The 10 Content Marketing mistakes to avoid

Content Marketing plays an essential role in a website’s visibility. It helps attract potential customers through content that delivers real added value. Essential, and yet, Content Marketing mistakes are common on the internet, even though they are easy to avoid with a few basic principles. and it improves the image and reputation of the company or brand.

But what is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is a marketing strategy built around creating, publishing, and distributing content to a target audience, in order to bring new traffic (and therefore new customers) to a business. This content is distributed online through blogs, videos, e-books, and other downloadable or interactive tools.

You need a clear idea of what to write and how your content is supposed to move you closer to your goals and your marketing strategy. Our experts have already explained how to build a strong Content Marketing strategy with SEO. We are going to reveal 10 mistakes to avoid in Content Marketing if you want to create effective, relevant content.

Content Marketing mistakes to avoid

Failing to define your content strategy

This is the step to prioritize above all others: creating a content strategy. This step is essential, but it is not obvious to everyone. By defining your strategy, you can also define your goals. Every one of your Content Marketing actions should serve clearly defined goals that are measurable over time. To succeed, set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and Time-bound).

What’s more, defining an appropriate strategy also lets you start by analyzing your existing data, that is, the content you have already written. This helps you identify the mistakes you have made and the important points you may have missed, based on how much interest your audience might have in them. Keep an eye on the latest trends in your industry; this will help you produce relevant content.

Failing to define your target audience

Not defining your target audience in Content Marketing means not writing for them. If you want your content to be read, you absolutely must identify your target audience. By knowing your audience, you will know who to address your content to and you will manage to answer their queries. You will show that you are listening to your audience, spark their interest, and make it easier to build loyalty. You can rely on the persona method, which is very useful for understanding your audience’s typical profile and building a connection with them. Every customer has specific characteristics. For your content to be effective, adapt to your audience.

Example of a persona sheet template with instructions weloveusers

One of the best ways to adapt to your audience is to understand their needs. Semji lets you deepen your customer knowledge by listing the questions users most often start with “how”, “which”, “when”, “what is”. Depending on the keyword you are working on, the Semji brief reveals the questions users are asking and the associated search volumes. Thanks to your expertise, you are then able to offer them the answer they are looking for. By providing THE answer to high-traffic queries, you increase the chances of your content appearing in the top spot on Google.

An essential approach, given how Google has evolved to offer only a single result. If you would like to learn more, we invite you to watch the replay of our webinar

“In the era of Answer Engine Optimization, which methods will satisfy users?”.

Not planning an editorial calendar

An editorial calendar guides you in creating your content and in publishing it. It lets you list the upcoming communication activities, according to your audiences, over a given period. A good editorial calendar should address each of your challenges at the right time. Once you have worked on your personas and their challenges, gather content ideas from which you can set a publishing frequency. If possible, keep a certain regularity in your publications (this could be once or twice a month, for example).

Semji helps you frame your content production thanks to its planning features. Once you have defined your content topics and imported the list of keywords you want to work on, you can design an editorial calendar in just a few clicks, defining the author of a piece of content, the expected delivery date, and the content status (to do, in progress, published, or any other status you choose). To speed up your content production, request a personalized Semji demo now.

Not defining an ideal length

We often tend to believe that a fairly long article (more than 1,500 words, for example) is not suited to an online readership. Think again, because in recent years it has been proven that the longer your article is (and therefore the more explanatory), the more likely you are to generate leads. If you want to use articles, you absolutely must define an article length through a word count to reach. This is one of the first steps to take before any writing exercise. Otherwise, you risk writing loosely, without really knowing when to stop.

To get there, respect the word count set by Google. Some sites detail the ideal length that online content should have. It is reported that the minimum number of words for Google is 300 words. But do not rely on that alone, because you also need to take your readers’ searches into account. And sometimes those searches call for clear, precise answers.

The ideal length of your text should also be greater than your competitors’, because this way your text will be more descriptive, more detailed, and therefore more interesting to the reader. Semji includes this feature and lets you determine in just a few seconds the word count to reach so that your text is longer than your competitors’.

Producing duplicate content

With 130 trillion pages indexed by Google in December 2016, it is easy to find content today. With so many resources, you will often want to draw inspiration from an article, and that is perfectly acceptable. But taking a text in its entirety, without changing a single word, is no longer writing but duplicate content (and this also applies to your title tags or your meta descriptions). This can have two negative impacts:

• Google can penalize you for it (loss of ranking in search results and even a ban).
• You will lose all credibility with users.

To better understand negative SEO, here is an article that can help you: How to protect yourself from negative SEO?

If you are short on inspiration, Semji helps you spot new topics to cover. Depending on the keyword you are working on, the Semji brief suggests topics and the associated search volumes. Thanks to this collected data, you avoid blank-page syndrome and never run out of ideas for creating new content or refreshing your existing articles.

Creating content that is too uniform

Learn to vary your formats, otherwise you will create a monotony that your reader may get stuck in. To do this, think about the different learning styles. Depending on your readers, you may have visual or auditory profiles. So, in addition to adapting to your audience based on their searches, you also need to adapt your content to these different profiles.

Beyond articles, video is a good way to convey information. These videos can be shared through your website or your blog, or on social media. In the same vein, infographics prove very effective for delivering data, especially when it is complex or numbers-based.

If you are a company operating in B2B, do not hesitate to run webinars either. This method allows interaction between the company and its clients / consumers. There are also white papers, which give you strong credibility depending on the subject you decide to write about.

Handing SEO content optimization to someone who is not an expert or qualified

If you have in-house writers and/or experts, turn to them. This strengthens your company’s cohesion and teamwork, and it makes the most of your internal strengths. What’s more, they know the subject better than anyone and will know how to include the key information you need to share with your audience.

The only requirement for producing content on the web: knowing SEO optimization best practices. By using a solution like Semji, your writers produce content that users expect and that is visible to Google. If you have no in-house resources, you can always call on an external provider. Semji adapts to any setup and lets you export, in one click, the briefs containing the SEO recommendations to pass on to your external writers.

Prioritizing quantity over quality in Content Marketing

To stay top of mind with your readers, it is essential to produce content regularly, particularly on social media. But if you are not sure you can publish frequently, focus instead on the quality of your articles and remember to update them regularly.

Put together a list of keywords around your topic. It should include, in part, a main keyword that the article will be centered on. Then secondary keywords, always related to your main subject. To help you, follow Semji’s recommendations to discover other keywords and topics to rank for.

Not optimizing your article for search engines

Make sure your content aligns with Google’s guidelines so it can earn a good ranking and better visibility. Semji gives you the keys to produce SEO-friendly content thanks to its recommendations: text length, content structure, internal linking, topics to cover, questions users are asking…

Here are some other tips not to forget:

• The title: the keyword should be placed at the beginning, and the text should not exceed 75 characters (ideally 50).
• Subheadings: do not hesitate to use the different heading levels such as H2, H3, etc… and to place your keywords in them using a long-tail format.
• The URL: match the URL to your title if possible, excluding conjunctions and prepositions. Use lowercase letters and hyphens to separate words.
• The meta description: write an accurate summary of the content that is attractive enough to encourage a click, without exceeding 300-320 characters.
• Images: image selection should be thoughtful, and all images should be named appropriately. Also pay attention to their file size and dimensions (100 KB maximum). Do not forget to fill in the Alt tags for good image optimization.

Not measuring your ROI

Evaluating your return on investment (ROI) helps you know and understand which elements made your site perform well or not (number of views, shares, …).

To start, you can reuse the indicators you already use to evaluate your marketing investments. You will find that the data to measure is very similar. First, begin with your lead volume and the number of visitors to your website. You can regularly check your bounce rate to see whether it is too high. Finally, remember to prioritize your conversion rate. But be patient, because the performance of a Content Marketing strategy is measured over the long term. So give yourself a few months to see the results.

Determining the effectiveness of a Content Marketing strategy is a complex task. With Semji, you can assess your content’s contribution to your site’s overall traffic, as well as the detailed performance of each piece. Semji collects and centralizes the data that is key to your business to make it easier to track your Co ntent Marketing actions.

Once you have applied all these tips, all that is left is to distribute your content on your chosen channels and wait a while to test your KPIs.

All these different measurements can take a long time to carry out. With Semji, enjoy a complete report on your conversions, your traffic, and the revenue generated by your content. The “Dashboard” view gives you access to a 360° view of the performance of content created or optimized with the platform. Do not wait any longer to maximize the ROI of your content, and request a Semji demo now from our team!