Avoid These Top Content Mistakes And You’re In For Smoother Sailing
Making content mistakes can be costly for business owners. Ineffective or poorly executed content can lead to missed opportunities, lower website traffic, and lost customers.
When you consider the sheer volume of content your business is competing with, it’s important that the content you create is useful to the viewer and guides them to take the next step with your business, be it opting in for a freebie, signing up to a webinar, booking a call or making a purchase.
Just because content is everywhere, doesn’t mean it’s easy to create, and oftentimes business owners (or their marketing staff) make errors or oversights that could be costing you down the line.
Read on to discover 10 common content mistakes you should avoid if you want your content to work for you, not against you.
The benefits of content marketing
As a business owner, it’s important to always be thinking about how you can better serve your customers. What problem does your business solve? How can you make their lives easier?
One way to do this is by creating valuable content for your audience.
This could be in the form of blog posts, ebooks, infographics, or even just helpful tips and advice. By providing helpful and informative content, you’re showing your customers that you care about their needs and that you’re willing to go the extra mile to help them out. This will build trust and loyalty, both of which are essential for any successful business. So make sure to always keep your customers in mind and ask yourself how you can better serve them. Chances are, they’ll appreciate it – and so will your bottom line.
3 ways content can lead to more sales
As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to improve your sales. And one of the best ways to do that is to create valuable content for your audience. Here are three reasons why:
1. It will help you attract more leads. If you produce high-quality content that’s relevant to your target market, you’ll attract more leads. And the more leads you have, the more sales you’ll ultimately make.
2. It will help you build trust and credibility. The better your content is, the more trust and credibility you’ll build with your audience. And that trust and credibility will convert into sales over time.
3. It will give you a competitive edge. If you’re creating truly valuable content, chances are your competitors aren’t doing the same. This gives you a competitive edge that can help you close more deals and boost your bottom line.
So if you’re looking to improve your sales, start by creating valuable content for your audience. It’s a proven strategy that will help you attract more leads, build trust and credibility, and gain a competitive edge in your industry.
10 Content Mistakes to Avoid
Let’s see what content mistakes you can prevent to improve your content and help get the right message across to your readers.
#1 Unclear audience definition
When it comes to your audience, one of the most critical factors to bear in mind is who they are? Followers and buyers come from all interests, backgrounds, ages, and possible problems they need solving. If you disregard who your audience or readers are, you’ll risk getting the target message wrong. Not defining your target market may lead to content mistakes and miscommunication.
For example, you need to reach a young target audience looking to purchase a car. Your content may include aspects of how smaller cars make navigating the city easier or how the entry-level model in the fleet comes in many cool colours. Cars targeted to younger people may also add how affordable they are to purchase and how fuel-efficient they are. In contrast, if you were trying to market to an older audience, you may want to consider more comfort features and luxury. For instance, heated seats, leather interior, cruise control, panoramic roof and so forth.
#2 You don’t have a plan
If you’re a business owner, it’s important to have a social media and marketing strategy. These days, consumers are more likely to purchase products or services from brands that they follow on social media. By actively engaging with your target audience on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can build trust and credibility, and ultimately increase sales.
Of course, simply having a social media account is not enough. In order to be successful, you need to have a plan for what you want to achieve with your social media marketing efforts. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Boost customer engagement? Whatever your goals may be, it’s important to create content that is relevant and engaging for your audience.
With a well-thought-out social media and marketing strategy, you can take your business to the next level.
#3 You don’t know what your audience wants
Another one of the content mistakes to avoid is an assumption and not being clear about what your audience wants. You could, for example, create the most engaging and reader-friendly content, but instead of attracting your target audience, you’re attracting random readers.
Attracting readers, in general, will score you page views and clicks and so on, but it might not extend that opportunity of increased sales. If your goal was to increase sales on a product, you need to attract the right audience to buy your product.
#4 Inconsistency
One of the biggest problems you might need to overcome is inconsistency. It’s important to post on a regular, consistent basis because when you ghost your audience, you’ll leave them feeling cold. We show you how to be more consistent in this blog here.
#5 Your content is too salesy
It’s important to strike the right balance when it comes to selling your products or services. You don’t want to be too salesy, as that can turn potential customers off, but you also don’t want to be too passive. The key is to find a middle ground where you’re confidently promoting your business without being overly pushy.
One way to strike this balance is to focus on providing value first and foremost. Make sure that your potential customers can see that you’re offering something that will improve their lives in some way. Once you’ve established that value, you can then start to talk about your product or service in a more confident and direct way.
Of course, every business is different, so there’s no single formula for success. But if you keep these principles in mind, you’ll be well on your way to striking the right balance between being too salesy and not salesy enough.
#6 You’re making it all about you
A critical one of many content mistakes to dodge is making it all about you and your company. The readers didn’t come to hear stories about you and your success; no, they came seeking a solution for their problem. Introducing the company on the “about us” page is fine, but readers may not be interested if every blog post and article includes facets of the company and its success. After all, they need you to help them solve their problem.
Always put the customer and their needs first. Even if your audience is not all customers yet, they are potential customers and are already part of the marketing funnel.
#7 You’re not looking for professional help
You could probably run everything by yourself, but some critical pitfalls call for professional skills and techniques. If you’re not a marketer and don’t know much about marketing and getting your business on the map, then its time to hire skilled pros, like us.
#8 You’re not using the data to build your business strategy
How can you make sure that your content marketing strategy is on track?
One way to do this is to keep an eye on your stats and metrics. By understanding how your content is performing, you can make adjustments to ensure that it is more effective.
For example, if you notice that your blog posts are not getting much traffic, you might consider changing your approach. Maybe you need to write more targeted posts, or perhaps you need to promote your blog more aggressively. Whatever the case may be, paying attention to your stats will help you fine-tune your content marketing strategy and get better results.
#9 Creating and responding randomly
One small yet impactful content mistakes many business owners make is beginning their day checking all their messages and wanting to respond to them immediately. The thing with content in the form of chatting first thing in the morning is that it leads to distraction and takes your focus from the actual goals of the day.
You could designate an allocated timeframe later during the day to respond to the chats that came through. This brings us to the last point in this list.
#10 Skip out on the distractions
Distractions come in all forms and shapes, including content. One of the biggest mistakes is getting distracted by “other” things that don’t relate to your day’s tasks. Focus on what needs to be done. Try putting the most important things at the top of your to-do list.
Turn off your notifications if they don’t relate to your day’s schedule. Some notifications are only going to throw a spanner in your flow. For example, don’t check your emails just yet. As we mentioned in the previous point, allocate a designated time for replies and emails.
For more time management tips, click here.
Closing thoughts
We hope you found this list of content mistakes helpful. Now that you’re aware of them, make sure to avoid them in order to produce better content for your website, blog and social media.
Remember, always test and measure the results of your content so that you can continue to improve what works and get rid of what doesn’t.
What was your biggest take away from this post? Do you have any questions about avoiding these common content mistakes? Join our free Facebook group to learn more about how to effectively market your business online.
