What are Some Common Content Marketing Mistakes that Beginners Made?

Marketing forms the backbone of revenue for any business. In other words, if you need to survive in the market you need to participate in various marketing practices.
 

With the changing trends of the market and consumer buying patterns, businesses have drawn to a more comprehensive and intelligent marketing habit, better known as content marketing.
 

David Beebe, former head of content, Marriott says that,

“Content marketing is really like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.” 
 

While some may perceive content marketing as a chance to speak about oneself at its best, the customer logic seems to defy it and bring greater challenges to be faced by businesses.
 

As easy as it seems, if not thought upon strategically, content can lead to a significant drop in your customers and your reputation in the market. This is why businesses are advised to have a distinguished content marketing team in their organizations that will not only help them create creative content taking account of the target audience but also drive impeccable revenues for the company.
 

In the words of Andrew Davis, “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.”
 

So, if you are stepping into the curious and money making world of content marketing, you must know where you are going wrong and have the power to get back in the right direction.
 

Here are some of the common content marketing mistakes that beginners make:
 

Planning constitutes the basic step in formulating a content marketing strategy. Most of the beginners skip this step and suffer consequences in spite of creating great content for their business.
 

Planning includes lots of things like selecting the right platform for content, the correct timing along with the frequency of posting content for your audience. No matter if you are a small or big business, content strategy is equally helpful in making sure that your content reaches your target audience.
 

It helps you direct all your efforts towards the end goal of your business and drive revenue for your company.
 

Duplicate content is one of the most important things that businesses must be wary of while creating content. It is a trap that beginners fall into because it looks easy and effortless. Copying content might seem as the easiest task to do while creating content but it won’t help you rank anywhere on Google.  
 

Search engines like Google make sure duplicate content doesn’t get higher page rankings, which ultimately throws all your SEO efforts into waste.
 

So, make sure that your content is unique to the audience and does not simply replicate what someone has already said. It is best to have a content creation team that will understand your business requirements and create innovative content for your company.
 

Seth Godin says, “Content Marketing is all the Marketing that’s left.”
 

Jamie turner has correctly said, “The only way to win at content marketing is for the reader to say, “This was specifically written for me”, However, most of the beginners fail to understand this fact and create content for only one type of audience. You need to do a market research to understand what kind of content is your audience interested in reading.
 

Making assumptions at this stage will take you nowhere down the content marketing road. Note down the conclusions from the market research and create content according to that.
 

Remember that you will easily lose readers if you write for a particular person. Make sure that the customers must be able to relate or draw some value from your content.
 

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Titles do the quintessential task of representing your content. According to a research in Science, the average attention span of customers has fallen to 8 seconds from hitherto 10 seconds. This is even less than a goldfish!
 

So imagine if 8 seconds is all the time that you’ve got to catch your customer’s attention, won’t you spend a significant amount of time selecting a suitable title for your content? Customers will only read your content if the title of your post catches their attention.
 

Most beginners either completely let the title be out of order or put a completely ridiculously funny one. Your titles speak for your content, so make sure that if you are writing about ice creams, your title does not focus on salads.
 

Craig Davis, former Chief Creative Officer at J. Walter Thompson correctly says

“We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”

One of the biggest mistakes that beginners make while marketing content is skipping the proofreading part. As important as it is to not copy content, it is equally essential to not skip the proofreading phase of your content. It is one of the silliest mistakes that most marketers make.
 

There are strong chances that if you continue to make grammatical or other proofreading mistakes in your content, the customer will leave your business page and rather look for an alternative.
 

So, it is better to spend an additional 5 minutes in making sure that your content is free from any such errors as you do not want to give your customer any chance to move away from you.
 

If you are a business, of course, you would want to sell as much of your products in the market.  But while formulating a content marketing strategy, make sure that you not just focus all your content on selling your product and talking about yourself.
 

Most beginners consider content as a platform to pitch for sales, which in modern times is a no-no. Make sure that you sound human and write about topics that concern your customer. Your am should be making their lives better and not just talk about sales.

“You need to create ridiculously good content – content that is useful, enjoyable and inspired.” ~ Ann Handley
 

Thus, these little mistakes while marketing your content can lead to great disasters for your business.  As Jason Miller has said, “Content marketing is no longer a numbers game. It’s a game of relevance.”
 

So businesses should focus on creating quality and class in terms of content that will also be an exemplary example and fresh in the eyes of the customer.