When it comes to content marketing, very few—if any—marketers get it right 100% of the time. We're all only human, no marketing deities here. But that's not to say we can't aspire to be as on top of our game as possible by learning from other people's mistakes as well as our own.

1. Don't Make These 8 Common Content
Marketing Mistakes
ConversionFanatics.com

2. When it comes to content marketing, very few—if any—marketers get it right 100% of
the time. We're all only human, no marketing deities here. But that's not to say we can't
aspire to be as on top of our game as possible by learning from other people's mistakes
as well as our own.
Mistakes can provide useful insight into how you can do things differently to drive more
traffic to your site, generate more leads, and increase your conversion rates. Mistakes
are how you learn and how you gain wisdom. Plus, you can take preemptive measures
by reading up on the missteps that other marketers have made so you can sidestep at
least a few of the more common errors and shortcut your path to success.

3. 8 Content Marketing Mistakes And
How To Fix Them

4. 1. You Fly By The Seat Of Your Pants
Without An Editorial Calendar
Pamella Neely on Web Marketing Today: "Content marketing
is not an isolated event. It takes months to build up a following
and get followers into the habit of consuming and sharing your
content. There are a lot of moving parts to even a small content
marketing program, and they all have to fit together.
This becomes especially true when you’ve got more than one
person doing your content marketing. Even coordinating a writer,
a designer, and a marketing manager can take some planning.
Editorial calendars can make everything go smoothly (or at least smoother), and will also
give you a way to capture and incorporate your best ideas. For example, this free plugin,
aptly named 'Editorial Calendar,' works well for WordPress platforms."
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5. All an editorial calendar is essentially is a plan with deadlines assigned to it. And it
definitely wouldn't be wise to implement a content marketing strategy without planning
it out and documenting those plans. In fact, research shows that you are "5X more
likely" to achieve your content marketing goals if you write them down along with your
strategy and plans for achieving them.

6. The Importance Of Written Goals
There's a study from either Yale or Harvard that's often cited in business circles in which
only 3% of a group of MBA graduates wrote down specific goals for their futures. Then,
a decade or so later, the same group of graduates was interviewed, and it was
discovered that the 3% who had documented their goals were earning 10X as much as
the graduates who hadn't put their clearly defined goals to paper.
As it turns out, extensive reviews of the aforementioned research done by experts like
Steven Kraus, a social psychologist from Harvard, in addition to investigative reporting
conducted by the Fast Company magazine has revealed that the study is nothing more
than an "urban myth."

7. That is, however, until a university psychology professor stepped up to the plate and
took the idea to the non-existent study and used it as the impetus for her research
concerning "how goal achievement is influenced by writing goals, committing to goal-
directed actions, and being accountable for those actions."

8. Nancy Anderson of Forbes.com reports below.
Nancy Anderson: "Dr. Gail Matthews from Dominican University
did her own study and found three key elements to successful
goal setting—accountability, commitment, and writing down
one’s goals. To do that she randomly assigned participants to
five groups:
• Group 1 – deeply analyzed their goals and the resources
they had to accomplish them.
• Groups 2 – wrote down their goals after the deep analysis.
• Group 3 – set action commitments after writing down their goals.
• Group 4 – did all of the above and shared them with a friend.
• Group 5 – did all of the above and sent a weekly progress report to their friend.
At the end, Dr. Matthews interviewed the participants and as you can imagine, Group 5
did the best. An average of 76% of participants in group five completed their stated
goals versus 43% in Group 1. (Click here for information on the study.) So with the
success of Group 5 in mind, implement the following suggestions in your goal setting
plan:

9. Put your goal in writing. Whether you go old school and post your goal on a piece of
paper and tape it to your bathroom mirror or you go high tech and use an online
journal such as Penzu, write down your goal and post it where you will review it and re-
engage on a regular basis."

10. 2. You Don't Publish Enough Content
To fully reap the rewards of increased web traffic and leads, you need to publish fresh
content on a regular basis—probably more often than what you're currently doing.
Research from Hubspot showed that "companies that published 16+ blog posts per
month got almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published between 0 - 4
monthly posts."
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11. The research also showed some pretty interesting results when the impact of monthly
blog posts on inbound traffic was segmented by company size.
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Notice how much traffic spikes for companies publishing 11 or more blog posts a
month, especially those that have 201+ employees.
Tyler Ellison, the Advertising Manager at Conversion Fanatics, weighs in below about
why your site needs to have a continual stream of fresh content and how to evaluate the
strength of your site's content in terms of its potential to go viral.

12. Tyler Ellison: "It's difficult to predict whether or not content will
resonate well with the market and go viral. You have to publish a
lot of good quality content on a regular basis until you hit a
nerve in order for content to really go viral.
Small budget advertising on content propulsion networks such as
Facebook will usually help you find out if you've got a winner.
The amount of engagement on Facebook in terms of likes, shares, and comments tells
you how strong the content is—but you usually need a paid 'boost' to the content to
find out."

13. 3. You Ignore Questions From Your
Customers
According to NewsCred, "The basic principle of content marketing is to simply answer
your customers’ questions. If you’re not doing that, you’re not doing content marketing
properly." You might think you know what your customers want, but companies are
often way off target.
NewsCred: "For example, a health insurance company may think providing healthy
recipes would be something their audience would find of interest. It’s possible, but it’s
unlikely that a large number of people are looking for their next summer salad recipe
from their insurance company. The type of questions they’d be asking their insurance
company would be more along the lines of, 'How do I choose between an HMO or PPO
plan?' or 'I’m getting married in a few months, how will my insurance change?'"
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14. If you have any doubt about what your customers really want, the solution is simple: just
ask! Leverage social media and email campaigns to informally interview your customers
about their primary concerns and pain points, and the kinds of content they'd like to see
more of.
Even though this strategy is astonishingly easy, it's amazing how many marketers don't
do it. When you take the time to ask your customers what they want, you can eliminate
any doubt about whether your customers find value in the content you publish.

15. 4. You Focus On Yourself, Not Your
Customers
Act-On.com shares insights from a variety of notable experts, including Ardath Albee of
Marketing Interactions, Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion, and Carmen Hill of Babcock
& Jenkins, about why making it all about you and your company is a big mistake when it
comes to content marketing.
Act-On: "I’d argue that marketers who do not build buyer insights or develop personas
will forever revert to content oriented that’s around products, because that’s what they
know best. Focusing on buyers is a shift to skill sets that takes applied effort." (Albee)
"Think like the end user, not like a business owner. Too many business owners and
marketers are writing more for 'their' way of seeing the world. They talk too much about
themselves; I always like to say it’s a blog, not a brag. Great content marketing is about
education. It’s about teaching. And it’s about good old-fashioned communication. To be
great at content marketing, the focus has to be about the reader, and not the
company/writer." (Sheridan)

16. "Try as we might, we tend to see things through the lens of our company, our product,
our need to get a bunch of leads in the pipeline by the end of the quarter, etc. Nobody
else cares that much about us. Our content needs a lot less 'we' and a lot more 'you.'"
(Hill).
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In that same vein, you don't want to pitch your product or service in every piece of
content you produce. Promotional copy has its place in the sales cycle. But if you're
constantly highlighting new and improved features and benefits, or hyping about your
company's milestones, then you're going to come across as overly "sales-y." You want to
provide your customers with content that "independently provides value," says Matt
Heinz of Heinz Marketing.

17. 5. You Don't Perform Keyword Research
Content marketing and SEO are two peas in a pod—or they should be. They
complement each other, with each one informing the other. SEO used to be all about
"tricks and tactics" and "optimization and opportunism." But times have changed, and
now SEO is all about content, making SEO-driven techniques more relevant than ever
for content marketers.

18. Garrett Moon of CoSchedule: "When outlining an SEO strategy
for content marketing, we take a slightly different approach than
what we were used to. It is probably best to begin understanding
how (and why) Google is rewarding longer-form content and
other content that is visually focused. Google has started to see
these elements as symbols of quality, and is doing a better job of
connecting search users to quality content.
Again, that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t mean that some of the tried and true
techniques of old SEO aren’t still viable. That’s where keywords come in.
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19. One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization has always been the
keywords, those words that people use to find our content in search."
You have several tools at your disposal to find the keywords that are most applicable to
your content, the most notable of which is the Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool,
which is free to use with any Adwords account. You can also use the Free Keyword
Tool from WordStream, Ubersuggest, Spyfu, or the Ninja Search Combination Tool.
To learn more in-depth information about how to take an SEO-driven approach with
your content marketing, check out Garrett Moon's complete guide here.

20. 6. You Don't Include A Call-To-Action
When thinking about calls-to-action, what might spring to mind are "Buy now!" or "Sign
up here" type messages. But calls-to-action can be more subtle, serving to build
pathways and connect readers with additional information that will help steer them
through the conversion pipeline.
In this sense, the call-to-action is simply a means to arrive at the next step, and every
content marketing asset you produce should have one. Ask yourself, what would your
customers most likely be interested in learning more about given the content they just
consumed? Then, direct them to that logical next step.

21. 7. You Stick To Only One Type Of Content
Or Platform
The beauty of new media is that it has provided us with a variety of ways to consume
content, from blogs and videos, to tweets and infographics. If we want to interact with
information, our consumption options are not limited to merely reading. We can look at
images, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and so on.
But if you're leveraging only one type of content—blog posts, for example—or only one
type of platform, then you are seriously missing out on reaching a much wider audience
base. Remember, people learn in a variety of ways.

22. Pamella Neely: "Internet users want more than words. Blog
posts are helpful, but infographics get shared more often. Tweets
with images get shared twice as much as tweets without images.
To leverage new formats, make creating videos a habit. And
always ask yourself if you could add an image. And don’t forget
SlideShares, animated gifs, and podcasts. Want to make all this
easier? Here’s a great app for creating social media images on the go: WordSwag,
available on iTunes for $2.99. Canva is an excellent desktop alternative."
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23. 8. You Underestimate The Importance Of
Your Headlines
"Click bait" is something we've all experienced, when a riveting headline pulls us in like a
magnet only for us to then be greeted by a sub-par or unrelated article. We've also all
had the experience of a ho-hum title leading to a sensational blog post, only we never
clicked the link so we didn't actually read the content.
Such is the value of a headline. Your content's headline has the ability to either draw
people in or make them completely gloss over your work.
According to Brian Clark of Copyblogger, "On average, 8 out of 10 people will read
headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest." Your headline is prime real estate
for attracting readers and compelling them to click through to read more.

24. Tyler Ellison: "Your headline needs to be written with the best of
copywriting skills to 'sell' viewers on clicking to the story. The
headline is the ad for your content. If your headline doesn't spark
interest and curiosity, it will never go viral.
Using ad networks like Outbrain allows you to test a variety of
headlines for your content to find the best one. So be sure to
split-test headlines before ultimately choosing the headline for
your content and giving it your full promotional efforts. The headlines that get the
highest click-through rates are the ones that are working the best."

25. Conclusion
There's a specific term that's used to describe the process of continual improvement; it's
called kaizen. And when it's applied in a business sense, kaizen "refers to activities that
continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to
the assembly line workers."
Kaizen is a good word/mentality to keep in mind regarding your content marketing
endeavors. But don't stop there; the concept of kaizen can be applied to all areas of
your business, driving you to create ever more fortified foundations and processes to
help your business grow and become more efficient.
To recap, here are the most common content marketing mistakes, as discussed above:

26. Checklist of things NOT to do with your
content marketing
1. Don't forget to use an editorial calendar
2. Don't post new content only once or twice a month
3. Don't ignore questions from your customers
4. Don't put the focus all on you or your company
5. Don't neglect your keyword research
6. Don't omit your calls-to-action
7. Don't limit your options when it comes to content format and platforms
8. Don't create lackluster headlines
And the final, biggest mistake you can make with your content marketing is to not
continue trying, to give up. It may sound cheesy or hackneyed, but it's true. Content
marketing success is not going to happen overnight. There are going to be hiccoughs
and setbacks. Just go into it as prepared as possible, but if something doesn't work out,
don't derail the entire operation: get advice, make adjustments, split-test, and keep at it.