10 Content Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

January 7, 2013

Don’t get caught making these content marketing mistakes in 2013!content marketing mistakes

It’s a new year, and if you’ve been following my content marketing blog, you know that we covered a lot of ground in 2012. As I look ahead to 2013, I’m reminded that there are a bunch of content marketing mistakes companies consistently make that are worth pointing out. If you can manage to avoid the pitfalls below, I guarantee that your content marketing efforts will be more successful, helping you to reach your goals.

So, without any further delay, here are the 10 content marketing mistakes you can’t afford to make this year along with some tips on how to avoid them:

1. Not knowing your audience (perhaps the biggest content marketing mistake). The secret to creating great content is knowing your target audience. For B2B content marketers, that audience typically consists of the buyers and users of your company’s products and services. Your number one priority as a content marketer is to understand who those buyers and users are. What do they care about? What challenges do they face? What factors motivate them to make decisions? There is a bunch of demographic and behavioral information that you need to gather so that you can create personas for your target audience. Doing so will allow you to create truly targeted content that will be much more likely to resonate with your audience and help move them down the path to purchase.
2. Making it hard for people to find your content. Spend all of the time in the world making great content, but if no one can find it, you’re wasting your time. That’s why it’s so important that you carefully construct your website so that visitors can quickly access relevant content from your home page.  Not only that, you absolutely must be optimizing all of your content with the right keywords so that people are likely to find it — and your website — when searching online.
3. Not creating enough content. It’s really hard to reap the benefits of content marketing if you’re not producing a lot of content. If you’re only creating one piece of content a week, or worse, just one piece a month, you need to pick up the pace. Take the time to build a content factory so that you’ve got the people, processes, and tools in place that you’ll need to publish a new piece of content every day. Doing so will help ensure that you drive more people to your site by not only helping to increase search engine traffic, but also by making your site a destination where people can come for valuable information.
4. Failing to listen. Great B2B content is never created in a vacuum. After all, for your content to be great, it’s got to be what your audience wants. That means taking the time to listen to your customers, paying attention to what people are talking about in your industry, and following what your competitors and industry influencers are doing. Content creation starts with listening. It’s the only way to be sure that what you’re creating is timely and relevant.
5. Not leveraging others. Content marketing may be the responsibility of the marketing team, but it’s definitely a task that requires the participation of many. To be successful, you have to tap into your co-workers and industry influencers for their subject matter expertise as well as their networks to help ensure that your content is getting shared with all of the right people.
6. Missing opportunities to distribute and promote your content effectively. Just because a piece of content is ready to publish, don’t make the mistake of thinking that your work is done.  You’ve got to figure out the right way to get that content to the people who it is intended for. That doesn’t just mean posting it to your website or sending out an e-mail. You also need to ensure your content is on the right content-sharing sites and being promoted through the appropriate outbound communication channels for your specific audience. Whenever possible, you also want to give your audience the ability to subscribe to your content.
7. Not making your content engaging. We live in a world where people have very short attention spans. As a result, you’ve got to make sure that your content is engaging in order for people to notice it. That means making your content visual, asking open-ended questions to promote comments, and giving people ways to interact with your content.
8. Always reinventing the wheel. Don’t make this classic content marketing mistake by making things harder than they need to be. Instead, look at your content needs holistically and figure out how you can reuse the content you’ve already created to help meet them. For example, consider turning a series of blog posts into a white paper or eBook, or leveraging your latest podcast or video to create an article or infographic.
9. Making it all about you. Remember, content marketing isn’t about touting why you’re so great at every turn. People want answers to their questions and solutions to their problems, not just details about your new product or testimonials about why it’s fantastic. Why there’s certainly a place for this stuff, make sure that you are also creating content that speaks to broader issues, trends, and questions being raised in your industry. Offering a little bit of thought leadership will go a long way toward helping to build your brand.
10. Your turn… What’s the biggest content marketing mistake you’ve made or seen others make?

Content Marketing Director

<strong>Kevin Cain</strong> is the Content Marketing Director for <a href="http://www.bluechipcommunication.com.au/">BlueChip Communication</a>, Australia's leading financial services communication firm. Before joining BlueChip, Kevin was the Director of Content Strategy for OpenView.