5 Common Content Creation Mistakes

Content Creation Marketing Mistakes We’ve All Done

Content creation is an important component of marketing because it provides relevant and valuable information to your target audience that helps acquire and engage new customers. However, there are many content marketing channels and tactics that leave room for common mistakes.

Albert Einstein once said, “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.”

We know that’s right! Making marketing mistakes is inevitable, but learning from the outcomes makes us much better marketers in the long run.

So, what are some things we’ve learned from our content marketing mistakes?

Here are 5 common ones (and their solutions) that, if fixed, can help drive more traffic to your website starting today.

1. Creating Only One Format Of Content  

When surfing the Internet for content do you prefer reading blogs or watching videos? You may answer “it depends on the information I am looking for.” Keep this in mind when creating any content marketing strategy. Not all consumers prefer information in the same way. While creating blogs and articles are an excellent format, some consumers may prefer visuals or audio to retain information.

Businesses that fail to provide a variety of content formats miss out on valuable new customers because, just like in the learning process, we all grasp information in different ways. You may be grabbing readers with text-based content, but missing out on audio/visual consumers by providing limited graphic or video content.

Mix up your formats! Try using infographics, videos, imagery, and text combined to reinforce the message to your audience.

This free download, the Periodic Table of Content Marketing from eConsultancy, is a great tool to hang in your office that will help you add variety to your content plan formats, topics, and more.

2. Leaving Out A Call-To-Action (CTA)

A crucial element of any content marketing effort that is consistently overlooked is the incorporation of a call-to-action in each piece.

Providing relevant content is the first step, but if you don’t give the reader something to act on once they’re done with it, you’ve just basically said “Thanks for reading my thing, bye!” Relevant content drives traffic but, without a strong call-to-action, your chances of converting the reader to a lead will significantly decrease.

All content formats must create an opportunity for the customer to know where to go next, and for you to capture them as a marketing lead for future offers and emails. Check out some of these examples:

•Ask your audience to write comments on your blog post

•Download an e-book for a step-by-step guide

•Offer a free trial or consultation on your products and services

•Setup a subscription on your mailing list for new updates

Unless you are writing your content merely for the pleasure of writing and educating, and not to generate leads and increase revenue, don’t forget to include CTAs in everything you publish!

3. Not Measuring Or Tracking Results

Great content can be created and published on multiple channels but, if you are not tracking the results of the campaigns, you could be wasting your efforts.

Measuring your success from each content type and traffic source will give valuable insight on what is performing and what may need to be adjusted or dropped. Set goals for each format to evaluate its performance.

Things to consider when measuring content marketing performance include:

• Pageviews, by content piece… which topics and pieces are generating the most inbound traffic?
• Leads by content piece… which offers are successfully converting the most readers and getting the most downloads?
• Conversions from blogs… which blog topics and types are converting the most readers?

Some great resources for reporting are Google Analytics and the HubSpot Page Performance, Blog Performance, and CTA Performance tools.

4. Lack of Continuity

Some businesses assume that publishing a few pieces of content intermittently makes for an effective content marketing strategy. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This mistake shows itself when businesses publish disconnected content at various times with long gaps in between postings and in various formats

Fix this mistake by getting consistent. By establishing continuity, your site visitors and readers will expect fresh, valuable, regular content which will build your company’s credibility. They will be excited to receive and open your messages and will be more likely to subscribe to and follow your content.

Implementing a schedule will help eliminate inconsistency and maintain a steady flow of lead-generating content to your prospects

5. Rushing Results

In a perfect world, as soon as the new content marketing campaign is executed leads will begin pouring in! However, if only a few leads are generated within a couple weeks, businesses interpret content marketing as unsuccessful. This is a common mistake made by many businesses that are hurting their long-term results.

Content marketing, like SEO, is a long-term strategy that requires a ramp-up period where relationships and trust with consumers are cultivated, search engines have time to crawl the site and re-index the pages, and readership increases to a point where the visitor-to-lead conversion ratio of 2-5% can start generating leads.

In the initial stages of content marketing, you will be creating content pieces, optimizing the flow and on-page SEO of your website, developing social media pieces, and producing calls-to-action that will drive traffic to your content. Once given the proper time, these efforts will provide profitable results to increase your business’ revenue with each content-captured lead that converts to a customer!

Amongst the thousands of companies included in a recent report conducted by MIT, the average 12-month content marketing project increased site traffic by 2-to-3x and increased inbound leads by 5-to-7x. Remember: patience is key! Great things don’t happen overnight.

Content marketing mistakes can occur at any stage of the process and that’s okay! As long as we learn and make adjustments we will know for future campaigns. The more you know about content marketing and how it works the faster you will drive success to your business!

Have you experienced other mistakes in content marketing? If so, comment below with your experiences!

For more on content marketing, click the button below to download a case study from one of our client’s that saw tremendous results from a content marketing strategy.