The Four Mistakes That Content Marketers Make
"I'm not sure what it is about the word "mistake," but it seems to be a big trigger for many people. The word has a negative connotation and tends to bring up feelings of guilt, shame, or regret. But while mistakes are certainly not desirable, they are inevitable. In fact, research indicates that most successful people experience at least one major setback in their careers."
When it comes to content marketing, there are many pitfalls to fall into. Every marketer will face unique challenges, but we all have our share of mistakes.
How do you stay on top of your mistakes?
In my experience, it's all about asking yourself the right questions.
The most critical question you need to ask—and keep asking yourself—is:
What do I want from my content marketing?
Because if you don't know what you're after, you may end up getting everything except the results you want.
How do we get everything but still fall short of our goals? Sometimes it's because we don't know what to measure.
Other times it's because we lost sight of our goals and started doing content marketing just for the sake of doing it.
These problems are pretty standard for new brands who are just getting started, but for everyone else, I need to ask: Are you sure you know what you're doing?
I'll guess that you do. Most of us who've been in the business for a while don't need to be told what to do.
But it never hurts to hear the advice straight from the source.
So let me put my years of experience to good use and tell you the top mistakes that content marketers make.
Here they are:
You're creating content for the sake of doing it.
You don't have a strategy or goals in mind before you start creating and sharing your content.
Your content is not engaging because it's not solving any problems, nor is it educating its audience on anything unique or relevant to them.
You're trying to get people to buy something without providing enough information to determine if it's the right thing for them—or at all worth their money.
Okay, so this last may be a common mistake, but I wanted to mention it anyway because some brands try and get away with this and get their audience to click the buy button without even telling them what they're paying for.
Okay, so let's get into detail about these mistakes one by one:
Mistake #1: You're creating content just for the sake of doing it.
This is a big problem I've noticed with people starting off in content marketing. They'll start writing just because they want more traffic or any other benefit that comes from posting your own content on your site like SEO, etc.…I do this too sometimes, but when you start getting serious about content marketing, you won't be satisfied unless you have a specific goal in mind that motivates all of your efforts in creating quality content that brings value to your audience—and ultimately, gets you the results you want.
At this point, I have specific goals in mind that drive all my content marketing efforts.
Those goals are:
to generate traffic to my site so that it ranks well on search engines like Google
to educate my visitors about what they're looking for and hopefully become a resource for them (this is usually why people visit sites and read blog posts)
to get people who either know or don't know about [my company] to become more familiar with us through our content, which helps people make better decisions when buying from us. Also allows me to collect new leads/leads who already know me. This also means sending out emails for each piece of content we create, something I'll talk about later.
What are your goals?
If you don't have any, you can't measure your results and figure out if what you're doing is actually working. So make sure to benchmark what your goal is and be clear about it. That way, all of your content marketing efforts will be geared towards this goal.
Mistake #2: You don't have a strategy or goals in mind before creating & sharing content – also called having no Plan B.
This is another common mistake that marketers make when starting out in content marketing—especially if they're doing it on their own, which, like I said earlier, isn't always the best idea because even though we think we know better than others who may not be doing things our way, we tend to make these mistakes more.
Here's the thing:
You can't just post a piece of content on your site and expect it to do well or even get any results at all unless you have a strategy in mind that drives everything you're creating…at least for the first few months.
This is different from mistake #1, where I talked about having goals in mind before doing anything else. With this mistake, what I'm saying is that if you don't have a plan behind everything you create and share on your site, things are going to be less than successful when it comes to getting people to read your content—as it should be considering the quality of what you're sharing with them.
So how do you make sure you're creating content that people want to read?
The easiest way to do this is by a quick analysis of your site's analytics—Google Analytics is the most popular, but there are other alternatives like HotJar.
You'll learn what keywords people search for when they land on your site, which pages they end up visiting (which means which resources they were looking for and weren't able to find), and how much time visitors usually spend on each page.
If you don't have any sort of analytics installed or set it up in the past few months, I recommend setting it up ASAP because it gives you so much information about what your audience wants. And if you already have Google Analytics set up, you should be able to see which resources are the most popular on your site.
Using this data, you can either create more content around a particular resource or repeat popular ones if it's practical enough for people to keep coming back to. The goal is always to provide value so that your visitors get what they need and come back again and again because of the quality of the information that's helpful for their job/business.
How exactly do you share all of these resources?
The primary method is through social media, which I'll talk about in detail below (for now, just know that you don't want to put links in Instagram captions). But before anything else, make sure that whatever you're going to post around a new resource is as good as or better than that resource.
This can be done by creating a short video explaining how to use it or creating an infographic out of the data it contains (this also helps because infographics are very shareable). Sometimes it's even helpful to post about a new tool you found but don't intend to use yourself, like when I came across LeadFuze and posted about it. Within the first day alone, I got 12 clicks (6 from Facebook, 4 from Twitter, and 2 direct from the site) where all they did came to my place for the link to sign up for their software.
There's no point in throwing your content out there with high expectations only to find that nobody wants it.
As for the actual social media posting, here's some advice based on my previous experience:
Use Google Analytics to get an idea of what kinds of posts (images/videos) get more interaction. Not only will you have a better chance at getting likes & shares, but you'll be able to create even more content around those types of posts, and your engagement will go up again because people already like that type of content from you.
With Facebook specifically, Instagram has a photo limit, so it's suitable for posting images, BUT if any links are in the captions, they won't show up in the Explore feed. Facebook knows this, which is why if you click on a link in someone's Instagram post when it appears in your newsfeed, then it will redirect you to the association. So even though they can't put links in their captions, Facebook knows people still want to click on them, so they give users an incentive by making links show up in their newsfeed.
Be aware of this because if your Instagram post doesn't get much engagement, then after a while, Facebook won't promote it anymore, and that means all of the data you have behind what type of post does well on Instagram is now gone—so make sure you come up with something else fast!
Something else worth mentioning about using social media for your content marketing strategy is that messages like "Click the link in bio" are not always a clear strategy (because no one actually clicks on anything from accounts with more than 1k followers). One thing you could do is to say something along the lines of "Want this article featured in my next blog post? Reply to this comment and let me know why you want it."
Although that might seem like a lot of work, it allows people to engage with your brand by sharing their thoughts and opinions. Not only does it make them feel more impacted by what you publish, but they're also more likely to click on any links in your future posts because they have a personal connection with you.
Mistake #3. Your content is not engaging because it's not solving any problems, nor is it educating its audience on anything unique or relevant to them.
The solution:
If you're creating content to share in your industry, then you need information that helps resolve or educate people on a problem they're experiencing.
If you're trying to start a side business, you need information that helps resolve or educate people on something they want to learn about.
Here's how I personally went about doing that in my past side clients:
1. I found problems people were having within their industry.
I used to represent a local gym. So because I'm passionate about wellness and have dabbled in many fitness & health activities over the years, I would listen to what my gym members talked about after their workouts.
2. I found problems people were having in my city.
I also took an interest in the running industry (since I already liked to run). So because I was interested but not experienced, I would listen to what runners and other fitness enthusiasts talked about while out on their runs.
3. Step 3: Preemptively set yourself up to succeed.
Because I figured these people were likely to have some problems, I would start looking for posts on Facebook (or even Instagram) that seemed to address an issue they had—then I would LIKE the post and write a comment related to it with a link back to a blog post of mine where more information could be found. After that, I would immediately check if more people LIKED that the post or had any comments on it. If they did, then I would like their LIKE or comment and write a thank you note related to what they had said (like "Thanks for sharing this! You're right about X. That's EXACTLY why I wrote about this on my blog: [link to article]."
After doing that enough times, I had a decent following of people that had already engaged with me and would be more likely to see my new content. Then when I did post new content, they were more likely to read it or share it because they felt like they already knew me or could relate to something I had said.
Mistake #4. You're trying to get people to buy something without providing enough information to determine if it's the right thing for them—or at all worth their money.
The solution:
Give people all of the information they need to determine if a product is for them or not. This means giving them more than just the benefits of your product. You need to provide them with the downfalls too so that they can determine whether it's worth their money or not.
And if you don't, then someone else will, and your competitor will reap the rewards (but more on that in a minute).
How I overcame this mistake: In my example from above, for each blog post I wrote for my client selling yoga & pilates DVDs, the primary call to action was pointing the reader to check out the product (the DVD).
Here is a sample of what it looked like.
However, in this case, I put one more "call to action" at the end of my articles (usually in the form of a question) that would entice the reader to read more about the product.
For example:
"If you're still wondering if yoga is for you, then check out this article where I address 8 things people often find intimidating about it."
Then at the end of that article, I had all of their contact information, social media links, and a small section letting them know they could also get a free preview of the product.
The way I positioned this was so that if someone read that article about yoga & pilates DVD intimidation, they were more likely to realize it might be helpful for them to see what they're getting into before making a purchase.
Or if someone happened to stumble across my blog but didn't realize what my business was all about (since the site's main focus wasn't selling the product), they were more likely to find out about it and be enticed by it. However, I wouldn't know whether this little addition was working or not until I started getting more people signing up for my list and buying the product.
Content marketing is a process that you need to constantly be evaluating and improving upon.
The mistakes you make today could be different from those I made when I started and will undoubtedly be different from those of someone just getting into it tomorrow.
But if you're willing to take action on what you learn, then I'm confident that even though your path will look a little different than mine, you'll enjoy similar results.
So let me know in the comments below; what have you learned from your experience creating content for your business?
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