5 Content Marketing Mistakes You Need to avoid

As a business consultant , I understand it's not an easy thing to implement content marketing the right way. You will make mistakes and that's fine but if you follow the steps that am going to show you in this article, you will be a step ahead of your competitors,you will have easier time getting leads, acquiring more customers and increasing your profits.

Mistake#1 : Not creating customer personas

You must put into consideration the target audience before you begin your content marketing. You just can't create content for the sake of and write about something you want to. Think of creating fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. This will help you to discover what problems and needs your audience have which will in turn ease your content creation and make it effective. 

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Mistake #2: Not using a Reader-friendly structure. 

These are the main elements of a reader-friendly content structure you should use; 

• Headings from H1 to H6 (HTML code) 
• Magnetic headlines and subheadings 
• Short paragraphs, not longer than 5 or 6 sentences. 
• Bullet points
• Images 
• Bold and italics 

These elements will make your content get the attention it deserves. People don't read online, they scan and that's a fact. All you need to do is to help your readers scan as much as they want while absorbing the content you offer. 

Mistake #3 : Pushing people to a sign up (paid or free)

Just like other marketing techniques, the ultimate goal of content marketing is to make sales but that's not the first thing you should have in mind.Instead,think of this as the chance to attract, persuade and convert your readers to do what you want, one step at a time. You can't push people to become customers right away, it takes time.

Mistake #4:Creating generic content

The only way to give value to your customers is through high quality content. You need to know how to find, organize and present useful information in a way that your customers will enjoy consuming. 

• Find a topic for your content which should solve a problem or tap a need for your target audience. 
• Define the specific topic you're going to talk about. 
• Do some competitor analysis and and find your unique angle. Look for something that no one talks about but should. 
• Choose the type of content you're going to use, whether it's an article, an ebook, a webinar etc. 
• Find data to backup your angle by researching on the topic. 
• Develop an outline which should lay out the structure of the article
• Start developing the content and write a content page of at least 1000 words. 
• Edit the article and trim the parts that are necessary. 
• Publish the article and promote it through social media,influencer outreach and email marketing. 

Implement those rules to create high quality content for your company's blog. 

Mistake #5 :Not adding images and graphics

It's so boring reading an article that doesn't feature at least one image. It's not for aesthetic reasons but for pedagogical purposes. 

According to Neil Fleming's VAK model on how people tend to learn, we find that people learn in four different ways :

• Visual learning 
• Auditory learning 
• Read /write learning
• Kinesthetic learning

If you only use the read/write technique, you are leaving many people behind. You should therefore develop content with images which includes graphics and even videos.

When using images there are some factors that you have to consider, for instance ;

• The placement of the image matters - you should put images above headlines.
• Always use relevant images
• Captions are read four times more than the body copy ~ always add a caption to every image.
• Never break the left margin with your images.

Share your contents everywhere and at regular basis. 

Be sure to implement those tips or let all the tasks done for you.