Mistake #1: Not Creating Customer Personas
Before you even begin with your content marketing, you need to know who you are talking to. You can't just create content for the sake of it and write about something you want to. Any piece of content you create has to have a target audience, that is, a group of people that share a few commonalities.
This target audience is best structured by using a marketing technique called "customer personas". This technique consists in creating fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. With this personas, you can discover what problems and needs your audience have, which makes the content creation much easier and effective.
Mistake #2: Not Using A Reader-friendly Structure
It's a fact: people don't read online, they scan.
In 2013, analytics vendor Chartbeat analyzed Slate and other websites and found that most visitors scroll through about only 50-60% of an article page. On another study, a Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking study from 2008 indicated that less than 20% of the text content is actually read on an average web page.
I know this sounds awful and makes you want to give up on your content marketing efforts. But don't panic, there's a solution: create content optimize for the web.
You don't have to use complicated software to do so, you only need to follow certain rules of thumb that will help your readers scan as much as they want while absorbing the content you offer.
Mistake #3: Pushing People To A Signup (Paid Or Free)
Content marketing isn't the same as selling. Like any other type of marketing, the goal of content marketing is to attract, persuade, and convert your readers to do what you want them to do, one step at the time. The ultimate goal is a sale, but that's not the first thing you should have in mind.
It will take time, but as it goes with life, if you put one step at the time (and don't make the mistakes laid out in this article), you will get people to pay for your products and services.
Mistake #4: Creating Generic Content
The importance of the usefulness of your content can't be minimized. You can't expect people to care about what you have to say if what they find is content that doesn't make their lives better in any way. You first have to give value to receive something back (whether that is a social share, an email signup, or a sale).
The only way to "give value" to your customers is through high-quality content.
If you follow the advice given in the three previous sections, your content will already be high-quality. That is, if you know who you are creating the content for, if you make it easy to read and scan, and don't push the readers into doing something they don't want to do, your content will likely to stand out from the rest.
However, that's not enough. You need to know how to find, organize, and present useful information in a way your customers will enjoy consuming.
Mistake #5: Not Adding Images And Graphics
There's nothing sadder than reading an article that doesn't feature at least one image. It's not for aesthetic reasons, but for pedagogical ones.
In other words, you can't develop content without using images. That's why you need to add as many relevant images as you can in your content. This also includes graphics and even videos.
If you follow the tips and steps that were shown to you in this article, you will be a step ahead of your competitors. Not only that, but you will be doing a favor to your customers. And by doing so, you will have a much easier time getting leads, acquiring more customers, and increasing your profits.
Courtesy of SearchEnginePeople
