The 5 Don’t Do’s with Content Marketing
6 Dec 2013
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In our previous article, Content Marketing vs. Advertising: Who Wins the Battle?, we mentioned several advantages of content marketing over advertising. The gains include the ability to increase brand exposure economically, explore new markets through lateral communication, and improve competitiveness. However, while content marketing can produce fantastic results for companies, it can become your worst nightmare if it isn’t leveraged properly. For instance, fans could stop visiting your page and make negative comments towards your brand if you self-promote relentlessly. (Related article: How These 3 Simple Best Practices Can Improve Content Marketing Performance).
To help marketers avoid such mistakes, here are 5 don’t do’s of content marketing:
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Recycle content
One of the main goals of content creation is to provoke your customers’ interests in your products or services. You won’t be able to achieve this goal if you continuously reuse your content by giving similar tips or covering the same topics. To come up with new article ideas frequently, you can research the latest trendy topics, read magazines or online publications such as Mashable, or see what other companies are writing. -
Write without a content calendar
Once you have a list of topic ideas, you have to organize them using a content calendar. This will allow you to have a healthy dose of different articles each week or month. By using a content calendar, you can arrange 3 articles regarding Google Analytics on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and 2 YouTube videos on digital advertising on Tuesday and Thursday. This will spice up your content schedule and make it more exciting for your audience. Moreover, it’ll increase your content’s shareability as your audience is more likely to distribute content that they enjoy and think their peers will be entertained by. -
Forget your audience
In order to entice your readers, you have to produce content that arouses their self-interests. After all, the only reason why your audience is reading your web content is because they think you have solutions to some of their problems. Whether it’s a video on how to use a social media management tool or tips on how to write a prolific sales email, your content should always be about your readers. -
Use fancy words
Your content should be straightforward and easily digestible by using simple terms. This can prevent your content from becoming too complicated for your readers and “bumpy.” If your content turns out to be too complex for your audience, its flow will be affected as your readers will likely pause temporarily to grab the nearest dictionary. -
Forget about your bottom line
Since content creation is a marketing tactic, it should be assessed based on your bottom line. You can do so by examining your multi-attribute channels on Google Analytics and determine how content piece contributes to your overall conversion rate. After all, you’re spending money directly (hiring a blogger) or indirectly (opportunity cost) to create your content. Therefore, you should see if your content is in fact generating a positive ROI. -
Pick quantity over quality
While businesses want to pump out as much updated, provoking content as possible, they have to ensure the quality is still there. There’s no better to turn off your readers and induce them to leave your website permanently than creating a boatload of useless content. As a company, you have to make sure your offerings, not just your products or services, but also your content is ample. Essentially, people are reading your content for help, which subsequently makes your articles, infographics, and other content pieces as integral as your other products or services.
Although content is currently king, it can only remain on the throne if it’s used properly. In order to leverage content marketing to your advantage, you have to continuously create a variety of new articles as well as become audience-oriented, sales-driven, and quality-focused. This will help you continue to produce content that arouses your readers’ interests in your brand and boosts your revenue – the chief objective of content marketing.
If you have any questions about content or digital marketing, please contact Ray at ray.wang@smartt.com. If you are interested in learning more about digital marketing, attend our 1-day digital marketing training workshop.