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7 Dumb Content Marketing Mistakes Holding Your Business Back

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content marketing

Running a business is hard work, isn’t it?

With so much competition, getting your product the limelight it deserves and capturing the attention of your target audience can be even harder.

Which is why thousands of businesses around the world have turned to content marketing over the last few years, trying to get closer to their audiences and build loyal tribes that not only buy from them but also generate positive word of mouth.

And it works.

According to Smart Insights, marketers across Europe and the U.S. consider content marketing to be the most effective online marketing strategy.

Source: Smart Insights

But if it’s that good, why isn’t it working for your business?

Based on our experience, you’re probably making one or more of the following mistakes.

1. Misunderstanding the Concept of Content Marketing

If you think content marketing is a synonym for blogging, you’re not alone. Far too many people wrongly believe blogging to be the only thing content marketers do.

Content marketing is an integrated marketing strategy that aims to build a loyal following for your business online by creating and distributing useful, well-researched and highly actionable content that solves the problems of your audience and helps them move forward in their business. It involves multiple content types and distribution channels.

It’s not direct advertising.

Not understanding this key concept results in unrealistic expectations from content marketing.

It’s a long game that requires patience and persistence.

But when you do it right, it results in a strong community that trusts your advice and willingly opens its wallet to you.

2. Creating Content Without a Long-Term Strategy

Sporadically publishing blog posts on random topics or occasionally engaging with your social media followers isn’t content marketing.

Content marketing is about building trust, and that can’t be done unless you have a consistent, well-defined and documented content marketing plan.

Everything from your article topics and publishing frequency to keyword research and outreach campaigns needs to be planned in advance.

According to Content Marketing Institute, most organizations still do not have a documented content marketing strategy.

Source: CMI – 2017 B2B Industry Benchmarks

A well-rounded content marketing strategy includes:

  • Your business case for investing in content marketing, the objectives you aim to achieve with it and what success looks like to you
  • A description of your target audience and its needs
  • The actions you want your audience to take after reading your content
  • The different types of content you’d create
  • The distribution channels you’d use

A strategy document acts as a reference point and keeps you on track.

For example, Neil Patel, a leading content marketing influencer, creates annual editorial calendars for his blogs and breaks them down into quarterly, monthly and weekly plans.

This allows him to plan way ahead and create content on a regular basis.

3. Writing for an Undefined or Poorly Researched Audience

Do you know who you’re writing for?

What’s the biggest problem their business is facing that you can solve?

How much money are they willing to spend on solving that problem?

Not writing for a clearly defined audience is one of the biggest and most common content marketing mistakes.

When you create content for everyone, it appeals to no one. Successful marketers know this, which is why they spend countless hours building and refining their buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a sample profile of your ideal customer. It helps you create laser-focused content that gives your readers exactly what they’re looking for.

Facebook is a great place to start your audience research. Simply head over to the Ads Manager in Facebook, click on “Audience Insights” and create a new audience.

If you don’t know anything about your target audience, use the “Interests” field to enter the names of your three closest competitors or a few industry leaders you wish to emulate.

For this example, we entered Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc. Magazine and Forbes in the Interests list.

Facebook, from its database of millions of users, shows you exactly what kind of people follow these interests.

Each of these tabs reveals fascinating insights on your audience.

For example, if you go to the “Page Likes” tab, you’ll see the list of the Facebook Pages most of your audience follows.

You can explore each of these pages to study the kind of content they’re creating for their readers.

You can also use the comments on these pages and publications to better understand the needs of your audience.

Structure the information you gather with this useful Buyer Persona template.

4. Creating Thin and Useless Content That Hurts Your Brand Image

One of the core objectives of content marketing is to create in-depth content that not only helps your readers take action but also establishes you as an expert. When your audience considers you an authority, they take your advice seriously and willingly buy from you.

Thin content, which barely scratches the surface of a topic and doesn’t share any actionable advice, does exactly the opposite.

It hurts your brand image, makes you look like an imposter rather than an expert, and turns buyers away.

But that’s not all.

Panda, one of Google’s major search algorithm updates, specifically targets and devalues any sites with thin or shallow content.

So how do you avoid getting penalized in search results for publishing thin content?

By creating content that’s…

  • Long and in-depth (preferably 1500+ words)
  • Backed by reliable data evidence
  • Actionable

Back in 2012, serpIQ studied the search results for over 20,000 keywords and concluded that longer and more in-depth content generally tends to rank higher.

Several recent studies still seem to agree with that conclusion.

This is one of the reasons why investing in high-quality content is not just an option anymore—it’s a necessity. If you can’t create the content yourself, hire professional bloggers/marketers who understand your niche and know how to create well-researched content.

Cheap writers might save you a few bucks, but the damage they can cause to your brand is often irreparable.

In short, instead of creating content just for the sake of it, you should look to create high-value content that helps your readers take action and grows your stature as a subject matter expert.

5. Not Building an Email List (or Doing It the Wrong Way)

An overwhelming majority of businesses are guilty of this.

Building an email list is one of the fundamentals of online marketing. You can’t build a community around your brand if you do not have a subscriber base.

One of the core objectives of publishing great content is to convert readers into subscribers so that you can stay in touch with them and turn them into paying customers.

According to Smart Insights, generating more leads and improving sales are two of the strongest benefits of email marketing.

So if you haven’t started building an email list yet, now’s the time.

Here’s a quick process you can follow:

  • Create a lead magnet (a PDF eBook or a training video) that addresses the biggest concern of your audience.
  • Set up an email opt-in box on your blog and ask your readers to download your lead magnet for free by entering their email addresses
  • Use Facebook advertising to promote your lead magnet to your target audience
  • Set up an autoresponder sequence that triggers as soon as a subscriber joins your list.
  • Keep your email list engaged by regularly interacting with them.

Email marketing is a broad subject that needs to be covered in more detail. But the points I shared should give you a good starting point.

6. Promoting Your Content Like Spammers

Smart content marketers spend 20 percent of their time creating content and 80 percent promoting it to the right audience.

Most businesses do the exact opposite.

In fact, even when they promote content, they do it like spammers by frequently sharing the same social media updates and flooding the timelines of their users with self-glorifying posts full of spam hashtags.

Content promotion is a sophisticated process that needs careful planning and execution.

It involves multiple channels integrated in a broader marketing strategy, all leading to a single objective: generating more traffic to your content and turning that traffic into subscribers.

Here are a few promotional techniques that work.

  • Guest Blogging

Smart marketers use guest blogging to expose their content to a broader audience and develop new relationships. Many of them write dozens of guest posts every month.

Just think about it.

If your blog doesn’t have any traffic, what’s the point of publishing your best content on it?

A smarter approach is to create amazingly useful content and publish it on the already established blogs in your niche.

This would strengthen your brand image as an expert, drive traffic to your blog and help you reach a much wider audience.

  • Influencer Outreach

If you’re not spending a considerable portion of your marketing budget on building relationships with influencers in your industry, you’re not taking advantage of one of the fastest-growing marketing techniques.

Source: Sidebuy Blog

An influencer is someone who’s an established authority in your niche and has a loyal following. By partnering with people like this, you can add credibility to your content and drive more traffic.

  • Social Media Marketing

More than likes and retweets, social media marketing is about building relationships with your readers.

An engaged audience waits for your new content and willingly shares it with followers.

If you’re not talking to your audience directly on social media, you’re missing out on the essence of social media marketing.

There are several other more advanced content promotion strategies as well. But the idea behind all of them is to promote content in a legitimate way to the right audience (not spam them with unwanted messages).

7. Underestimating the Importance of SEO

I’ve kept this one at the end for a reason.

SEO is a polarizing subject.

One segment of marketers can’t think of anything but SEO when talking about online marketing.

The other shuns it as complete malpractice.

Both are wrong.

SEO isn’t everything, but it’s still an important component of content marketing.

Some of the most successful blogs and websites depend on search engines for more than 50 percent of their traffic.

Take a look at the traffic distribution of ProBlogger and Copyblogger, two of the most popular websites in the blogging niche.

If your content is not search engine optimized, how is your audience supposed to find you?

The right approach is to create content that addresses the needs of your audience, and then optimize it for the right keywords so that your audience can find it.

There are detailed guides available on the web to help you do that.

But of course, hiring a professional to help you is always the safer option.

The Takeaway

By investing your resources in content marketing, you’re already ahead of your competitors. By avoiding the mistakes I’ve highlighted in this post, you can increase the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy and generate a much greater ROI on the time and money you spend.

Are you making any of these mistakes right now?

Need more guidance?

Just comment below and we’ll do our best to respond to your queries.

Google’s RankBrain Revealed! What’s it Mean for You and Your Small Biz?

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When Bloomberg broke the news Oct. 26, 2015, it caused quite a stir. The news that Google, the most popular search engine in the world, was using RankBrain, an artificial intelligence (AI) system, to deliver more effective search results, shocked everyone. Google’s longtime support for AI was no surprise. Neither was the fact that Google was working on a way to use AI to refine search engine listings. But the announcement that a large fraction of the millions of search queries had been handled by an AI system nicknamed RankBrain for several months before the news broke shook the business and tech worlds.

Exactly what is RankBrain and what does it mean for SEO and your small business? Let’s find out.

Is RankBrain Out to Destroy the World?

The year was 1983. The film was “WarGames.” A bored high school computer nerd named David hacks into what he thinks is a gaming computer. David initiates a round of “Global Thermonuclear War.” Sounds fun, right? It would have been except that the computer he hacked into was not a gaming computer, but an AI system known as Joshua. Joshua is actually part of the Air Force secret war response system and David’s little game becomes a real-life contest where the fate of the world is at stake. How does David stop the world’s destruction? By “teaching” Joshua the only way to win the game is by not playing at all. The film was fiction, of course, but the AI system concept and the ability to learn is what RankBrain AI is about.

Google’s goal is to serve accurate results without fluff and/or spam. The problems with accurate results are both language- and human-based. Language constantly changes and is full of exceptions to each rule. Rules-based approaches don’t work efficiently. Add the language variables to the human factor, where a search for the same object can be asked for in countless ways, and you have a real challenge.

The beauty of RankBrain is that it learns how humans express themselves and serves more relevant results each time.

Gimme Some Examples

A recent Stone Temple study compared search engine results before and after the implementation of RankBrain. Overall, 54.6 percent of queries that returned unrelated results before implementation, returned correct results after RankBrain implementation. Quite impressive.

Consider these:

  • The difficult to resolve query “What is low in the army?” returned results for what the AI determined the searcher was really asking – “What is the lowest rank in the army?”
  • Another query, “Why are PDFs so weak?” served results about the security of PDF files.
  • RankBrain handles misspellings, such as “Cutter” for the country “Qatar,” much better than the old version of Google search.
  • RankBrain handles specific types of phrases better. For example, the older Google search process ignored words, such as “the,” “and” and “is.” Often, however, these words are an integral part of the phrase. RankBrain handles searches better where an article or ignored word is an important element in a search.

What’s RankBrain Mean for Your Small Biz SEO Plan?

Historically, changing Google algorithms have had unexpected results. Websites that indexed well before a change dropped to Page 25 after. RankBrain SEO effects are more subtle, however. One reason is that RankBrain is not a new algorithm. It’s not a standalone or new type of search engine. It’s simply an added ranking signal mechanism. As the third most important signal in determining page rank, however, it is a process that improves search results, has the ability to update itself and develop without human intervention. RankBrain excels at analyzing difficult, ambiguous and unrefined queries and serving accurate results. As time goes on, the already impressive results will only get better.

What’s that mean for your small business SEO campaign? Right now, not much. If your SEO strategies include writing engaging content with important keywords, frequently adding quality content and staying on top of algorithm changes, you’re already doing what you have to. For now.

If RankBrain AI seems weird and futuristic to you, you’re not alone. A Google engineer, Paul Haahr, recently confessed at SMX West, a search marketing conference held in San Jose, “Even Google engineers can’t understand the new RankBrain AI system…”

OK, maybe RankBrain will take over the world. The search world, that is.

Here They Come Again – 6 Hot Small-Business Tech Trends You Can’t Ignore

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“Oh, no, not again! Seems like yesterday we were building online shopping carts and getting orders from folks sitting at home in front of their desktop computers. Then people started contacting us through their smartphones and tablets. We had to make all kinds of changes. And you say more tech changes are on the way? Please say it isn’t true!”

If that sounds like you, don’t despair. There are hot tech trends you can’t ignore. But, the good news is that most of them are existing technologies and you may have already experimented with a few yourself. This is the year, however, that these trends explode and experimentation has to make way for utilization. Here are the 6 small business tech trends for 2016.

More Ways to Get Paid

Paying with a smartphone at the register isn’t new, but technologies are coming that are not only more sophisticated, but safer, too. MasterCard recently announced it will soon use fingerprints or a selfie to verify identities when paying with a smartphone. Visa is working on mobile payment options embedded in a car’s dashboard touch screen.

More ways to get paid is always good for business.

Like Videos? Good. You’ll Need More

Users love videos. Bing and Facebook now offer advertisers video options. Even better, Google includes video in its algorithm, meaning that videos now show up in search engine queries. Well-done videos are highly effective marketing and content tools. How-to, product feature and get-to-know the company videos give customers a clearer picture of who they’re dealing with.

Virtual Reality is Here – Really!

Well, OK, virtual reality (VR) has been here for some time. But, VR’s emergence as an online advertising tool is coming of age. Oculus Rift is set to launch a virtual reality headset in the first quarter of 2016 that connects social media and video channel platforms along with direct messaging capabilities. VR is projected to be a big hit with consumers and small businesses should be able to cash in.

It’s an App Epidemic

It sounds bad, but it’s not. At the same time Google changed its methodology to reward mobile friendly websites, it also began app indexing and factored apps into search engine results. This indexing has paid off for businesses that utilize apps. Adoption will only grow in 2016.

This year, apps not only help businesses engage customers, but make life in-house easier, too. Business efficiency tools, such as apps for screening job applicants, accessing inventory and communicating with team members are examples of the ways in which an app can be used for greater productivity.

Does this mean you have to pay a developer to create an app? Nope. Tools like Appy Pie and Microsoft’s PowerApps give non-techies the tools they need to easily create apps for Android, iOS, Kindle, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Look for more programs and advanced features this year.

Better Inventory Management

A Wasp Barcode Technologies 2015 study found that nearly half of small businesses with fewer than 500 employees don’t track inventory. Shocking, isn’t it? Inventory sits in the warehouse gathering dust because no one knows it’s there. What a waste! Inventory management gets a boost with digital solutions like Fishbowl Inventory. Fishbowl is the most popular QuickBooks add-on for good reason. It integrates with most CRM and accounting programs so managers always know how much stock is on hand. Accurately tracking inventory means more control.

More and Better Wearables

Smartwatches have yet to really catch on but that’s likely to change. Apple Watch competitors plan to roll out their own smartwatches this year and consumer sales are expected to grow 35 percent by 2019. What’s that mean? It means small, small screens. Marketing strategies have to retool Web and app content for wearables through the use of list formats, or listicles, rather than article formats. Content will have to provide on-the-go information and be voice-command friendly. The wearable trend won’t completely take hold this year, but this is the year to lay the wearable content groundwork.

Of course, not all tech trends meet expectations. Take last year’s popular holiday gift, the hover board. A self-balancing scooter sounds great. What could go wrong? It could catch fire, that’s what. Plugged in to recharge or not plugged in at all, they caught fire. Homes were destroyed. Major airlines banned them.

VR, apps and videos won’t burn your house down. In fact, they’re ready to make a big impact. In a good way.

Bad Online Reviews? Here’s What to Do!

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​“Very good example of a very BAD restaurant.”
Actual review posted on TripAdvisor
Ouch! That hurt. The review above was originally posted in 2012, but it’s still online for all to see. That’s the problem with online reviews – they never go away. It’s not like you can ignore them, either. Not when 90 percent of consumers say positive reviews influence their purchases. Not when 82 percent of consumers do their product and service research on review sites before they purchase. That’s all well and good if your reviews are positive. But, what if they’re not? 

You Need Reviews, You Really Do!

Many businesses solicit reviews. You’re probably wondering why. Why open yourself to getting shot down? Are online reviews so important? In a word – yes. One of the biggest advantages of reviews and review sites is that they show up on search result pages. Reviews give your business exposure it would not otherwise get. They build credibility and encourage online word-of-mouth advertising. Honest reviews provide valuable insights into your business procedures and show you where you need to improve. And, the good news? The majority of reviews on sites like Yelp, Google and Facebook are positive. Of course, it’s the negative reviews that stick in the craw.

And you will get negative reviews. It’s what you do about them that counts.

Get to Work

You can’t let a bad review sit for too long without doing something. Stay on top of reviews as they happen. Claim your business pages wherever you find them and make sure the information is correct. Fix it if it’s not. Set up automatic alerts in Google and Yelp to monitor new reviews. When the dreaded time comes and someone posts a bad review, take action.

  • Respond Publicly: But, not until you count to 10, take deep breaths and calm down. Negative reviews, particularly when they seem unfair, are maddening. No question about it, you’ll be steamed. Respond politely, thanking the customer for the feedback. If you screwed up, apologize. A calm and friendly response coupled with a resolution go a long way to neutralize a nasty review. Your response stays online as long as the review does, so the way you handle it says as much about your business as the review.
  • Respond Privately: Depending on the severity of the complaint, you may also choose to contact the reviewer via private message. Again, be polite. If you handle it correctly, you just might save the customer and rebuild goodwill. There’s always a chance that, if made happy, a reviewer will post a more positive review update.
  • Check Validity: The catch with online reviews is that a few are fraudulent. They could come from a disgruntled former employee, an ex-spouse, a competitor or someone who has too much time on their hands. If there are clear signs that a review is fraudulent, respond once with a courteous remark and ignore it thereafter.
  • Perform a Gut Check: Ask yourself if the reviewer had a legitimate complaint. Is there room for improvement? What can you do to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again? Reviews are a great way to communicate with customers and give them a better experience in the future.

Too Much of a Good Thing

How much should you fret about bad reviews? It depends. It turns out you need a few. People expect to see good AND bad reviews. If all they see are five-star raves, they become suspicious. All those positive reviews can’t be real. A negative review or two actually builds trust. But – you knew that was coming - you have to have a small negative-to-positive ratio. Watch for common denominators in the negative reviews. If every negative review says the customer service was appalling, something’s wrong. Fix it. Then work on getting more positive reviews.

 No Reviews? Few Reviews? Get More

The best way to get honest, positive reviews is to ask your satisfied customers to provide them. Send customer satisfaction surveys, provide links to review sites and ask recent purchasers to rate their experiences. Your best customers are also your best cheerleaders.

Two caveats  - never purchase reviews. You’ll pay big time if you’re caught. Not to mention the fact that it’s not honest. And, never give customers a tablet in your place of business and ask for an immediate review. Yelp and other review sites filter out multiple reviews when they come from the same IP address.

The bottom line: Accept the fact that you’ll get negative reviews. Deal with them and move on. One bad review isn’t the end. In fact, if you’re proactive and handle it right, you can turn a bad review into an opportunity to build trust and goodwill. 

Getting it Right – Tips to Grow Your Small Business

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Did you know that Pepsico’s “Pepsi brings you back to life” slogan translates to “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave” in Chinese? Not exactly the marketing idea the company wanted to convey. Pepsico is big enough to absorb the hit, but marketing is full of pitfalls which can do real damage, particularly when you are trying to grow a small business. If your small business is plugging along, but it’s not quite where you want to be, you’ve probably thought about what you can do to take the next step. Here are some tips you can use to avoid the pitfalls and grow your business, one step at a time.

Take Advantage of the Free Stuff

Chances are, your business is already listed in Google, Yahoo, Yelp and Bing. Take control of your listings by claiming your business, updating the information and correcting inaccuracies. Make it easy for potential customers to find you. If you haven’t already done so, take advantage of social media by creating a Facebook page and Twitter account. With all of this spontaneous communication comes risk, however. Think before you post. You don’t want to deal with the aftermath of an ill-advised tweet. Don’t fall down the slippery slope like Delta Air Lines did after the 2014 World Cup, which pitted Team U.S.A. against Ghana. After mistakenly implying that Ghana had giraffes, the airline tried to apologize by tweeting it was sorry for its “precious” tweet. We think they meant “previous.”

Take Advantage of the Low-Cost Stuff

With all the online opportunities, small-business owners sometimes forget about the fundamentals. You probably passed around a lot of business cards when you first started out, but maybe that kind of advertising fell by the wayside. You need to go back to what made your startup work. Have new business cards and flyers printed up and pass them around. Place advertisements in local newspaper and magazines. Get your business name out there. Make a name for yourself in the community by sponsoring community events. The basics served you well in the beginning, they can serve you well now.

Think Bigger

Have you thought about opening another location? If you current small business is profitable and under control, a new location could be the right step. Here are some other ways to grow your business:

  • Offer your business as a franchise. If you want to rapidly expand your business and your business model is easy to duplicate, a franchise is one of the quickest ways. It’s also desirable because day-to-day management is left to the franchisee. Few businesses work as a franchise, however, so do your research first.
  • Diversify your products or services. Diversification is a great way to expand because it adds revenue streams that can fill seasonal slumps. Ideas for diversification include adding complementary services or products, teaching classes in your field and targeting new markets.
  • Form business alliances. No one small business can serve the needs of all, but if you partner with a business that complements or supports your products or services, you can experience rapid expansion.
  • Expand. Moving beyond your local market opens the door for more sales.

You Will Make Mistakes
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The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven people on board. On July 4, 2014, American Apparel used a photo of the Challenger explosion on its Tumblr page to commemorate America’s Independence Day. Apparently the young social media manager, who was born years after the tragedy, thought it was a picture of fireworks.

The moral? You will make social media mistakes, even the big guys do it. How you respond makes all the difference. First rule, of course, is to check and double-check before you post anything. If possible, have someone else read your intended post to point out potential trouble beforehand. If something gets by and you find yourself dealing with a barrage of complaints, immediately remove the offending post. An hour is an eternity on the Internet, so remove it as soon as you know there is a problem. Don’t defend yourself, simply apologize. If it only happens occasionally and you build a history of professionalism, you can overcome a gaffe before it does too much damage.