{"id":69290,"date":"2016-09-29T15:21:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T19:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/?p=69290"},"modified":"2020-09-21T13:34:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T17:34:10","slug":"content-marketing-sins-and-how-to-avoid-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/content-marketing-sins-and-how-to-avoid-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Content Marketing Sins and How to Avoid Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bci-8\"<\/p>\n

Content marketing is \u201cthe way forward\u201d in the digital age. The idea is simple \u2013 create content and keep your audience consistently engaged with your brand. The trouble is that in practice; this isn\u2019t so simple and there are a lot of brands delivering content marketing that just doesn\u2019t hit the spot.<\/p>\n

When content marketing goes wrong \u2013 it turns your audience away rather than engaging. They switch off and tune out from your brand and may even go hunting for the kind of content they do want elsewhere.<\/p>\n

So if you don\u2019t want to send your customers packing to your competitors; you need to think about your content marketing strategy and avoid these content marketing sins:<\/p>\n

Contentless Content<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"thincontent\"<\/p>\n

Every single piece of content you produce be it for your social media<\/a>, your website, your blog or promotional material should actually have some content. There\u2019s very little point in delivering thin content.<\/p>\n

What is \u201cthin content\u201d it\u2019s contentless content. Let\u2019s say you run a store which sells printers and print cartridges. You\u2019ve heard that every piece of content needs to be at least 500 words long. So you churn out 500 words on how to reset a particular printer. Except the only content in that 500 words is really \u201cswitch it off and switch it on again\u201d. That\u2019s thin content. Tiny pieces of information that are stretched so thin that they hold no value.<\/p>\n

Never forget that you are writing for an audience first and foremost. Sure, it\u2019s a good to write for search engines too \u2013 that way your audience can find your content. But it\u2019s never a good idea to prioritize a search engine over people. The search engines won\u2019t be your customers any time soon.<\/p>\n

Guest Blogging Overkill<\/strong><\/h2>\n

One of the keys to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is creating incoming links from other websites. That\u2019s because it tells the search engines that you have something that other people agree is worthy of being said on your site.<\/p>\n

This is why guest blogging can be a good way of boosting your rankings. You write a piece for someone else\u2019s blog or site and they, in exchange, give you a link back to your site in the piece.<\/p>\n

The trouble with this strategy is that not all sites are created equal and neither are incoming links. If you guest blog for a site with spammy, poor quality content \u2013 you may be doing more harm than good for your rankings. Google and other search engines are increasingly trying to deliver high-quality content in their search results. When a crappy site says \u201clook here on the internet\u201d \u2013 they may reduce rather than boost your rankings.<\/p>\n

This is actually good news. Guest blogging, when done right, is hard work. It\u2019s better to save that hard work for top notch sites that will bring you readers and customers than to waste it on sites that won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Constant Recycling of Content<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"ggn-recycle-31\"<\/p>\n

It can be really tempting, when you\u2019ve worked really hard to create great content, to keep pushing that content endlessly. You write an awesome blog post. Then you announce that post on all your social media channels and your website. It brings in a bunch of traffic. Then after a while \u2013 that traffic starts to tail off; your audience\u2019s attention has wandered a little.<\/p>\n

So\u2026 you decide to repost that content on social media. Every day for a year. That\u2019s a terrible strategy. All it means is that people will see it over and over again and tune out from your channels. It\u2019s much better to use recycle content sparingly \u2013 dig out those awesome posts and re-share them every few weeks or months but not every day or every hour. We know how tempting that is \u2013 particularly given the background noise on many social platforms but it\u2019s also a great way to alienate the part of your audience that is most engaged with your brand.<\/p>\n

Not Reviewing Other Sites Before Engaging With Them<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is a little bit similar to guest blogging overkill. Before you engage with any site to try and pick up traffic or links from them \u2013 you want to get under the hood of that site and see whether they\u2019re really offering you any benefits.<\/p>\n

Spammy sites with thin-content are clearly not going to deliver any results but other sites may also be negatively rated by Google without such clear warning signs. Look at their page rank, Alexa rank, etc. and see whether it\u2019s really a good idea to associate your brand with their site before you start to engage with them.<\/p>\n

Treating Content as Marketing and Advertising<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"spam_wall\"<\/p>\n

Sure, the objective of creating great content is to sell product. Otherwise; why would you bother? It\u2019s a lot of work and that work needs to see a return. However, content isn\u2019t about trying to directly sell your products or services. It\u2019s about positioning yourself (or your business) as an expert or experts in the field.<\/p>\n

If people stumble on to your site only to be greeted with dozens of posts which say; \u201cBuy from me! Buy from me!\u201d They\u2019re going to leave. There\u2019s nothing to be engaged with.<\/p>\n

Remember the catalogues that used to drop through your door with monotonous regularity? They\u2019re not as common now \u2013 even online they\u2019re not common. Why? Because that\u2019s all they did; \u201cBuy stuff! Buy stuff!\u201d People got wise to that and they don\u2019t need it any more.<\/p>\n

When you use content to explain things, when you use it to help your audience reach their personal or business (or indeed both) objectives; you give people a reason to keep reading rather than close their browser tab and move on somewhere else.<\/p>\n

The essence of content marketing is giving. The more you give, the more likely you are to receive in return. That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t have any sales content on your site or blog, of course, it just means you should keep it to a minimum so that the visitor sees the value before the demand to buy and the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Content marketing is \u201cthe way forward\u201d in the digital age. The idea is simple \u2013 create content and keep your audience consistently engaged with your brand. The trouble is that in practice; this isn\u2019t so simple and there are a lot of brands delivering content marketing that just doesn\u2019t hit the spot. When content marketing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":69292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-69290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69290"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71300,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69290\/revisions\/71300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}