What The Most Common Beginner Mistakes Made In Content Marketing?

Recently launched a content marketing plan and it’s not going great? Maybe you’re still looking into the requirements and challenges associated with content marketing? Regardless, the art of content marketing is, like the minds of the target audiences, nuanced and complex. Finding the recipe for content marketing success is every marketer’s dream, but too many fail to achieve theirs – simply because of minor flaws in their strategy. Here are four of the common mistakes that businesses make when conducting content marketing activities:

Four of the common mistakes

1 . An Expectation Of Instant Success

Too many marketers think that content marketing will start yielding results after month one, but this isn’t always the case. In fact, overnight success is only really possible when an item of content marketing goes viral. Most content marketing strategies take a few months to build up momentum and can take a while before leads start trickling in. What is important to remember is that content marketing is like SEO – it takes an initial investment but can continue generating leads long after the content has been developed, uploaded, and paid for.

2 . Inadequate Planning And Strategising

One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make when first getting into content marketing is that they fail to pull together a coherent, goal-driven content marketing strategy. Everyone involved should understand exactly what the purpose is behind the development and marketing of content. Brands should also know exactly who they’re talking to with their content, which requires looking into and developing audience personas before working on the content itself. Contrary to popular belief, content marketing isn’t just posting content for the heck of it!

3 . Lack Of Content-Type Variety

Another misconception about content marketing is that it’s all about posting blog articles. While the humble blog article is one important informative component of content marketing, it certainly isn’t the be-all and end-all. One mistake content marketers make is not including variety in their content marketing mix, which could lead to content fatigue after a while of posting the same type of content over and over. Be sure to include a variety, like videos, podcasts, downloadable content, etc.

4 . Not Concerned With Quality Of Content

Again, it should be emphasised that content marketing is not about posting content for the sake of it. Anyone can develop items of content for a content marketing campaign, but whether that content is going to resonate with the target audience will largely depend on the quality of that content, and how the content is differentiated from other similar pieces of the content offered by competitors. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s better to post one piece of quality content than to post 10 pieces of sub-par content.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

One way to improve your content marketing skills is to avoid mistakes like the ones above. The other way is to learn the basics of content marketing and how to execute professional, effective content marketing strategies. Check out the Copywriting & Content Marketing course from the Digital School of Marketing, and upskill today!