by: Brooke Howell
These days, content marketing is essential to getting your business noticed and connecting with customers and prospects. Once you’ve gotten started, though, it’s important to continually monitor your performance, learn more about top trends and proven tactics, and adjust your approach to do better in the future.
This week I’ve been thinking about common content marketing mistakes I see companies making, and I found some articles and blog posts to help you learn more about what not to do so you can improve your company’s content marketing efforts.
5 Mistakes You’re Making With Your Content Marketing StrategybyJayson DeMersatForbes:“Right content, wrong audience. This is perhaps the most common mistake I see businesses making. Among the businesses I work with, it’s rare that I see content that’s factually incorrect or poorly written. What’s far more common is seeing great content that’s just not right for its intended audience. How to avoid this mistake:This mistake can easily be avoided by testing out a variety of content with your audience. Consult your analytics to see which content has performed well in the past, and emulate that in terms of format,readability scoreand promotion and distribution methods.”
Avoid Content Marketing Until You Can Answer “Yes” To These Two QuestionsbyCasey WrightatThe Huffington Post:“Is our customers’ experience consistent with our values?For every one company that is not yet ready to explain its values, there are a hundred who are too embarrassed by their real values to share them with their customers. The result is hypocrisy–something that is immediately sniffed out and punished by customers. Take McDonald’s for instance. McDonald’s is trying to rebrand as a healthy. They are leading this effort with their content marketing–increased transparency about ingredients and increased discussion of healthy menu options. Unfortunately for McDonald’s, these marketing efforts fall flat, because the experience most people have of McDonald’s is so different from the message McDonald’s is sending.”