Content marketing is a great way to bring more customers to your business. In fact, consumers tend to find more information about the product or service before making the decision. They read reviews, educational articles, they look at your blogs and the kind of content you produce. Providing valuable content also helps the brand to stay at the top of customers’ mind, keeping them engaged and building brand authority. If content marketing is part of you plan, it’s important to avoid these common mistakes.
- Not having an editorial plan
Sometimes, especially when you’ve just begun the blog, you have the tendency to go with the flow, or think that it’s fine to not have an editorial plan. Indeed, having a plan seems too grand when you are just testing the water. You can figure out the next topic when the time comes and gather feedback from your readers, improving as you go. However, it’s important to look ahead and have a clear plan of what’s to come. You may end up missing great opportunities, some special occasions or having to rush a piece to meet the deadline. For example, at Samui-Villa.com, we noticed that there’s an interest for people to look for where to spend their Christmas holiday. Hence, we put in in the plan to make sure we have enough time for research and writing the piece. Furthermore, an editorial plan also allows the team to know who is doing what and when, which promotes a productive workflow.
- Thinking that you don’t need to proof-read
No matter how good your writing skill is, mistakes are unavoidable. Sometimes, they are just minor mistakes like inconsistency of writing “it’s” and “it is”, an extra space or a missing period. As you are the author of the piece, they may not be obvious to you since you are so familiar with the article. At a time like this, it’s good to depend on a good proof-reading tool to find out any irregularity. After that, take a break from the article, do something else and go back to it with a fresh mind. Before you hit publish, read it again from top to bottom to make sure everything is fine. An error-free article always creates a good impression.
- Underestimating the power of an outsider
Have you ever asked an outsider in your target audience to read your article and provide some feedback? He or she can contribute some valuable perspectives on how well you are doing. More importantly, it’s a good check to see if you have accidentally included any jargon, or if things have a different meaning that you expect. When you are too deep in an industry, it’s easy to forget that others may not understand things the same way.
- Neglecting the trends
Your content marketing plan may or may not need to always follow the trends. However, it’s good to keep track of the hype. You may be able to leverage on the trend and bring more traffic to the article one day!
- Lack of balance between words and images
Balancing texts and images is an art. Having too many words bore people out. But having too many images may dilute the focus. It all comes down to what type of content you are creating, what your audience are looking for. Of course, a research article will have different requirements from a lifestyle piece. Find the balance of your market.
