While publishing high-quality content is important, it’s only half of the content marketing equation. The other half is promoting the content through effective marketing strategies. If your efforts are falling short of expectation, you could be making one of these common content marketing mistakes.
Failing to Ask Your Network to Share a New Post
If you don’t feel comfortable asking your social contacts and people on your opt-in email list to share new posts, you need to push past that to get your content in front of a larger audience. You may want to save this favor for posts that you feel are especially important and let those you’re asking to share know that you will do the same for them.
Another idea is to create or join a group for business professionals in your industry with the understanding that you share each other’s work. Lastly, consider asking several experts in your industry their opinion on concerning issues. Once you receive their answers, publish the post to your website and ask them to do the same. Most will be happy to do so.
Sharing a New Post Only Once a Day at the Same Time
It’s good to set up automatic social sharing of your content. However, it’s good to schedule your post several times the first day and at least a few times the day after to reach the largest possible audience. Not everyone checks their social media feed first thing in the morning. Some wait until their lunch hour to check social accounts, and others wind down with social media scrolling before they go to bed. Automatic scheduling to hit all of these time frames is the best way to attract more new readers.
Not Considering What Your Audience Wants to Read
Everyone has topics that interest them more than others. However, you could be losing readers if most of your content centers on what you want to read instead of what your audience wants to read. Use your analytics dashboard to your advantage to understand which topics create the most interaction among readers. While it might not be what you would choose, data doesn’t lie. When you produce content that people want to read, they will keep coming back for more.
Creating Content with No Goal in Mind
You have heard that you should produce a lot of content to remain fresh with search engines and to get people back to your website. Unfortunately, producing content just for the sake of it will not get you the results you seek. Every piece of content should have an objective such as educating your readers or helping them solve a problem, establishing your company as an expert in your industry, or driving leads and sales. If the content you’re about to publish doesn’t meet one of these needs, consider not publishing it, or re-working it until it does.
At visionPATH Marketing, we help small businesses just like yours drive sales through content marketing. Please contact us to learn more about how we can help.