Con­tent mar­ket­ing is one of the best invest­ments a com­pa­ny can make. It increas­es traf­fic and brings in high-qual­i­ty leads, so it’s no won­der why so many orga­ni­za­tions are on board.

A sur­vey by the Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Insti­tute found that 92% of mar­keters say that their com­pa­ny views con­tent as a busi­ness asset. As a result, mar­keters need to make sure they’re doing every­thing they can to max­i­mize the ROI of their con­tent mar­ket­ing efforts.

How­ev­er, con­tent mar­ket­ing does­n’t come with­out chal­lenges. It’s a crowd­ed mar­ket, which means there’s lit­tle room for mis­takes and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. Mar­keters have to get it right, in order to achieve opti­mal results.

Here’s a look at six of the biggest con­tent mar­ket­ing mis­takes, and what mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als can do to avoid them.

1. Not creating reusable content

A one-and-done approach isn’t a good idea when it comes to cre­at­ing con­tent. A qual­i­ty piece of con­tent requires a lot of time and resources — there­fore, it’s cru­cial that mar­keters look to max­i­mize the return on their invest­ment by cre­at­ing con­tent that they can repur­pose and post on dif­fer­ent chan­nels lat­er down the road.

For exam­ple, mar­keters can repur­pose a blog post into some­thing more visu­al, like an info­graph­ic or video. All of the research is com­plete, so it’s most­ly a mat­ter of repack­ag­ing the infor­ma­tion into a dif­fer­ent medium.

Not creating reusable content

2. Not creating enough content throughout the sales funnel

There are numer­ous stages of the buy­ing process, and as such, it’s impor­tant that mar­keters address each of them when cre­at­ing con­tent. If you put too much focus on pro­duc­ing edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, for exam­ple, appeal­ing to those in the aware­ness stage, you can miss out on nur­tur­ing buy­ers fur­ther down the pur­chas­ing process.

Mar­keters should look to cre­ate enough con­tent for each step of the sales fun­nel. While edu­ca­tion­al blog posts are vital for aware­ness, it’s essen­tial to also cre­ate con­tent like case stud­ies and eBooks for the lat­er stages of the also.

3. Not paying attention to user-generated content

User-gen­er­at­ed con­tent refers to any con­tent that users cre­ate, unpaid. That can include every­thing from pic­tures and videos to reviews and blog posts.

Accord­ing to a study by Reevoo, 70% of peo­ple trust images that come from con­sumers like them­selves, instead of images which brands cre­ate. Mar­keters who ignore user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent are miss­ing out on a mas­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty to build con­sumer trust — not to men­tion out­sourc­ing con­tent cre­ation to users can save mar­keters time and finan­cial resources.

Mar­keters can start incor­po­rat­ing user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent by find­ing out what inspires their audi­ence to cre­ate con­tent and engage with their com­pa­ny. Using social media chan­nels like Face­book and Insta­gram are an excel­lent way to exe­cute a user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent campaign.

4. Not having a content approval process

There’s more to cre­at­ing con­tent than craft­ing the per­fect piece and pub­lish­ing it. Before that can hap­pen, team­mates and clients should review and approve your con­tent. Hav­ing a peer review process like this in place is vital, because it ensures that approved mate­r­i­al max­i­mizes each ele­ment, and gets pub­lished on time.

Many mar­keters use email or spread­sheets to try and man­age con­tent approvals, how­ev­er rely­ing on these meth­ods can slow down the team and hurt client rela­tion­ships. It’s easy to lose track of approvals and get feed­back in time to meet client deadlines.

Mar­keters should make sure that they have a con­tent approval process in place. They can cre­ate a con­tent review and approval tem­plate that includes each step (review round one, revi­sion round one, etc.) and its duration.

Mar­keters can also use a con­tent man­age­ment plat­form to pre­pare, approve, and pub­lish con­tent on time. The tool can track revi­sions and changes in one place, and elim­i­nate the need for messy spread­sheets and end­less email chains.

5. Not reviewing content marketing performance

One of the biggest mis­takes mar­ket­ing teams can make is not tak­ing the time to review the per­for­mance of their efforts. With­out look­ing at the data, there’s no way to know what is or isn’t working.

For exam­ple, if a piece of con­tent is per­form­ing well, mar­keters can find ways to repur­pose it, or focus on that spe­cif­ic tac­tic. If some­thing isn’t work­ing, they can instead focus on oth­er initiatives.

It’s impor­tant to review con­tent mar­ket­ing per­for­mance with the rest of the team at least quar­ter­ly. Engage­ment met­rics like page views, social media shares, and the time vis­i­tors spent look­ing at pieces of con­tent can help mar­keters improve their cam­paigns continuously.

6. Not promoting content enough

Con­tent mar­ket­ing does­n’t stop after the pub­lish­ing process. Many mar­keters make the mis­take of focus­ing sole­ly on cre­at­ing con­tent, how­ev­er mar­keters need to put the con­tent in front of their tar­get audi­ence repeat­ed­ly for it to have an impact.

Mar­keters should spend more time pro­mot­ing their con­tent than cre­at­ing it. One idea is to fol­low the 80/20 rule. Spend 20% of the time cre­at­ing con­tent, while using the oth­er 80% to pro­mote it via social media, blogs, email, and oth­er channels.

With enough care­ful plan­ning, mar­ket­ing teams can avoid falling prey to some of the biggest con­tent mar­ket­ing pit­falls. From imple­ment­ing a con­tent approval process, to cre­at­ing con­tent that cov­ers the entire sales fun­nel, there’s a lot for mar­keters to con­sid­er when craft­ing an effec­tive strategy.

But those who can get it right will reap the rewards of their con­tent efforts.

SOURCE: Social Media Today