While we’re sharing the top digital marketing trends to add to your strategies, we thought we’d share several content marketing practices that we avoid. It’s always helpful to look at what not to do while you’re considering what to do, so here are some great tips to help with your digital content marketing efforts.
1. Don’t publish content sporadically (or not at all).
The easiest way to slip off your customers’ radar is to fail to deliver content on a consistent basis. Conversely, the best way to generate organic leads is to create great content to drive traffic to your site. Make sure you share content regularly by creating a schedule you can stick to. And that doesn’t just apply to your business’ blog. Oh, no. It applies to social media, email… all the many ways you connect with your customer base.
2. Don’t depend too much on any one type of content.
Stay relevant and get the attention you deserve by creating a mix of different types on content, such as slidedecks, videos, webinars, e-books and infographics. Sounds overwhelming? Try repurposing content in different formats. For example, you can turn a PowerPoint presentation into SlideShare deck. Or repurpose a webinar as a Youtube video. Or use your visual content to create a Pinterest board.
In addition, you’ll want to have a strong visual content strategy in place. This strategy should include visuals that capture your target audience’s attention at faster rates since there’s a lot more content out there to compete with. Plus, you ought to include short- and long-form videos that entertain, educate and/or inspire potential customers as a way to build trust and share information about your products and services.
3. Don’t jump on every trend that comes your way.
It can be tempting to follow every trend that makes its way onto the many year-end predictions lists, but resist the urge. Instead, evaluate every trend for its worth to your business. Analyze whether or not it makes sense for your customer base. In many cases, your tried-and-tested tactics will still work the best toward meeting your business’ goals.
4. Don’t depend on a single channel or a single network.
Gone are the days when you could rely on a single network and survive online. These days you have to be everywhere at once. Consumers expect you to be online when and where they are. You can make that happen more easily by repurposing content for different networks. Review #2 above for a few great ways to go about it.
5. Don’t forget to integrate social media with your other channels.
These days, SEO relies heavily on social signals like Tweets, Facebook posts and +1s. For this reason, you must, must, must include well-placed social sharing buttons and possible a social login on your website. Websites that integrate social media see increases in both traffic to their sites and user engagement.
6. Don’t separate your content goals from your business’s goals.
You want the goals of your digital content strategies to relate to your business’s goals in a meaningful way. First, you need be clear and specific about what your goals are. What does success look like for your business? Then, align your content with your goals.
It may help to consider what content marketing does really, really well when you’re thinking but how to use it to meet your goals. Here’s a short list: build brand awareness, increase brand loyalty, educate customers, increase customer engagement and recruit talent.
7. Don’t measure the wrong metrics.
By tracking the metrics that measure the results of your content, you can determine which content brings you the results you want. Which metrics are the right metrics? That depends on your goals. However, here a few basic metrics to consider if you want to measure the ROI of your content:
- number of social media shares
- time spent on site
- visitors & return visits
- blog-related expenses
- blog-related revenues
You can also make use of tools like Kapost’s Content Scoring, which will help you identity which types on content are worth investing in by looking at what content moves customers down your sales funnel.
There you have it. Have we missed any big ones? In your experience, what are the worst content marketing practices?
Get in touch with Filament to get help putting in place better content marketing practices for your business.
