7 Content Marketing Bad Practices You Should Avoid Like The Devil
Content Marketing…the Frank Sinatra of modern-day Marketing.
Doing Content Marketing doesn’t mean you’re effective in it, or that it's bringing value to your business.
That’s why there’s a gazillion blog articles out there, but users actually engage with only a tiny portion of them.
If you pay close attention to where many businesses fall short on their Content Marketing efforts, it’s usually on one of the areas below:
1. Doing Content Marketing because your competitor does it.
Studying your competition is hands down one of the most important parts of not just Content Marketing, but Marketing in general. However, it’s one thing to study your competition, and it’s a whole different thing to copy-paste what your competitor does. Companies that start off as in “Our competitor puts out a lot of content and so should we” usually end up as a cheap clone of their competitor.
2. Not knowing your target audience well enough (or at all).
One of the main reasons why you’re putting out content is to answer questions your target audience has and educate them. To do that you have to have a pretty good idea what your target audience looks like, what their goals are, their challenges and what content they like to consume. It doesn’t make sense to put out content that would appeal to large corporations if your ideal customer is small businesses right? In other words, content that’s relevant to your audience can truly make or break you. And in order to do that, you have to dig deep into the traits and interests of your customers.
3. Thinking Content Marketing is Advertising.
Your blog is not the place to tell people 1,000 times how awesome your product is and why they should buy it. You have your product pages for that. Whenever I have to use an example of what great Content Marketing looks like, I always look at a software company called Ahrefs. They sell Search Engine Optimization software and they put out some of the best Content in the niche, essentially educating people about SEO (from beginner to advanced). The beauty of their blog articles (apart from the in-depth info in there) is that they never try to sell their product through them. They just teach you SEO and whenever they have to use a tool to perform whatever tactic they’re teaching you, they just use their own. It’s almost guaranteed that if you start reading the super informative content they put out (and you’re actually interested in that stuff), at some point, you will feel the need to buy from them.
4. Creating Content sporadically and with no clear timeline.
Picture your favorite show on TV or online. How would it seem to you if there was no actual scheduling as to when the next episode would air? Pretty unprofessional right? It’s the same thing with Content Marketing. Businesses that have a clear timetable of when they put out new content earn more trust from their customers, plus they always stay top of mind compared to the ones that create some content and then disappear. You will not reap the benefits of Content Marketing if you put out Content once in a blue moon.
5. Using people from other roles to pitch in with Content creation.
The sad reality of many small businesses is the fact that they use whoever is just ok at writing any content at all with their content needs. It goes without saying that you can’t expect to have any serious impact at your traffic and sales that way. Content Marketing is not just about writing stuff and hoping that people will magically land on your website and start buying like there’s no tomorrow. Just like you wouldn’t hire an amateur that’s good at building stuff to build your house, so should you only hire professionals that have experience doing it (ideally in the industry you’re in as well).
6. Focusing on just one type of content.
It’s no news that some people like reading, while others prefer visual content. If you just put out blogs then you’re missing out on a whole portion of your audience that mostly consumes infographics for example. The amazing thing about that is that you don’t have to start from scratch whenever you want to put out content in a different form. You can always borrow pieces from your existing blog articles from example and repurpose them into a nice and fancy infographic.
7. Being all about you, you, you.
You customers couldn’t care less about your product really. The only thing that interests them is how it will help them get their job done. So, if you go all egocentric on them, bragging about YOUR product, and YOUR company, and YOUR amazing discount, then you’re as good as a ’90s corporate brochure or TV ad. And that’s definitely not how the Internet works today. Always focus on the You instead of the I/We.
The important takeaway here is that Content Marketing is no magical solution to your Marketing efforts and will not work without clear planning and research into your target audience. Don’t go for a half-assed unoriginal approach like most businesses do. Learn from the mistakes of others, put in the time and do it properly.
