In case you already have a visual content plan in place, it is time to re-purpose old content to publish more and build a stronger online presence.
5. You Don’t Understand Your Audience
Not everyone is going to like your content. Additionally, what appeals to one subset of the population might not be as engaging for others.
You must also realize that your audience will react differently to the various content formats. While a chunk of your users might prefer videos, others might want to see an infographic.
A good understanding of your audience is a combination of many things. Also, you should use the social platform filters to target the right users.
The key to a successful content strategy is in knowing your audience.
Takeaway:
Almost every content sharing platform and even the social media channels, allow you to target your audience based on certain factors. Utilise it to your advantage.
6. Your Content Is Based On a Passing Fad
Content which is bound by time, will be lost to the purgatory and not be of much value once its popularity phase has passed.
Any content that is built on hot topics falls out eventually. However, evergreen content continues to bring in users long after it is published. The usefulness of this content never fades.
Brands that are focused on creating viral content are missing out on this very important detail. Viral content does bring a lot of visitors but isn’t a good recipe for long-term gain. Your brand should focus on creating content which holds a long-term relevance.
Those cat or panda videos might be the “cutest thing your audience sees on the internet today” but it will be replaced by something else tomorrow.
Takeaway:
When you plan your content, don’t forget to think long term. Viral comes and goes. Evergreen content stays.
Conclusion
Each and every brand has its own unique strategy. But there are a few common mistakes all brands should avoid equally.
Not knowing the likes and dislikes of your audience. Being too dependant on textual content and thinking of only creating “viral”stuff are just two of the many mistakes that can negatively influence your brand image. By carefully crafting your content. Avoid the obvious mistakes and improve your blogging fortunes.
What Do You Think?
Are there any other mistakes you think people should avoid? Perhaps you’d like to share how a tweak you made, helped boost your blog’s readership? Please comment, below.
You may also like to read: 6 Common Blogging Blunders (And How To Fix Them)
Our other articles on various marketing mistakes
Featured image: Copyright: ‘https://www.123rf.com/profile_samuraitop‘ / 123RF Stock Photo
Latest posts by Sahil Kakkar (see all)
- How Chatbots Can Boost Your Site’s SEO - March 31, 2020
- The Future of Augmented Reality With Search Engine Optimization - September 18, 2018
- Mobile-First Indexing: What Google Wants You To Know - June 21, 2018
