What Not to Do in Content Marketing

As with most professions, marketers and advertisers have a certain set of rules and guidelines that direct strategies and decisions. They can entail guidelines for design elements or provide ethical standards. In content marketing, there are some practices that either do not work or can get a company into trouble. Whether one is advertising to an audience in Utah or an audience in the Northeast, one would be wise to take heed.

“Seven Deadly Sins”

Business 2 Community lists what it calls the “Seven Deadly Sins” of content marketing. Deriving its name from the common Christian creed, these are some examples of what not to do. One sin listed is keyword stuffing. Commonly associated with black hat SEO tactics, keyword stuffing involves filling up a page with keywords in order to get a top ranking. This practice can get someone into trouble and cause a website to be of low quality. A similar listed sin is link scheming, or selling links to other websites.

Whether advertising to folks in Utah or to people in the Pacific Northwest, not tracking results is another sin listed that will hurt a business deeply. One has to know how a website or another tactic is doing to have any success. Forgetting to update old content may seem like an obvious sin, but Business 2 Community lists this sin because it is probably easy to overlook. Old content will only misinform website visitors.

Avoiding Mistakes

Marketing to the public does not have to be rocket science, but it is important to know the big mistakes to avoid. The “Seven Deadly Sins” makes it clear that there are some strategies that are outdated or simply don’t work. From Utah to the East Coast, marketers can do themselves a favor by looking into different communication strategies and keeping things in perspective throughout a campaign.

Hayden Ratliff writes for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. He writes for many other clients as well. Follow on Twitter.