Ten Mistakes Businesses Make When Implementing a Content Strategy |

• Updated on: 2019-10-14
• Read original article here

Creating and publishing content that your audience will not only enjoy, seek to read and will act on takes time, patience and planning. Plus, it takes an understanding of how content marketing works online and the technology used to help people find you. Here are ten mistakes to avoid.

For content marketing of any type to work, you need to have a plan in place. You need to understand what your goals are for the content. Without an understanding of that plus your audience, you will not succeed with your content strategy.

You don’t have to be an amazing writer to create content that gets results. But, the content needs to make sense, be original, and have your own voice, in other words share your personality and opinions, it is what makes you unique and your audience will love it. The best way to create content like this is to write how you talk and talk directly to your audience (of one) in a way that they understand. If you can’t do that, hire someone who can.

Everything you publish on your website and on social media, or in a book, needs to have a reason for being. If you can’t come up with reasons why your audience would want to read or view your content, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

We’ve all read content that sounds exactly like a sales letter, the content that you publish should not always sound like you’re selling something. Instead, it should be educational and dare I say it entertaining in nature. The content should be valuable by itself without your audience purchasing anything or signing up for anything. This is what will make them want to know more.

To create valuable content, you need to be an expert in your niche. The way to appear as an expert is to stay slightly ahead of your intended audience. For example, if you want to create content in the cooking niche but you’re not a chef, you might decide to focus on home cooked main dishes instead of more elaborate information.

A lot of your content should be educational in nature, and most of that with few exceptions can be evergreen. You may have to go back and update some of the content with technology changes depending on your niche, but timely information that is general in nature and within the niche is always useful.

People like to get general, everyday content, but they also like more in-depth information that requires longer content. This authoritative content can help you establish yourself as the go-to expert in your niche.

It’s imperative that you understand your audience. It may help to create audience avatars. This means that you create a drawing of your ideal audience member, along with a name, a past, a present, and a future. Then every piece of content you create should be created directly for that person.

While the quality of your content along with expert targeting is more important, optimizing the content for readability on the platform people are reading it is imperative. For example, format the content for ease of reading with plenty of subheadings, bullet points, and white space.

Using the right words, the right headers, tags, keywords and so forth is important to help your audience find you. These are the things that search engines use to display your content to your audience. If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin like Yoast SEO to get help with this issue.

You want the content that you publish to mean something not only to you but more importantly to your audience. You want it to perform well, inform your audience and create new customers. The right content will work better than anything else that you do and will in the end ensure your success.