Top 5 content marketing mistakes and how to avoid them

To have a successful SEO campaign strategy, you need to be producing helpful content for your target audience.

This means creating relevant and engaging articles that are optimised for search engines and targeted specifically to your buyer personas. Easier said than done, right?It’s not just a case of smashing out a couple of paragraphs to keep your blog ticking over. There are many steps involved in creating content that’s not only going to attract the customers you need but also inspires them to take action and engage with your business. Making mistakes in your content marketing could prevent you from expanding your customer base. So, it’s important to ensure you know what you’re doing to make the most out of the content you produce.

In this blog post, we highlight the five most common content marketing mistakes, and what you can do to ensure you don’t make them!

Not having a plan

Without a plan, you don’t have a strategy. And without a strategy, your content marketing won’t be very effective. With so many stages involved in executing a content marketing strategy, it’s important to know why you’re creating this content and exactly how you’re going to do it.

Start by gathering data on your target audience so that you can create your buyer personas. A persona is a semi-fictional character who represents your ideal customer. It should include demographics such as gender and age, as well as other details such as their likes and dislikes, behaviour, goals, hopes, fears and more. Most importantly, you need to identify the most common questions your customers are asking in relation to your business. Knowing these will influence the titles of blogs you produce.

Your plan also needs to identify how you should promote your content to make sure it’s seen by your target audience. For example, if your buyer persona spends a lot of time on social media, consider running social media ads promoting your content. This will reach more potential customers and, because you will know your personas inside out, you’ll be able to create really specific adverts that will target your ideal customers.

To learn more about creating a digital marketing plan, check out this post.

Not implementing SEO techniques

SEO is so important when writing effective content; it helps to make your blog posts and website copy more discoverable on Google. So, not implementing an SEO campaign strategy will mean that your business may not be found by your target audience. As a starting point, carry out some keyword research using the data gathered to create your buyer persona - what are they likely to search in Google to get answers to their questions? Try to get a balance between a good search volume and difficulty for your keywords - choosing over-competitive words will be very difficult to see any results from. Software such as SEMrush and Moz.com can help you identify the right keywords for your business.

Once you’ve selected your keywords, choose one per blog post or webpage, implementing it naturally throughout your content. It’s also important to include it within your page title, image alt tags, meta description, and headings. This will show Google that your content is relevant and helpful for readers searching for that term and will, in turn, help you to rank.

Ensure your content also has internal links to your other relevant blog posts or webpages in order to create a strong linking structure across your site. More and more SEO experts are converting to the topic cluster model - a technique whereby a single pillar page containing an overarching topic is linked to by more specific, detailed blog posts.

A word of warning: writing content purely for SEO reasons won’t help your website and could even damage your ranking. Remember - your content needs to be relevant, helpful, and engaging - not just a page of links and keywords.

Not sharing on social media

What’s the point in creating content if you don’t share it with your target audience? Be proud of what you’ve written and utilise social media platforms to reach potential customers. In fact, long-form content (i.e. articles with over 1,500 words) is more likely to get shared on social media, which will, in turn, increase engagement and your website traffic.

With 2.27 billion monthly active Facebook users globally and 32.6 million active users in the UK alone, creating a social media SEO campaign strategy is an opportunity you can’t afford to miss out on. It’s clear to see why so many businesses want to advertise on social media - the reach is almost limitless! So, why not take this opportunity and create a traffic ad to promote your content? This will specifically target your chosen audience, putting your blog post right on their newsfeed. Once you know they’re interested you can re-target them with conversion or lead generation ads.

And you’re not just restricted to social media - it’s a great idea to promote your content via email, too. If you’ve got an existing list, then great - you can send out emails with links to your latest blog posts to them. To build upon your email list, you need to pay attention to the next point...

No CTAs

At the end of every blog post, ensure that you include a call to action (CTA). A CTA will keep the conversation going, instructing your readers what to do next. You may want them to download a guide which goes into more detail about the topic you’re discussing in your blog post. You may want them to sign up to your email mailing list. Or, you may want them to take you up on an exclusive offer. Whatever your call to action is, you need to ensure that it is relevant to the content you’re producing and that it’s something your readers just can’t refuse!

Call to actions persuade your website visitors to take action on your website, converting them into leads; in order to get that downloadable guide, have your readers fill out a form which captures their name and email address. You need to make sure that the language you use within your CTA hits the mark, too - strong, imperative language might put people off. Equally, not being direct enough could lead to your readers ignoring your great offer!

Not copy-checking/formatting correctly

This one may seem pretty obvious, but it’s surprising how many mistakes could easily slip through your radar; when you’re the one writing the content, it’s easy to become ‘blind’ to common misspellings and grammatical mistakes. That’s why helpful software such as Grammarly should be your best writing buddy! In just a few clicks, Grammarly will sift through your copy and highlight any mistakes.

But don’t just leave it all to technology to pick up on things. You need a human eye to read your content before it goes live, too. Ask a colleague or friend to double check your work, ensuring it flows correctly and makes sense.

It’s time for that CTA we were on about…

Welcome to the CTA section of this blog post. Lucky you - you’re getting to see one in action!

In all seriousness, we want to help you create better content and get the leads you need. After all - we’re mad about marketing and want to see all businesses thrive. That’s why we’ve produced an e-book on how to do just that. Our beginner’s guide to better blogging covers everything from how to find your writing voice to discovering your audience. So, find your groove with content marketing, start developing a killer SEO campaign strategy, connect with your audience, and stand out from your competitors. Just start here: