“Content marketing is all the marketing left”, believes entrepreneur, author, and businessman Seth Godin. As a content marketer, you have probably tried to do everything right and followed the rulebook to the letter. You regularly read up on best practices, watch talks by people who have done this for several years, and listen to podcasts. It is natural to feel ready about the ‘dos’. However, more often than not, you may be doing practices that are detrimental to your content marketing efforts and your brand’s success. If you indulge in these five habits, it’s time to revisit your content marketing practices:

1. Limiting your idea of what constitutes content

Research shows that 60% of marketers produce a minimum of a piece per day. Yet a common mistake they make is to confuse content with incessantly shared blogs and social media posts. Depending on your brand and its voice, it is a great idea to diversify your content strategy and include as many of the following as possible:

• Infographics
• Whitepapers
• Videos – How to, demonstrative, blog content
• Live videos on Facebook and Instagram
• Podcasts
• Case studies

It might be a good call to print and paste this image by Core DNA on your office bulletin board, lest you should forget what’s possible in the content realm (relax – it happens to all of us!).

2. Not being clear about who your audience is

IBM’s 2015 survey shows that a whopping 63% of customers feel as if the brands they love just don’t get them. Read further, and the same research shows there’s a huge gap between what brands assume customers want and what they really want.

If your customers feel like this too, it means all your marketing efforts and monies are pretty much wasted. No one likes being bombarded with messaging that isn’t relevant. Soon, they might stop considering your content as authoritative and move to your competition.

Dig deep into who the brand’s audience is, what their practices, habits, likes, and dislikes are, and customise a message for them to make the best of your content marketing efforts.

3. Not tying up your ideas with a robust strategy

As a marketer, it’s your job to effectively bring your strategy and execution together. Studies show that 65% of successful marketers have a watertight content strategy.

However, more often than not, marketers churn out great content on a daily basis without any overarching strategy tying the individual pieces together. Try to identify primary goals for your client’s marketing efforts and create a strategy to meet it.

Listening to the audience, identifying gaps in the competition’s efforts, and tailoring the content you send out can form the foundation for a great strategy. Once you and your client have shaken hands on the strategic plan, draw up a content calendar and begin executing it on a daily basis.

4. Believing your content marketing practices will remain fresh forever

While it definitely makes sense to cash in on viral content and trending topics, your strategy cannot comprise only these buckets. Focus on blogs and videos that will be useful today, tomorrow, five months from now, or three years later. This makes their chances of showing up for relevant searches higher too.

For instance, assume you’re creating content for an automobile brand. A simple branded video on how to change brake fluid will remain ‘evergreen’ for several years to come, while a video of a new variant’s launch won’t have as many views some years later.

5. Thinking content is just about sales pitches

While it is understandable that you want your content marketing practices to convert to sales, it isn’t a great idea to make overt, glaring sales pitches. Your audience will lose interest if you oversell, and move on to a brand whose content is more educational and useful to them.

Lead conversion is a long-term game; consistent, relevant content generation will ultimately get you the sales you need. Don’t rush it.

Conclusion

With content marketing predicted to be a $412 billion industry by 2021, it would be good to correct anything that might prove detrimental to your efforts. Stay ahead of your competition by avoiding the habits outlined above, and watch your agency soar ahead of the others!