You invested in digital content marketing but still are not seeing any ROI. You keep falling short of your goals and your audience does not seem to care about anything you publish. This is the time people start having a list of objections. These objections could include things such as content marketing not working, the audience not wanting to read and the industry being too boring for digital content marketing. This mentality is like getting into a fender bender and blaming the vehicle rather than the driver. More likely this is the result of user error.
Content marketing does not come naturally to a lot of people, and a lot of them have to learn it on the fly. Business is not going to slow down so that we could catch up. Under this kind of pressure, it is really easy to pick up bad habits that could stunt your progress. Here are some of the bad digital marketing habits.
The first bad habit is that you do not have a long-term plan. Marketing experts put a lot of pressure on content because firsthand how valuable it is to the journey of the buyer. But this does not mean you need to impulsively throw a hat into the ring and save the details for later. The long-term plan is everything.
Think of every blog article as a stepping stone guiding somebody through the buyer’s journey from awareness, to consideration, to a decision. You cannot pave this path without an idea of where it is going. Here are a few quick tips to help you plot a content journey that aligns with the journey of the buyer.
You need to audit your existing digital content. You need to assess all marketing assets as well as find gaps or opportunities based on the parts of the journey of the buyer that lack content support. You should also do an event-based audit. You need to assess all upcoming events and organize them based on criteria such as month, blog topic, initiative or inbound campaign. Once again, you should identify gaps or opportunities for content support.
You must also set SMART marketing goals. SMART means specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely. You also need to create a content compass. Your content compass could be as simple as a spreadsheet which organizes the direction of the creation of your content. You must also improve your CTA game. Each piece of content must give the reader a clear as well as simple next step.
Another bad habit that you could develop is talking too much about yourself. Content marketing is a form of social interaction between your brand as well as your target audience. Because of this, it is important to maintain a certain level of social etiquette and self-awareness. A lot of us would not make dinner plans as well as spend the whole meal talking about ourselves.
When you echo what everybody else is saying, it is also a bad habit. Content marketers walk a fine line between saying what audiences want and need to hear as well as being authentic thought leaders. Among the worst habits we form is treading lightly on topics. If all that you ever do is report what everybody else is saying, then how can you stand out?
Being stuck in a rut content is also a bad habit. Do anything for too long and you risk complacency, especially in marketing. Content that ruts a lot manifests in two ways. First, you have the same conversations over and over again. If topics and content frequently repeat themselves, get out of your office, engage with your customers and look for fresh ideas. Second, you use automation software to post the same content with the same words and visuals on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. In other words, you just told the same story four different times to your most engaged audience members.
Automation software is a great tool for marketers, but if you rely on it too much, it could make your brand appear robotic as well as ingenuine. It is going to take extra time, but you should tailor your posts based on the social channel used for distribution.