5 content marketing blunders and how to avoid them

Further in continuation to our series on content marketing, today we will have a look at some of the content marketing blunders committed inadvertently by marketers.

Marketers are busy folks. 

And over the past decade, they have been busy creating a monstrous amount of data.

As cited in Forbes, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created each day - with over 90% of the data being generated in the last two years alone.

This number is not totally incomprehensible - as marketers we are all aware - the sheer gazillionome of newsletters, brochures, social media content, advertising content, email content we create everyday are in some small way contributing to this massive tome of data. But how much of it is actually hitting the end-goal? How many newsletters are actually getting read, how many emails are being directed towards trash and how many advertisements are actually getting a second glance / view? Unlike other initiatives to prune overconsumption / creation, where zealous champions have a tangible goal/ outcomes [reduce the use of plastic, reduce your carbon footprint], conscious creation in marketing has no takers. Zilch. Nada. Create we can and create we will.

As marketers, we need to be conscious of the quality and impact of the content that we create. And to create better, we need to avoid some commonly seen content marketing blunders that can massively descale the impact of our content.

1. Original content: Though this would seem totally obvious, you would be surprised (or not) to learn how much of the content on the internet is duplicate. More alarming is the fact that marketers are not investing enough in creating original content for brands, sometimes being merely satisfied enough in repurposing / idea-hacking / plagiarizing content created by others. 

Not creating original content is a huge reputational risk for brands. Marketers / writers don’t realize that they stake not just the brand’s but their entire professional credibility by not investing in original content creation. Nowadays, users are getting more and more astute at detecting plagiarized ideas / content. This blatant disrespect towards the user / reader’s intelligence is both shoddy and shocking.

Tip: It is tempting to idea - hack / dive and create moment marketing campaigns and create topical, current campaigns that reflect how aligned your brand is to the current trends. But honestly, it is better to evaluate how many of those campaigns are aligned to your brand values. In case you are a food brand, it makes total sense to ride the crest of a trending wave around a food controversy [aka the Rahul Bose moment] - but in case you are brand whose brand values are not at all aligned to the moment, an irresponsible moment marketing campaign can expose the naivete of the brand.

2. User-centric content: How many times has it happened that we got pulled into visiting a website due to a click-baity headline but found that the content was not at all mapped to the headline, was deceitful and not target-audience centric. What a huge disappointment! 

Writers need to treat their audience with respect in case they want to generate sustainable traffic. Despite the plethora of tools available, marketers still treat all audience segments as equal and don’t create persona-centric content. How would you feel reading content that was not specifically written keeping you in mind? You would feel slighted by the impersonal, casual and brazen approach taken by the brand.

Tip: Persona centric communication may appear to be daunting and time consuming, but it is much better to have a small tribe of engaged users than a large community of disinterested ones.

3. Reading poorly edited content: In today’s day and age, there are innumerable tools that are at the disposal of content creators - Honestly, there is no reason to put up a shoddily edited article. Writers can use Grammarly or any of the tools available to generate high-quality authoritative content. Poorly written / edited content tells readers how important is your business / product / brand to you - and how important s/he is to you. If you don’t care enough to phrase it right, do you really care at all?

Tip: Many professional editing tools are available online, much of the features are available in the free version of a freemium product. Even big brands trip sometimes, but in case you are not there yet, that means you need to try just that bit harder, in delivering stellar content.

4. Considering what your target audience wants to read: Nearly all marketers suffer from some sort of marketing myopia - writing what they feel the target audience wants to read. 

Your content should be about what your target audience wants to read, not what you want to write about. If the content does not resonate with the target audience, no matter how well written it is and how well edited it may have been, it will just not achieve the intended goal. Having trouble narrowing down on your target audience - read this post How to choose your blog’s target audience

Tip: A marketer needs to get out of his own way - and razor focus on what his target audience wants. Identify potential sources of your target audience conversations, whether it is reddit threads, quora, site search, focus group discussions or social media content. Don’t think that you know what the target audience wants. That goalpost for a marketer is constantly shifting - and we need to keep running to keep up with the consumer.

5. Dead content: We owe it to our readers - creating content that resonates with them, helps them in their daily workflows in some way, or entertains them. So for me the next biggest blunder is a monotonous, dead piece of content. As writers / markets we should aim to write content so good that it is inherently share-worthy and readers feel compelled to read it / share it. As Rand Fishkins explains, the idea should be to create 10x content - 10x content is “Content that is 10 times better than the best result that can currently be found in the search results for a given keyword phrase or topic.

Tip: Under the threat of deadlines and multiple projects, marketers often end up writing insipid, uninspiring content. It is difficult to constantly churn out unique, innovative and entertaining content. As writers / marketers, creativity-on-demand is rather difficult to maintain. Instead try to identify and stick to a writing schedule mapped to your productivity cycle.

As marketers, we need to be constantly vigilant to create super helpful and relevant content. It is better to create no content rather than sub-optimal, poorly written content. Else, we are just adding to the massive mountain of data, through a stream of poorly designed and written content.

You can also browse through an interesting post on content writing that I wrote sometime back, 10 Tips for better content writing and let me know your comments.