Content marketing works. “Brands relying on inbound marketing
save over $14 for every new customer acquired,” says Hubspot.
But your story is probably different. Content marketing isn’t giving you as much return on investment as you anticipated. It could be because you are doing any of these five things we outline in this article:
1. Focusing on quantity over quality
There is a consensus among content marketers - content is king. The goal is to create killer content. And for good reasons. No one likes mediocre content.
Lots of weak content will probably get your business noticed, but people will often leave your content disinterested in your business. For a B2B blog, an in-depth article from between 1,500 and 2,000 words is best for your audience and for a B2C company between 600 and 800 words is the sweet spot.
Focus on killer - in-depth - content.
2. Being inconsistent
Who else would follow Game of Thrones if new episodes came out inconsistently? You guessed it. Very few people.
Even when your content is top-of-the-class, inconsistency will kill your content marketing faster than weak consistent content.
If you can only manage one article monthly, be consistent. Is it five quality articles every week? Be consistent as well.
If you are not sure what to do, start small (eg. one article per week) with high-quality content.
3. Publishing error-ridden articles
Nothing is quite as repulsive as picking errors from inside an article. Such content is hard to read and ultimately will leave your readers disinterested in your brand.
It’s hard to be a writer and an editor at the same time. To solve this problem, use tools like Hemingway App and Grammarly to pick out your errors. Or hire an editorial team.
4. Not promoting your content
Content is king, but distribution is the Queen and she’s wearing the pants.
Promoting your content is an important piece of your content marketing puzzle. With all the talks about killer content, it’s easy to fall into the temptation of only focusing on content development.
Don’t.
Promotion should be 80 percent of your content marketing. Find influencers in your niche and promote your articles to them. Share your posts on social media and send them out in your emails. Build your audience.
5. Not writing for a clearly-defined audience
Much like in the way EVERYONE can’t be in your addressable market. Everyone can’t be the target of your content marketing.
If you are writing for everyone, chances are you are writing for no one.
Take the time to paint the persona of your typical audience and develop your content to serve that one person.
Write to one person, using “you” as opposed to “people” or “they”.
Doing this helps your content connect with your users more personally instead of speaking in general terms.
If done well, content marketing saves you more money than traditional marketing and helps you build a more streamlined brand.
Which of these mistakes are you making in your content? Do you have more mistakes to add to this list? Tell us in the comments.
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