Not seeing results with your content marketing strategy? Here’s why

Content marketing is one of the best ways to bring in new leads and to grow your business- and this should come to be no surprise.

The Content Marketing Institute has reported that a whopping 92 percent of marketers consider content as a vital business asset, making it incredibly competitive. But this should not deter your efforts. In 2018, no business can afford to neglect the power of content.

Coming up with a solid content marketing plan is by no means an easy task. Many marketers spend an extortionate amount of time and effort creating content which fails to attract any decent engagement.

If you’re having trouble seeing results in your marketing plan, then consider these five common “mistakes” that can hinder success.

1. Your content is too “salesy”

A mistake many marketers make is the creation of content that is too pushy in terms of trying to get them to buy your product or service. The truth is, people are tired of over-bearing sales pitches. The consumers of today want value and crave experience. A much better approach is to build meaningful relationships with your audience through informative and engaging content.

You should strive to give answers to the questions and the common problems of your readers. To do this you can follow conversations on social media and ask for feedback, and from this, provide informative content. Create content with the customer in mind or else you risk sounding like a commercial.

2. You’re unclear on who your audience is

One of the first steps you should have taken when embarking on your content marketing journey is to first understand who your target audience is.

Some marketers believe that by making content vaguer, they will reach a broader audience. But when it comes to creating content for your brand, quality really is better than quantity.

It is much more effective to outline your target audience and then create content that is likely to appeal to them in regards to their demographic and interests. Identify your audience, research them, and most importantly- figure out what they want.

A good start is to head over to your competitors’ websites and scope out who they are targeting. One you have more of a clear understanding of your target audience, you can begin to hone in on what topics they’re likely to want to read.

3. Not using multiple forms of content

According to marketing guru Neil Patel, another common mistake that some marketers are guilty of is not experimenting with different forms of content.

“We’ve all read one. The blog post that has zero images and looks like a page from a history book,” he writes in his blog post.

Today, words and images simply aren’t good enough. If you really want to capture the attention of your audience then you need to be more creative.

The consumers of today especially love video, with more than 100 million hours of video being watched each week on Facebook alone.

They also love infographics due to the ability to digest the information way easier than trawling through a block of text. In fact, research has shown that us humans process images 60,000 times faster than plain text.

So, it may be time to think about how you can deliver your content in ways other than plain text in order to further engage your audience.

4. You aren’t promoting your content

You may have produced some really interesting content, but unless you put effort into promoting it, then all those hours you spent making it will go to waste.

Social media is a powerful platform in which to share your content with a wide audience. Post multiple times across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to really gain exposure.

There are also a number of tools available which can give you analytics on the best times to post in terms of engagement based on when your followers are most active. Such tools include Google Analytics and Hootsuite.

5. You don’t understand the importance of SEO

If you aren’t optimizing your content for search then you are missing a very large chunk of success. Content and SEO go hand-in-hand; it makes sure your engaging content can actually be found.

Take time conducting keyword research using Google’s Keyword Planner. You can then integrate these keywords throughout your content naturally to make it more visible on search.

Additionally, if you post on a self-hosted WordPress site you can download useful SEO plugins such as Yoast which really help you optimize your meta descriptions and titles.

So, now you have an idea of some of the mistakes to avoid when creating a solid content marketing plan, it’s time to increase your engagement!