Without adequate marketing strategies in place, a business would not be able to achieve the success they’re striving for. For this reason, companies are always searching for the latest tactics, including the content marketing strategies that will help them succeed on the internet and overcome the obstacles their competitors cause them to face.
For many years content marketing has been one of the most effective and most important strategies utilized in the marketing campaigns of businesses, and even today, this particular marketing tactic remains one of the most essential for a business’ success.
The Pass/Fail of Content Marketing Strategies
Content marketing is a quite broad term used to describe any form of promotion that utilizes content created by a brand (or in some cases, content created by a third-party), in order to help drive more recognition and engagement for a particular company. Some content marketing strategies work effectively and get a passing grade, but there are also many strategies that get a capital-F Fail, yet companies tend to make these mistakes when it comes to implementing a strategy into their business model. For this reason, it is important to consider what is effective and what is not effective, and to adjust your marketing campaign in such a way to benefit your brand, rather than harming awareness of your brand.
When you read an article about content marketing on the internet, then you are most likely going to find information related to content marketing strategies that will help you improve your campaigns. While it is important to know what type of strategies you should implement for success, there are simply too few posts that offer information related to the mistakes that are bringing you down in regards to your marketing campaigns.
7 Content Marketing Strategies to Dump Today!
For this reason, we’ve decided to fill that particular gap by providing a detailed article about common mistakes you need to avoid to ensure your content marketing strategies are not only effective, but also free of any particular mistakes that could cause problems with the efficiency of your efforts.
1. Plagiarism
One of the first mistakes that people tend to make when it comes to delivering content to their audience is when they copy content from another source and publish it as their own. Not everyone is guilty of this particular mistake, but there’s a significant number of blogs that tend to do this. A lot of software also exists that allows for content to be “curated” in a very direct way – a lot of these tools tend to copy exactly what another blog has posted and then publish it on the blog the tool was installed on. Torque explains that it is important to consider the fact that plagiarism can be divided into three categories:
- Complete plagiarism
- Partial plagiarism
- Lazy plagiarism
Even though these categories don’t all include copying an entire article, each should be avoided at all times. Not only is plagiarism unethical and might cause copyright claims to be made by the original source, even “lazy” plagiarism will also harm your ranking in Google and other search engines.
2. Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
Now that we have discussed the fact that plagiarism should always be avoided, it should become clear that creating your own content is very important. Unfortunately, we live in a very busy world, and that causes restrictions to be placed on our schedule. For this reason, a lot of people tend to hurry away when it comes to creating content, as they focus more on creating a large quantity of content rather than focusing on the quality of the content they produce. However, this is the wrong way to think!
While it’s important to post regular content on your blog, on other websites and of course, on your company’s social media channels, it is important to consider the quality of the content as the most important element. Here Articulate explains that focusing on quality will bring a better ROI and help you achieve more.
3. Not Spending Enough Effort on Headers
When it comes to creating content that will be utilized in a content marketing strategy, another common mistake that many people tend to make is rushing on their headers. Headers are essential for content, not only to be of high quality, but also to be engaging and to attract new customers. For this reason, it’s important to spend some time on your headers. Make sure they are attractive and completely relevant to the content found in the article. For instance, don’t tell people they’re going to find the answer to losing weight in one week when the article simply shares general information about long-term weight loss.
In addition to focusing on the content of your headers, also make sure to use the correct tags. Add a page title and include a topic in an <h1> tag. Use <h2>, <h3> and <h4> tags wherever appropriate. This will ensure Google picks up the correct content when your content is discovered during a search, and it will allow third-party websites to correctly analyze your content when someone decides to share your article.
4. Not Attending to On-Page SEO
Apart from the header tags found in your website’s content, there are many other on-page SEO factors that need to be considered. Backlinko explains that there’s a number of factors considered essential for a web page to be visible to search engines, and to allow for the best possibility of ranking higher. Attending to on-page SEO will also make it much easier for your audience to find your content. Here are some of the most important factors to consider when it comes to on-page SEO:
- Your page title should start with the keyword you are targeting in the particular piece of content
- Ensure the URL of the page that contains your content is SEO-friendly
- Add multimedia objects, such as images and videos, wherever possible
- Add the primary keyword you are targeting in the piece of content within the first 100 words of the article
- Make sure your content can be viewed on any device, be it a computer or a smartphone
- Link out to third-party websites that have a lot of authority in the industry you are targeting
- Internal linking is also important – link to other pages on your website to make it easier for Google to crawl your website
5. Building Backlinks from Low-Quality Sources
The backlink is not only a key player in search engine rankings, but also gives you a good opportunity to promote your content on third-party blogs and websites, and to simultaneously drive more traffic back to your website. When you build a backlink to your website Google picks it up, and this either increases or decreases your ranking in the search engine results.
Unfortunately, when you post your content and link back to your website from a third-party platform that has low search rankings or a high spam score, then the link will cause a reduction in your search engine ranking. For this reason, it’s important to always focus on building links from higher quality sources. Use tools such as CheckMoz to determine the ranking metrics of a site before posting a backlink on that particular website.
6. Focusing Only on Research and Survey Statistics
Research reports and survey results regarding how people are using the internet can be found on many different locations on the web. These statistics are extremely helpful when it comes to creating new content, planning a content marketing strategy, or when promoting your website. However, the problem is that too many people are too concerned with these statistics, which causes them to forget about the fact they have to take their target audience into account as well!
Instead of only focusing on statistics you can find at research and survey sites, take a look into the needs and interests of your target audience and also consider these factors when planning a new content marketing strategy.
7. Targeting Too Many Strategies at Once
As a final note in our list of mistakes to avoid when it comes to content marketing on the internet, we want to emphasize the fact that you should avoid taking on too much. There’s a lot of marketers and business owners who take on multiple strategies when they are only getting started. They want to blog, post content on guest blogs, share images all over the internet, and stay active on all of the most popular social media networks! Great – but this takes up a lot of time and effort, which means they are losing money.
When only starting out, begin by analyzing what strategies would most effectively work for your needs, and focus on these particular strategies first. As your business grows, then you can implement more techniques when you have more staff on board that could assist with these tasks.
Practice Sound Content Marketing Strategies for Success
Content marketing has become one of the most important parts of a successful business, especially in our modern world where we have to greatly rely the internet to help us succeed. With the right content marketing strategies in place, your business is sure to thrive, whether it includes blogger outreach techniques or social media sharing campaigns.
Not implementing the correct strategies, however, can be detrimental to your business. In this article, we shared some important mistakes that people often make in their content marketing strategy. Should you be making any of these errors, know that avoiding them from here on out will help you improve the results achieved through your campaigns.
Are any of these DON’Ts lurking in your strategies? Which one do you think is the most damaging to a brand? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments!
