10 Content Marketing Mistakes You Might Be Making

At first glance, content marketing seems like the easiest thing in the world to do. You write an article (or buy some PLR) and throw it up on your site and wait for the search engines to find it. Easy peasy, right? Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the wrong way to go about it. The truth is, content marketing mistakes are easy to make unless you’re paying attention.

Here are 10 content marketing mistakes you might be making without even realizing it.

Mistake #1 – Not having a goal for your content

Before you even start creating an outline for any piece of content, ensure that you know what your goals are for the content. Whether you create it, buy it, or curate it, there must be a point for it existing before you do it.

Mistake #2 – Sharing content that’s not relevant for your audience

Always keep your ideal customer in mind when you’re creating your content. That way you’ll be sure to give them the information they need and avoid sending them down rabbit holes or squirrel trails with content that doesn’t meet their needs.

Mistake #3 – Thinking your ideal audience never changes

Just because you researched your audience six months ago, doesn’t mean you can stop now. Audience characteristics often stay the same, but their behavior and thoughts can change with seasons, trends, and as a result of pretty much anything else going on in their lives.

Related Content: 6 Keys To Understanding Your Audience

Mistake #4 – Not adding calls to action to your content

A call to action is to content marketing what the punchline is to a good joke. Absolutely necessary because it’s the main reason you’re creating the content in the first place – to lead the customer to your next step.

Related Content: Understanding Calls to Action

Mistake #5 – You don’t follow up enough

Everyone’s overloaded with content these days, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be following up with your new reader/prospect/customer. Because out of all that noise, they chose YOU to give their email address and/or money to.

Mistake #6 – You don’t pay attention to SEO

I’ll admit to being guilty of this one myself, but SEO is necessary and it’s also very powerful if you do it right. My friend Melody at PLRoftheMonth.club* has converted me to the wisdom of SEO, and I’ll be writing more about that later.

Mistake #7 – You don’t have a funnel

Funnel, schmunnel. That is NOT the way to think about funnels because whether we like it or not, funnels work. They make your marketing tasks easy and predictable; they make your customer’s buying journey a logical progression from lead magnet to high-end product (if that’s what you sell); and most important of all they give you a visual and measurable framework for your business.

Mistake #8 – You make plans that don’t fit your goals

It’s great to make goals and it’s equally great to make plans, but you have to make sure that your plans reflect the goals you want to achieve. It’s so easy to get sidetracked with new and interesting topics that have nothing to do with what you or your audience is expecting from you. (Just ask me how hard it is to stay focused on one topic!)

Mistake #9 – You don’t keep track of key performance indicators

What the heck are key performance indicators? That’s the question I had the first time I heard someone talking about KPI. You should be setting these up when you create the goals for your content so you know how effective it is. More on these coming in a future post as well. For now, here’s an article to get you started:

Mistake #10 – You don’t pay attention to your data

You’d probably be surprised at the number of people who don’t even look at their data. They just keep throwing content up on their blogs and in their emails without seeing how well it works. It’s hard to repeat your successes if you’re not paying attention to what actually works.

So how many of these mistakes have you made in your business? I know I’ve made more than what I’ve admitted to in this article, but just writing about them makes me want to drop everything and start fixing.

*Note: This post includes affiliate links, for which I will receive a small commission should you make a purchase.