When only 30% of content marketers say that they consider themselves effective, it would seem there’s plenty of room for error in the content marketing world. So how do you make sure you’re bound for success? Here are four major pitfalls that you absolutely must avoid.
1. Failing to Commit Sufficient Resources
A content marketing drive needs someone in the driving seat. It doesn’t necessarily need a huge budget thrown behind it to work, but it does need your commitment – in time, in effort, in personnel, in resources.
It takes time to figure out what your clients really want to know more about. It takes time to establish what channels and platforms they use to access content. It takes smart, creative thinking and some careful analysis to clarify how your own business goals overlap with those of your clients. And it takes time – lots of time – to make genuinely well-crafted, well-researched, well-presented content that your clients will really want to engage with. Don’t scrimp on the resources you need to make it work.
2. Failing to Schedule Content Frequently Enough
It’s not enough to update a blog every once in a while, or to create a single podcast, send this out into the ether and expect your client base to start growing at once.
Successful content marketing is all about creating a steady, regular supply of high-value content that your audience comes to anticipate, look forward to and return for the next instalment. If you aren’t willing to throw yourself behind it, you aren’t going to be able to make your content as successful and effective as it should be.
3. Failing to Put a Proper Strategy in Place
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. And again. And again. It’s absolutely crucial to have a properly documented strategy in place. A strategy isn’t a list of cool-sounding blog titles. It doesn’t just mean working out what your clients’ chief aims and pain points are and coming up with content ideas accordingly. And it’s much more than even a detailed content calendar for the coming quarter.
Strategy is working out how each of the dots joins together. It’s establishing not only your overarching goals, but breaking down the process step by step to define the goal of each individual piece of content too. It’s figuring out how you guide the customer along their customer journey, treating each piece of content as a stepping stone along the way towards your ultimate aim.
4. Failing to Go Multi-Screen
Mobile has now officially taken over from browser as the main way that people access information online. Yet so many organisations still focus on desktop optimisation. They focus on creating calls-to-action that involve following links back to their website, even though these function poorly within social media apps.
If you’re going to fully future-proof your strategy and make it as engaging as possible for your audience, you need to think about how it translates from screen to screen. And you need to think about how to work with the platforms your market is actually using to access content – not against them.
For more great tips on creating a successful social media strategy, download the B2B Content Creation Masterclass below.
