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When done right, content marketing can increase brand awareness, build trust, and generate more revenue. If your content marketing efforts aren’t bringing any good results to your business, you are probably not hitting the sweet point.
A report by the Content Marketing Institute suggests that 86% of B2B marketers used content marketing to increase brand awareness.
It’s not too late, you can also use content marketing to rip more benefits but only if you are not making these five mortal content marketing sins.
1. Ignoring Your Audience
Do you know who your target customers are? Do you think about your target audience when creating your content? If your answer to those two questions is “NO” then you are making a big content marketing sin and the outcome isn’t promising.
If you don’t know or think about your target audience when creating your content strategy, they will lose interest in you and this means less ROI to your business since no one will be reading your content.
When developing your content strategy, think about the following:
- Your target customers’ feelings.
- Your potential customers’ concerns.
- What they are looking for.
- How can your products solve their problems?
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And if you are marketing your products:
- Figure out what your target customers are thinking about.
- What information do they want to read before reaching out for their wallets?
- Etc.
Effective content marketing strategy takes into account many aspects of the target audience.
According to John Simon, the author of ‘write my thesis’ if you write high-quality content that addresses your target customers’ concerns consistently, you will build trust with them and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
2. Guessing What Your Target Audience Wants
Unless you are using black magic assuming that you know what your target customers are interested in is also another deadly content marketing sin you should avoid doing starting from now.
Your wants and needs could be different from theirs’ so don’t make assumptions about your target audience.
Start by identifying your customers, reach out to them, understand what they need, know what gives them sleepless nights, then come up with a solution to their problems by developing content that answers their questions on Google. Once you establish yourself as a rich resource of information, your business will stick to their minds. They will also become your brand ambassadors.
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3. More Talking Less Action
It’s a content marketing sin to talk more and act less.
Surprised?
Please don’t!
Look, effective content marketing starts with a workable plan and then sticking to it. And once you have developed a powerful plant, don’t let it sit on the shelf. Your business will benefit from putting what you plan into motion.
Go online and research. Dig your head deep inside forums and other areas where you can learn more about what your customers want.
Once you know what is making your customers not to have peace, make a powerful content marketing plan and work on it.
Make sure you set achievable goals as well and be consistent with them. Find ways to achieve the goals.
4. Producing Socially Embarrassing Content
When we want our followers to engage with us on social networks, we are asking them to do it publicly. And while we are working hard to educate our followers on various aspects, we ought to understand that some people won’t feel comfortable seeing their lives exposed in public forums.
Does that make social content limiting? Of course not, however, brands should come up with ways to churn out content that people want to read, like, comment on, and share with others proudly.
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5. Writing Content Solely About Money
Well, in the end, all we need is money but when it comes to content marketing, satisfying your customers’ needs should come first then money will follow later.
Generate content that shows the customers that you care about their feelings, problems, concerns, needs, and wants and focus on building and retaining relationships with them.
This way, you will grow your brand reputation, drive more traffic to your website and ultimately make more sales.
Look, even though you are posting content, too often, what does the content say? Is your content just pushing your customers to buy from you or is it offering them help with their problems?
If you want to see huge success with your content:
- Come up with a concrete content strategy.
- Don’t distract your website visitors with invasive ads.
- Invite people and allow them to make their own decision.
- Create content that educates, entertains, and convinces your audiences.
- Sell to them in a friendly manner.
- Do not offer them baits or trick them to click on something.
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Additional Content Marketing Sins
1. Cross-Posting and Not Responding on Time
You share the same posts to all your social media networks then take too long to respond to comments. Are you aware that this is a content sin?
Of course, you should cast your net wide and that means you should be found on at least two to three social media platforms.
Do you post the same content on all your social media platforms at the same time? This is what the experts call cross-posting and is seen as being lazy. You are not putting a lot of time and effort but you want to get maximum results.
Plenty of tools out there allow publishing of posts on multiple posts at the same time; you may think they are right for your brand.
Think about your followers who have similar social networks like yours.
Let’s say, you posted on Twitter, and your followers see your post and immediately they switch to Facebook they find that you have made the same post there and on Instagram as well. They won’t even dare to click on the link and this means less engagement on your content.
Think about how hurting it can be to your business if this happens several times a day.
Note that different platforms are preferred by users of certain demographics. Think about what could happen if you posted content for people aged above 50 years on platforms like Snapchat that are dominated by youngsters. Of course, no one will bother to read it.
Taking too long to respond to messages and comments is another sin you are probably making which is costing your social media followers.
If you make a post, and a user asks a question that could lead to a new sale and you take longer to respond, you won’t hear from them again.
These days’ customers aren’t patient. They want brands to answer questions promptly and that’s why many brands have opted to use AI and chatbots.
To keep your audience engaged and happy, make sure you respond to comments, messages, and questions quickly within 24 hours or quicker than.
2. Inconsistency
Inconsistency is also another content marketing sin. As a blogger, small business owner, or influencer, you communicate with customers through content.
Everything from your company logo, social campaigns, website, and what have you represents your brand. In case of any inconsistency, your target customers will start to lose their trust in you and can see you as being unprofessional or careless.
Have an editorial calendar and stick to it to avoid being inconsistent with your content.
3. Lack of Video
54% of people want brands or businesses they follow to share more video content. Besides, the average user stays longer on a website with video than one without.
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As you can see, people love video content more than text-only content and even if your content strategy is bringing better results, don’t forget to spice up things with video. A study by IMPACT suggests that marketers who use video increase revenue 49% quicker than those who use text-only content. The study further suggests that video can boost landing page conversions by 80% or more.
4. Spamming Followers
How often do you post? Do you post hourly or several times a minute?
Wait, and how do you react when someone leaves a comment? Are you just responding to boost your posts?
This is what is called the mortal sin of gluttony in content marketing and it can have a negative impact on your brand.
Even though you should strive to increase your follower base on social media, being over-reactive or over-posting content can hurt your effort to get more followers.
And as if this isn’t enough, you advance to the next level of gluttony and use spambots.
If you are using spam bots, you are getting thousands of likes on your posts but those 10,000 new followers aren’t genuine ones.
And if those followers find that you aren’t providing anything of value, they will disappear faster than you can see.
Grow your followers organically by posting naturally.
5. Keyword Stuffing
Search Engine Optimization helps to drive traffic to your website and attract targeted customers. But if you are abusing keywords, you are hurting your conversion rates and soon you will start losing your audience.
Even though you should strive to get a top spot on Google’s search results, you must prioritize high-quality content instead of keyword stuffing.
Focus on creating content that educates, informs, entertains, and convinces your target audience.
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Where Do You Stand?
Which of the above content marketing sins have you committed? Are you experiencing a decrease in your conversion rates? Are you losing more followers than you are gaining? If yes, you are probably committing one of these sins of content marketing in social media.
Fix everything now before you are fixed!
Author Bio: Alice Jones is a content marketing expert and freelance writer from San Francisco, CA, who offers assignment help and a contributor to the dissertations services. Alice is also a member of the professional essay writers community.
