5 Common Mistakes Small Businesses Make When They Try Content Marketing

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By Jacob Maslow

Content marketing provides your potential customers with relevant information on several online platforms when they search for answers to a problem online.

When done correctly, content marketing rewards your business with leads and sales. By avoiding common content marketing mistakes, like ignoring SEO or the quality of your content, you can expect a more effective and faster return on investment from your marketing efforts.

Here’s how you can avoid the five most common mistakes small businesses make with their content marketing:

1.      Neglecting to Profile Your Audience

You cannot create content without first knowing about your audience. For example, suppose you’re selling something targeted at a middle-aged audience seeking higher-end products. Your marketing cannot use language that targets a younger generation looking for affordable solutions. Your content must resonate with your potential audience.

Therefore, you must first research your audience profile if you want your content marketing to bear fruit. You need to know the following about your target audience:

  • Their age
  • How much income do they have
  • Where they work
  • What are their interests
  • What problems do they face
  • How your content can help them solve these
  • Will these people provide value to your business by sharing your content

Furthermore, don’t make the mistake of not writing each topic without a goal. Your customers go through a sale funnel, passing through several stages before purchasing your product. These stages are awareness, consideration, and decision.

As they go from realizing they have a problem that needs solving until they decide your product provides the best solution, you need to give them the right content at each stage of the buyer journey.

2.      Building a Content Marketing Strategy Without Analyzing the Data

If you brainstorm a few ideas for your business and start publishing content without first analyzing the data, you may have a few hits, but most of your content will most likely flop.

Before creating a content marketing strategy, you first need to understand what topics your customers are interested in reading. Start by observing which content provides your competitors with the best returns. These articles will rank highly and have high click-through rates.

Next, analyze details about the articles that you can improve on. Ask yourself the following:

  • Can you add more information for your audience to make the article more informative and engaging?
  • Does the article ramble on for too long, or does it not provide enough information because it’s too short?
  • Does it have strong backlinks?
  • Is it actionable?

The aim is to find ways and topics to add to your content marketing that can prove more valuable to your audience than your competitors’ content.

3.      Not Writing for Your Audience

Your content must always speak to your audience by providing them with the information they want. You can learn this information by communicating with them on social media, through surveys, etc.

Therefore, if you sell hardware supplies and like to let your audience know about changes in your local building laws, they won’t read the article if they want more DIY tips or information about preventing problems around their home. Therefore, your content will not serve its purpose.

Therefore, please don’t waste your marketing budget on creating what you want; make it about what your audience wants, ensuring it brings your business the right traffic, leads, and conversions.

Remember, you also want to keep the language of your content easy to understand, so use more straightforward terms. Also, lay your written content out in an appealing way that makes for effortless reading.

4.      Forgetting About SEO

Don’t forget the role search engines play in driving traffic to your website. Therefore, you cannot ignore SEO techniques when creating content.

Make sure the content for your small business is optimized by including the following essential items:

  • Several tools, including Google Search Console, can help you find the keywords and long-tail keywords to include in your well-written content and images.
  • Optimize elements like meta titles and descriptions, and break your content into sections with H1-H6 tags to make it easier to read.
  • Link to external sites to enhance your user experience and get more backlinks for your website. Keep checking that links remain unbroken and fix these as necessary.
  • Redirect users to other pages on your website with internal links.
  • Optimize all your content for mobile devices.
  • Maximize your ratings by avoiding duplicate content.
  • Provide a better user experience by ensuring your website is easy to interact with, loads quickly, etc. You cannot afford to ignore this step if you want to rank highly on search engines.
  • Ensure your SEO works by analyzing your website’s metrics and data.

5.      Producing Too Much Content or Making Constant Changes

You may have heard of the term “keyword cannibalization.” It means creating too much content to cover all the keywords you possibly can. Unfortunately, this will harm your ROI. Always aim for quality rather than pushing too many posts. This ensures your content stands out rather than competing against itself.

If it targets similar keywords, the solution is to merge the content to create one informative and powerful piece that will perform for your business.

Additionally, you don’t need to change your content too frequently to keep up with Google changing its algorithms. You will reap more rewards if you stick to your original keywords long-term than changing them or adding others.

Bottom Line

Your small business relies on your content marketing strategy to keep growing. Content marketing may seem tricky, but you can build a successful online presence when you know how to avoid the most common mistakes.

It takes planning and organization to stay on track with your marketing goals. There is a wide range of tools that you can use to help you research, plan, and keep track of your content marketing. You don’t need them all. Instead, one or two of these is enough to help with your planning and organization as you grow your business and keep your audience informed and engaged.

See also

Unlock Unconventional Strategies To Keep Your Web Traffic On A Continuous Growth Trajectory

FAQs

What is the most essential part of content marketing for a small business?

The most important part of content marketing for a small business is creating quality content that provides value to your audience. Your content should be well-researched and informative, written in an easy-to-understand way, and optimized for search engines. Additionally, it should be tailored to the needs of your target audience and updated regularly.

What are the common mistakes to avoid when starting content marketing?

Common mistakes to avoid when starting content marketing include not having a plan or strategy, overlooking SEO techniques, producing too much content or making constant changes, and not engaging with the audience.

How can I optimize my content for SEO?

To optimize your content for SEO, you should use several tools to find the right long-tail keywords to include in your content and images. Additionally, you should break down your content into sections with H1-H6 tags, link to external sites, create internal links between pages on your website, optimize all content for mobile devices, and avoid duplicate content. Finally, you should analyze data from Google Search Console or other metrics tools to ensure that your SEO efforts are effective.

These steps will help your content rank higher in search engines, drive more traffic to your website, and improve your return on investment.

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