Content is King. You need content to survive. If you don’t have a content marketing plan, you are missing out on a lot of traffic. These are words we’ve all heard someone say before, and in the past decade content has received a lot of recognition.
Don’t get me wrong.
Content is really important, content marketing is key to having a strong presence online and it does help in projecting the value of your business.
But.
Just because you are Doing Content doesn’t mean you are Winning in content. To do content the right way and ensure you get the results you want, you need to ensure you are avoiding some common mistakes. I’ve highlighted a few of this mistakes and some tips to mitigate/ eradicate them completely.
Mistake No.1 – #No Content Marketing Strategy
A strategy is crucial for success. Here are a few tips for building a successful content marketing strategy:
- A successful content marketing strategy starts with defining your KPIs (key performance indicators). Identify what numbers are important to you (e.g., views, shares, traffic, CTRs, conversions, etc.), and track them.
- Strategy should not be static and should change over time. You should change your strategy when you realize that what you’re doing is not as effective as it could be.
- Sit down with your own team and come up with a content strategy, nobody knows more about your business than you, do not rely on an agency or content marketing company to come up with a strategy for you. There are plenty of content marketing companies out there, but they don’t usually get involved in strategy. That’s your job. Their job is to sketch out your editorial calendar, to write your content, and to help you publish. They execute the strategy that you come up with.
- Publishing content is not a strategy. Content marketing strategy takes in the big picture of marketing — audience, sales funnel revenue, profit, and brand. Deciding to have a blog and write articles is not a strategy.
Mistake No. 2 – #No Promotion of Content
There are two arms of content marketing:
- Content Creation
- Content Promotion
These two arms must balance each other, there is no point in creating a content that you are not promoting and of course you cannot promote a content that hasn’t been created.
Too many companies are creating content and not promoting those content all over the web.
I personally believe the reason is because their content sucks and it’s not just good enough, but that’s just me and my little Nigerian self.
But if you are spending so much time creating valuable and useful content, why hide it from the world?
Here are a few tips to spread the word about your content –
- Email newsletter.
- Marketing email to a landing page.
- Tweets. Be sure to tweet it several times, and ask for retweets.
- Google+ posting.
- Facebook posting.
- Sharing in LinkedIn.
- Pitch influencers in your industry who can share your content.
- Pitch bloggers and site owners, and ask them to share your content.
- Mention your content when you comment on other websites and blogs.
Mistake No 3 – #No Consideration for Giants
Oh Yes!
Giants exists and they are very present in content marketing. What do you do if your competition is just spitting out amazing content every single second and they own a monopolistic capital share of your target audience. Everyone is drooling at their content and it seems like there is no hope for the new guy.
It’s a serious issue, and it’s not easy work but it isn’t impossible. Here are a few tips to help you do battle –
- Keep producing excellent content. Don’t back down just because the competition is bigger than you are.
- Niche down. Find out which topics they are neglecting and focus on delivering valuable content there.
- Curate a small, but devoted group of followers. Work harder to create an intense fan base than trying to draw audience away from the competitor. Often, the best audience isn’t the biggest audience, but the most devoted audience.
- Out content them. Spend time analyzing your competitor, not so you can copy them, but so you can out-content them. Identify what forms of content they are missing out on or producing poorly. Use these holes as opportunities for your own content. so they are producing great blog contents, oh yea? well hit them back with some great videos and interviews.
Mistake No. 4 – #No Fun in it
Too many Nigerian brands take a very serious and classic approach towards creating content, content is an opportunity to have some fun (once in awhile). Content should be engaging and fun for your those following you and creating that amazing experience every time they read your content is what it’s all about.
If you can’t be light and humorous with your content now and then, you’re probably doing something wrong. Shift gears even a little bit and make content fun again.
Conclusion
Remember there is always room for improvement when it comes to content marketing, don’t’ stay static and don’t stay boring, it is always better to produce a few good articles that have sparkle than producing a lot of boring content without any value.
Hope you get to see some improvement on your articles.
If you are looking to build a great content marketing plan and execute on your marketing strategy, fill the form below:
