Content Marketing Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making

Published on: 31 March 2021 Last Updated on: 27 December 2024

By now, most people know the value of a content marketing campaign to your business. Given the reach and convenience of the internet, most brands are bound to hop onto the content marketing bandwagon.

The only problem here is that not everyone who hops onto trends completely understands them. Before you fully commit to a content marketing campaign, it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into so you can avoid making catastrophic errors.

In this article, we have outlined some horrible content marketing mistakes many marketers are making these days. Read this article if you don’t want to make these mistakes.

Why Should I Consider Investing In Content Marketing?

ROI: The first reason that content marketing is beneficial is that it significantly contributes to your return on investment (ROI).

ROI can come in different forms, such as a customer subscription, better brand visibility, improved brand reputation, increased inbound traffic, and customer loyalty.

Establishing Brand Authority: Content marketing also helps establish your brand as an authority, so long as your content is of good quality. You can even become your niche’s primary source of information. When this happens, customers are more likely to remember your brand whenever they need a product or service that you offer.

Interact with Target Audience: Finally, content marketing is a potent means to interact with your target audience (and your target demographic). Sharing content helps you build trust with your audience, and it also acts as a means to extend your reach even further whenever your audience shares your content.

Lead Generation: Furthermore, frequent followers and readers eventually become actual customers.

Content marketing is a useful method to bolster your business’ performance, but only if you utilize it properly. It’s not a silver bullet that’s going to solve all your marketing problems.

Generally, your best course of action is to hire a content marketing agency to launch and implement your campaign properly, but for those who want to try their hand at doing their own content marketing, there are some mistakes that you need to avoid.

Poor Audience Understanding

At the core level, it boils down to how well you know your audience. Your marketing message will work through the content you publish when you know who you are speaking to. The digital mediums, the analytics, and the other technical aspects come way later.

Publishing content without knowing your audience is simply shooting arrows in the dark. It negatively impacts the different marketing and sales metrics you are trying to achieve.

Here’s how your digital presence might suffer if you make the mistake of not understanding your audience –

Low Engagement

When your content isn’t aligning with your audience, your website will suffer from low engagement.

Low Traffic: Your website can also suffer from low traffic.

Poor Brand Reputation: when your business content is everywhere, your audience doesn’t recognize what you are posting. You also don’t get to build your brand image which can sustain your business for the long term.

Poor SERP Ranking: readers will not stick around to read content that isn’t engaging, giving your website a poor search engine presence.

Publishing Content Without A Goal In Mind:

If you aren’t doing anything for free then you shouldn’t also do anything without a purpose in mind.

Whenever we publish content, it’s important to always have a goal in mind. You have to determine whether the goal of your content is to sell, generate leads, inform, or engage with your audience.

These goals or purposes shape your content strategy, which dominates the core function of your content journey. What’s the content journey, you ask? It’s your process to create, publish, distribute, promote, and measure your content.

Then there are your content channels and promotion tactics based on the type of channel and the type of content you are putting out. Yes, we are talking about everything starting from Social Media and YouTube to Blogs. If you are posting it on Instagram, you’ll use Instagram analytics. But, for blogs, you’ll need to use tools like Google Analytics.

Your goal will determine things about your content, such as your call to action and tone (whether conversational, informative, or imperative). For example, if your content is meant to sell a product, it needs to sound friendly yet informative. A post that’s meant to engage with your audience is best written in a sincere, genuine tone.

Failing To Utilize Paid Content Amplification:

The internet is currently oversaturated and highly competitive. Content brands are constantly vying to get their message on the feeds of prospective customers.

The brand that gets relegated to the background will surely lose customers, even if its product is superior to that of its competitor. Paid amplification helps your content reach your intended audience, and it almost always produces quality leads. Consider the fact that even industry giants make use of paid content amplification.

This means that you should do so as well if you want to stay relevant in your chosen industry.

Forgoing The Use Of Social Media Stories:

Social media stories are mobile-viewed vertical videos and images that appear outside a user’s regular feed and last only 24 hours. Storytelling will be the key to distributing your content successfully. Stories are perfect for building emotional connections with your audience because they are more casual and are mostly used as a medium for real-time engagement.

Stories also have a natural progression. This means that users can arrange their content to be more cohesive to viewers. Stories also allow users to enable their viewers to react to the story while also helping users determine the type of content that viewers want.

Limiting Your Content Form:

In today’s market, text and image content alone will not differentiate you from your competitors, especially when you consider that users are gradually shifting away from written content because of the increasing popularity of video content, podcasts, and infographics. This is especially true considering how these types of content are also searchable on major search engines.

It’s important to invest in other content channels to maximize your reach. This also allows your users to choose how they consume your content. The best part about this is that you don’t necessarily have to generate new content to fill these channels.

In fact, you can repurpose written content and simply change the channel they’re published on. An old blog post can serve as your framework for your video and audio content. Your users will appreciate the variety of your content, and this variation will also help improve your website’s SEO ranking.

Ignoring Data Analysis:

Successful content marketing is not just based on artistic taste and content popularity. It is also heavily influenced by data. Running an analysis of your campaign’s performance grants brands the insight needed to make informed decisions regarding content.

The numbers will help you determine which approach is better for a particular demographic. This also allows users to correct a wrong approach.

For example, if you’ve discovered that most of your users are active at a certain time, then use that data to determine the best time to publish your content. Simply ignoring the data will not only rob you of the traffic you would have gotten otherwise, but it will also convey that you’re indifferent to your audience, which will eventually spell the failure of your campaign.

Conclusion

Content marketing is a boon to business owners because it grants them the ability to grow their businesses quickly. It requires a lot of work and experience to get it right the first time, but since you’re posting your content on the internet, it essentially means that as long as your website is up, your content will continue to do its job. Whether your content becomes effective or not depends on whether you do things correctly.

Read Also:

Soumava Goswami

A passionate writer and an avid reader, Soumava is academically inclined and loves writing on topics requiring deep research. Having 3+ years of experience, Soumava also loves writing blogs in other domains, including digital marketing, business, technology, travel, and sports.

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10 Ideas To Successfully Sell Your Art Online

Selling art is always a challenge. You have to find ways to bring it to the attention of interested buyers. This involves working with agents, having big galleries to display your art, and so on. However, with the explosive growth of the web and the online market, artists now have more choices when it comes to promoting their work. How to Sell Your Art Online : You now have many different ways to provide exposure to your art online and find buyers. From online art galleries to creating your own website to sell your art, to promote your work through social media, there are many options. 1. Online Art Galleries : The best way to sell art is to get people to see it. Sign-up with a good online art gallery that provides good exposure and if they sell your art, you should get the major share of the sale price. You have to spend some time doing research to find good ones. The best online art galleries do not just display your work. They also curate your work and help you promote your work and to connect with other artists, and buyers, and collectors. Your art will be displayed well in the gallery in the relevant categories. Potential buyers can narrow down the results by filters like the subject, style, medium, etc. 2. Sell Through Specialized Art Marketplaces : Websites like Etsy, ArtFire, etc. focus on providing a marketplace for artists and for handcrafted work. On these websites, you can connect with other artists and artisans, show-off your work, and also get the opportunity to sell them. 3. Popular Shops and Auction Sites : While you are exploring your options, don’t forget websites like Amazon and eBay. Yes, they deal with a lot of different products. But they also let you reach millions of people across the world. To sell your art through these sites, you have to make sure that you promote your product links on social media, ads, and other means. 4. Build Your Own Website : There are now many ways to get your own online store with minimal investment. You can try TicTail, SquareSpace, or an eCommerce platform like Shopify. You can choose web templates to make sure your website looks good. Choose templates that are ideal for displaying art. Build your website and start promoting it to get visitors to your site who may become buyers. 5. Sell Through Social Media : Use social media websites like Facebook to promote and sell your art. However, for social media to be an effective marketing tool, you need to establish yourself as a person worth following. You need to build your personal profile, connect with other people, respond to other people’s posts, contribute useful content in communities, and so on. You can begin talking about your work and try to generate interest in it. Tweet about any sales you made or a new painting you added to an online gallery etc. on Twitter. Use Facebook well. Create a business page on Facebook and post interesting content about your art, show off your work. You can even set up shop on Facebook and sell on it. 6. Print-On-Demand Websites : With print-on-demand websites, you can get exposure to your artwork in many ways. You can sell prints of your work. You can have your art printed on several merchandise like shirts, coffee mugs, smartphone cases, and so on. This will create an awareness of your work and also provide a stream of income for you, letting you concentrate on creating more art and saving the funds to promote them in traditional ways. 7. Create Photobooks : Take professional photographs of your artwork and then select a few to create a beautiful photo book of your art. Use a service like a Blurb which lets you create stunning photo books. Blurb has partnered with Amazon so you can easily sell your photo books directly on Amazon. 8. Use Instagram : Instagram is an image sharing site. Take snaps of a few of your paintings or other artwork and share it. Use Instagram to create awareness about your art, your style, the media you use, and so on. 9. Make Use of Stock Art Sites : Select a few of your art that you feel are good but you can afford to give away to get more exposure to your work. Create a profile for yourself on sites like Shutterstock that tell a little about your work and your style. Upload good images of your art and let people use it for other derivative works. This can give more exposure to your art and people who use your images can share your image or your whole portfolio with others on social media, spreading the word. 10. Promote Your Art Through Occasional Giveaways : Everyone likes to get something for free, and if it is an original piece of art, that adds more value to the prize. Choose a small painting or illustration that is good but one you don’t mind giving away. Choose a picture or handicraft with size and weight that won’t cost too much to send to the winner. To ensure that you get entries for the giveaway from people who are interested in the work, ask them for instance, to write about why they would like to win the prize. Make it easy for them to share the giveaway page on social media. The internet has opened up so many ways to promote your art and sell it, through your own website, through online galleries, through social media, by organizing promotional events like a giveaway. Explore your options and use as many as you can to create a buzz about your work and finding buyers for it. Read Also : How To Master Social Media For Businesses & Entrepreneurs 5 Steps On How To Market Your Business Using Social Media Using Social Media To Promote Start-Up Businesses

5 Proven tactics to acquire more quality leads

Leads are the foundation for sales. While we all wish that everyone we come across as brands would convert right on the spot, that's not how it works. People need to "think about it", some need to actually see the benefits of what it is you're offering, and others just haven't been convinced yet. People are in different stages of your conversion funnel, and how they are convinced to ultimately purchase can vary a lot. To convert these individuals, you first need to gather leads, and then impact them time and time over, until they finally buy from you. Everyone is talking about the importance of collecting leads and then working to get people farther and farther down the conversion funnel, but very few people actually talk about how it is done, and what goes into doing it effectively. Additionally, there's a huge misconception about collecting leads that people make. Many people focus on acquiring as many leads as possible, and in doing so, they put zero thought into who those people actually are, which, means neglecting quality for quantity. Then, when they've gathered thousands and thousands of leads, they celebrate and cheer, without realizing that the leads they gathered were completely irrelevant and that the reason for acquiring leads in the first place is not done for the sake of having lots of leads, but to ultimately get people to buy. In this post, you'll learn how to build an email list from the people who come to your website, not by increasing the people who come to your site, but by optimizing the lead-generation process to increase your conversion rate of your visitors. And most importantly, you'll learn how you can improve the quality of the leads you get, and ensure that the ones you do get are laser-targeted to your brand and niche, and thus likely to convert into customers. 1. Create appealing subscription forms : When working to collect leads, you almost always have some sort of subscription form. Through this form, you collect information about your prospect such as email address, name, profession, etc. You've probably come across subscription forms that only ask for your email address and you've probably experienced the type of subscription-forms that ask for your name, profession, habits, and so on, where you're wondering when the number of fields is going to end. We'll go more into detail about the reasons to why some brands choose to do this further on, but now, we're going to focus on improving the format of the subscription form to give it a better visual appeal. When you're working to collect leads, you need to ensure that the subscription form is inviting and encourages people to sign-up. If the form just looks overwhelming and cluttery, you risk making your visitors confused, and ultimately losing them forever. As an example, here's Send pulse subscription form: As you can see, it is clear, concise, and asks for the most important information without coming off as intrusive or overwhelming. An important part of this is eliminating unnecessary elements of the subscription form which can risk confusing visitors. A challenge that many marketers face when they are going to set up their lead-generation form to acquire leads is that they have absolutely no expertise in coding or designing, and most importantly, they have no idea how they're going to create a subscription form to maximize conversions. The good news is that no longer, you need to have coding experience or be very good at designing in order to create a subscription form that performs well. The reason for this is that tools like Send pulse have done all of that for you. The absolute best part is that Send pulse gives you the option you to choose from their many pre-designed forms and then optimize it according to your brand and style. This means that you don't have to spend countless hours trying to figure out the format for a successful subscription form. Because with Sendpulse's subscription forms, you already have access to tried and true formats right at your fingertips that have proven to drive the best results. 2. Ask for relevant information : Here comes the answer to the cliffhanger that presented earlier about including lots of fields where you ask for information about your prospects (and why it can actually be a good thing). You might think that the fewer fields you have that your prospects need to fill in, the better, because obviously, the more people will be willing to invest their time, but that's actually not always the case. The fact is that while having a few fields can increase the number of registrations, it can also mean that many of the registrations you get are of higher quality. This is very relevant considering the fact that 61% of B2B marketers struggle to generate high-quality leads. And remember, ultimately, it's not about how many leads you can collect, it's about how many quality leads you can generate. Because ultimately, these are the only individuals who will do what you want them to do in the future, which is, become paying customers. Now, obviously, there's a fine balance between simply including too many fields that bring no value and having a high amount of fields that filter away irrelevant people, and to find the ideal length, you simply need to experiment and learn through trial and error, but the best part is that the SendPulse subscription forms allow you to add as many or as few fields as you'd like. Even better, it also allows you to add or remove whichever fields you'd like, whenever you'd like. This allows you to have full control over your lead-generation subscription forms, and at the same time be able to change and optimize them with ease within a matter of seconds. Since you are after quality leads, not quantity, don't be afraid of asking for a lot of information about the people signing up. The more relevant questions you ask, the more certain you can be that the leads you generate are very hot. 3. Include images : Humans are visual creatures, and so I cannot emphasize just how important including visual content in your subscription form is. When it comes to creating appealing subscription forms, visuals play a huge part, and they also play a huge part in people's first impression of it, and if they decide to complete it or not. Just creating a subscription-form with text can be very overwhelming for your visitors, and this means that you risk losing people in the process. If you do, however, include images in your subscription form, you can grasp your audience's attention, and convince them to sign up. Again, if you are designing your lead-gen forms manually, including images, changing formats, and optimizing them can be a full-time job due to its complexity, but using the Send pulse subscription forms allows you to effortlessly upload and store images in any format on their server. The best part? It can be done free of charge! 4.Create responsive subscription forms : Believe it or not, but people are still using unresponsive lead-gen forms. Some just don't know how to optimize them for all devices, others just don't believe or know that it is necessary. But with the increased usage of mobile devices, making your forms responsive is crucial for increasing the number of leads you generate, because if your form isn't responsive, you can be sure that almost 100% of the people who experience an unresponsive form will leave without signing up due to a terrible experience (or because they're just not able to sign up). Manually creating forms that are responsive can be difficult, to say the least, but when using Sendpulse's subscription forms, you don't have to pay a single thought on that, because all forms are responsive. 5. Use subscription formats that are relevant to your needs : The format of your subscription forms and where they are presented have a huge impact on its performance. Sendpulse offers four different types of forms that you can use for your sign-ups, all of which support different needs. Based on how your visitors use and navigate your website, different forms can work differently well. The best part is that using this subscription forms service, you don't have to guess or ponder what might work the best. Simply put each and every one of these subscription formats into practice, and see for yourself which format works best for you. Read Also : 7 Proven Marketing Tactics To Increase Your ROI In 2018 Social Media Marketing Role In Technology Role Of Messaging Apps In Enhancing A Company’s Market Prospects

Never Launch An E-commerce Platform Without Testing – Here Is Why

In simple words, without sounding too nerdy, let us try to look at what performance testing is. Performance Testing is the process of rigorously testing all the tech and digital components of an E-commerce business. This includes the desktop version of the platform and mobile app testing. The key is to look at and analyze how the entire tech and digital ecosystem operates. Especially when exposed to real-world use. Imagine hundreds of people using the E-commerce platform app at the same time. The questions that then arise are- Is the server able to handle the heavy load of all the traffic using the mobile app at the same time? Is there a lag or breakdown that any of the users are experiencing or is there a UI and UX compromise under stress? What are some of the benchmarks and standards that one should use to judge speed and whether the platform is exposing some bottlenecks? Performance Testing is more than just looking at loading page speeds. It seeks to test each aspect of the E-commerce platform and suggest the perfect optimization for the same. Important Things To Consider During Performance Testing For E-commerce: In this section, we request experts at QA Madness to help us. Specifically, to list some important things that should be considered during performance testing. 1. Testing Financial Transactions One area where things can go wrong is in financial transactions. With so many people using the same platform at the same time, testing becomes necessary. You need to test to ensure that every transaction is going through. Integrations with Payment Gateways, the ERP, and Inventory Management Software are all areas that should be covered under this software testing services. 2. Checking The Mobile App Exhaustively Mobile app testing perhaps constitutes one of the most important verticals for Performance Testing. How does the app perform? Is it SEO friendly? Is there a compromise in the graphics? These are the common issues that mobile app testing will help resolve. In addition to the app, the mobile version of the E-commerce platform’s website also needs to be tested rigorously. 3. Region-Based Testing For Different Geographies- If you are starting an e-commerce business, you are looking at a truly global audience. This is why you need to make sure that the internet protocols of the different countries are not interfering with how the customers in those countries are engaging with your platform. Changed domain URLs, IP addresses, and other rules and regulations need to be considered. 4. Data Management Testing Any successful E-commerce ecosystem is incomplete without integrated data management. For an E-commerce platform, data is the lifeblood that helps all its verticals- marketing, sales, and CRM. Performance Testing needs to ensure that the data collection, cloud storage solutions, and the final outputs are ready for systematic generation. The Three KPIs Of Performance Testing As Stated By QA Madness- While there can be multiple KPIs that software testing services can help E-commerce brands with, QA Madness states that the following are the three major ones. They refer to the same as the three ‘S’s of their Performance Testing goals. A. Speed When it comes to speed, we are referring to the speed of the website, the mobile version of the web, and the mobile application. It also includes the speed with which users are progressing from one page to another on the app and the website. The higher the speed, the better will be the user experience. This combines to deliver the best sales and revenues for an E-commerce platform. B. Scalability You do not want your website and app infrastructure to be so weak that it crashes only after a hundred visitors. You're E-commerce website and the app must go under a test for scalability to handle massive loads all at the same time. This will help you provide a fluid experience to millions of users and potential customers all at the same time without compromises. C. Stability A lot can go wrong on an E-commerce website when it is put under stress. Graphics can fall out of place and payment gateways can collapse. You never want the users to experience these problems on your platform. An E-commerce platform needs to be stable all the time, with or without load. Performance Testing seeks to build the stability of an E-commerce platform. What Do Experts Have To Say? There is no set rule as to when an E-commerce platform should go for Performance Testing. Some believe that it should be done at the early stages of development. Others believe that it should be done once the development of the platform is complete to identify the loopholes and then plug them in accordingly. No matter when you get them done, Performance Testing is essential for your E-commerce platform. If you want to create a highly optimized and result-oriented business, this is a great investment to make. If you have any other questions on software testing services or mobile app testing, feel free to ask them. Use the comments section to drop your queries. We will once again request or reach out to our friends at QA Madness to help you out. What Happens With A Lack Of Thorough Test? Not performing performance testing for an E-commerce platform can get you in a lot of trouble. Your site is live; suddenly, hundreds or thousands of people have started using it! What could possibly go wrong?- Well, without performance testing, things will go downhill really quickly. So, let’s see what could happen when not to perform performance testing. Crashes And Slowdowns If your E-commerce platform hasn’t been tested for scalability, it could easily crash when too many users try to access it. A slow website or app not only frustrates users but also drives them away. No one likes waiting for pages to load, especially when they’re trying to make a purchase. The result? A major drop in sales and a tarnished reputation. Failed Transactions Think of users wanting to purchase an item and their transactions fail. Users will not be ready to trust your platform anymore. This is why performance testing is important as it ensures that all financial transactions are smooth on your site even when there is heavy traffic. Poor User Experience Have you ever been on an app or website that lags, has images that don’t fit, or feels unresponsive? It’s not fun. The UI/UX of your platform can feel the same way without performance testing. This gives a very unprofessional impression and will make people leave your site out of frustration (high bounce rate). Increased Costs Skipping testing might appear to be a good way to keep some money in your pocket, however it will actually cost you more in the end. If your site crashes during a big sale or promotion, the time and expense of getting those issues fixed after the fact will likely be substantial. Plus, if your site is down for any longer period of time, you’ll be losing out on all that potential income. Safety Not Guaranteed! No matter what app you’re building, you’re likely going to be handling some sort of user data. Whether it’s a login and password or more sensitive financial or health information, users need to know they can trust you with that data. What About The User's Interest Finally, one of the most significant risks is losing users’ trust. If your platform crashes, slows down, or declines a transaction, for instance, and that happens to some users, they will probably never come back. Even if you fix everything afterward! When people’s trust is broken, it’s very hard to be rebuilt! Read also: The Right B2B E-Commerce Platforms to Sell Your Used Machinery Approaches for Increasing E-commerce Sales Through Inventory Reports 5 Reasons to Use Magento for Your Next Ecommerce Website

Content Marketing Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making

Why Should I Consider Investing In Content Marketing?

Poor Audience Understanding

Publishing Content Without A Goal In Mind:

Failing To Utilize Paid Content Amplification:

Forgoing The Use Of Social Media Stories:

Limiting Your Content Form:

Ignoring Data Analysis:

Conclusion

5 Ways Marketing Strategies Will Change Post COVID-19

Creating A Successful Call To Action In Your Business Emails: Here Are 5 Tips To Consider

Soumava Goswami

A passionate writer and an avid reader, Soumava is academically inclined and loves writing on topics requiring deep research. Having 3+ years of experience, Soumava also loves writing blogs in other domains, including digital marketing, business, technology, travel, and sports.

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Never Launch An E-commerce Platform Without Testing – Here Is Why

Content Marketing Mistakes You Shouldn’t Be Making

Why Should I Consider Investing In Content Marketing?

Poor Audience Understanding

Publishing Content Without A Goal In Mind:

Failing To Utilize Paid Content Amplification:

Forgoing The Use Of Social Media Stories:

Limiting Your Content Form:

Ignoring Data Analysis:

Conclusion

Share this Article

5 Ways Marketing Strategies Will Change Post COVID-19

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A passionate writer and an avid reader, Soumava is academically inclined and loves writing on topics requiring deep research. Having 3+ years of experience, Soumava also loves writing blogs in other domains, including digital marketing, business, technology, travel, and sports.

Leave a Reply

Popular

Follow Us

Recent

Related