With the average attention span only eight seconds, declining attention spans could be killing your content marketing strategy, meaning that marketers are on a time crunch when it comes to optimising content strategies in order to win over customers and new business.
With the New Year just around the corner, the team at Absolute Digital Media have taken a closer look at the content marketing mistakes you want to avoid to ensure that your strategy provides higher search engine visibility and domain authority and generates greater referral traffic.
Tables of Content:
- Don’t Publish Content for the Sake of It
- Consider What Your Audience Really Wants
- Be Consistent
- Include CTAs in Your Content
- Shake Up Your Content Forms
- Writing Content Without a Strategy
- Not Reviewing Your Content Performance
- Failing to Utilise Data
- Having the Wrong Offer
- Ignoring SEO
1. Don’t Publish Content for the Sake of It
Publishing content on a website or blog is very similar to posting on social media; you shouldn’t post for the sake of publishing a message to your audience. Instead of publishing content for the sake of keeping your profile up to date, consider how much value readers will gain from the piece. If the topic isn’t relevant to your audience or has already been covered numerous times on other websites, blogs, and forums then the chances are that the topic has already been well and truly covered.
‘You either create content worth reading or you don’t’– Sonia Simone
2. Consider What Your Audience Really Wants
Similar to not publishing content for the sake of publishing content, when it comes to publishing a new piece of content, you want to consider exactly what your audience wants from the get-go. Instead of repeating stats, fact,s and tips that can be found on other websites and blogs, consider the different ways you can make your content stand out in a crowded online marketplace.
With thousands of brands working towards the same goal as you, it’s important to define your brand within your content in order to make it stand out. To create a clear-cut image of your brand, consider:
- Your brand’s values
- The distribution channels suitable for your content
- Educating your audience, not just selling your products or service
- Personally engaging your audience
Find out how to define your audience, and identify what type of content appeals to each, here.
3. Be Consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to writing an engaging blog post or article, creating a better customer experience and building credibility and brand trust. Even if you have a number of digital copywriters writing content for your website or blog, you can achieve the same tone by defining your brand’s tone of voice by your businesses values. For an even more accurate tone of voice, consider what your business would be like if it was a person.
For example:
By ensuring that your content is consistent, you can effectively establish your brand as an authority whilst boosting your SEO and strengthening your businesses identity.
4. Include CTAs in Your Content
Whether you are posting on social media or are publishing a 1000 word article, it’s important to ensure that CTAs are used throughout your post or piece in order to encourage users to take action. However, before you even begin to produce your content, you need to identify a clear action at the centre of everything that you produce in order to ensure that your content reflects what action you want users to take, whether that’s purchasing a product, signing up to your newsletter, or getting in touch. Factors to consider when using CTAs within your content include:
5. Shake Up Your Content Forms
Whilst there are literally hundreds of different content types to choose from, a number of marketers get stuck in the rut of producing blog post after blog post after blog post. Not only is this repetitive, but if your content isn’t shared elsewhere, then it is unlikely to ever be seen by your target audience. In addition to blog posts and articles, consider producing:
- A podcast
- A case study
- An e-book
- An infographic
- An email marketing campaign
- A newsletter
- A presentation
- A social media campaign
- A video
- A whitepaper
- A Q&A
- A list
- A roundup
- A live stream
Despite this, each form of content that you produce will appeal to some audiences more than others, reverting us back to point two of ten: consider what your audience really wants.
6. Write Content Without a Strategy
Writing content without a strategy is like going on a road trip with no planned destination; a risk. In order for your content to make an impact, you need to have a strategy in place that defines how you will use your content and how it can improve the customer experience.
Percentage of B2B Marketers Who Have a Content Marketing Strategy
Source: Content Marketing Profs
If you are a part of the 38 per cent of B2B marketers who have a content marketing strategy but which is not documented, 19 per cent of B2B marketers who don’t currently have a content marketing strategy but plan to have one within 12 months, or 6 per cent of B2B marketers with no plans of having a content marketing strategy within the next 12 months – you need to create one now.
For your content marketing efforts to be successful, ask yourself the following questions:
- What do we want to accomplish in the next 12 months?
- Who do we want to reach?
- What resources does the team require to achieve our goals?
- What are the demographics of my buyer personas?
- Which types of content are performing the best and worst?
- What types of content are we missing?
- Is our existing content easy to read?
- How will our content be distributed?
- How can we create evergreen content?
7. Conduct Regular Content Reviews
To improve your content, you need to review the performance of your existing content in order to identify:
- What does and doesn’t work well
- What content has performed well and why
- What content can be redistributed
- What content can be converted into another content type
With this insight, you will be able to identify the types of content that performs well on each platforms and construct a strategy that is suitable for each of your audiences.
You can review the performance of your content by tracking different KPIs, including:
8. Utilise All Available Data
Once you have reviewed the performance of your content, it’s important that you utilise this data and use it to your advantage when creasing new content and ensure that your creations can be repurposed and are evergreen. One of the most effective ways to do this is to create a content review which breaks down each successful article or post by the success metrics mentioned in point seven of ten.
For a quick content review, use the following template:
9. Ensure You Have the Right Offer in Place
A major downfall for many brands is having the wrong offer. Your offer is the most crucial part of any content marketing campaign and your content, whether it’s in the form of a social media or email marketing campaign, video or podcast, should encourage your readers to take action to achieve your initial goals. To make sure that your offer stands out, be sure to research existing and previous offers to identify what has and hasn’t worked from another business’s perspective and consider the different ways you can make it personal.
10. Don’t Ignore SEO
When it comes to writing content, you shouldn’t ignore SEO. The two are closely linked and, according to Google, content is one of the primary search engine factors. This statement is also mentioned in the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines which are used to ‘evaluate search engine quality around the world.’ The document also highlights why raters must represent the user, various browser requirements, ad blocking extensions, and general internet safety information.
Learn how you can improve your Google E-A-T rating according to the experts at Absolute Digital Media, here.
Ready to inspire your audience? Learn how to promote your business’ expertise with valuable content by getting in touch with the team at Absolute Digital Media on 0800 088 6000 today.