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5 Common Content Creation Mistakes

Are You Making These 5 Content Creation Mistakes?

Content creation is one of the most valuable forms of marketing. By providing your target audience with relevant and valuable information through blog posts, whitepapers, automated emails and social media posts, you can effectively acquire and engage with potential customers. 

However, because there are so many different content marketing channels and tactics, marketers are more likely to make a few mistakes along the way. While making mistakes in your marketing strategy is inevitable, learning from the outcomes is what makes you a much better marketer in the long run.

Here are five of the most common content creation mistakes and their solutions, that when fixed, can drive more traffic to your website and keep your audience wanting more! 

Mistake #1: Creating Only One Format of Content

When searching the Internet for content do you prefer reading blogs, or watching videos? You may answer “it depends on the information I am looking for.” Keep in mind that if you want variety, so do your readers, which is why it’s important to provide all sorts of content types when creating a content marketing strategy for your business. 

Businesses that fail to provide a variety of content formats miss out on attracting valuable customers because not all people consume information in the same way. While creating blogs and articles are an engaging format for some, other consumers may prefer visuals or audio to retain the information more effectively.

In order to fix this, mix up the formats you use to send your message. Include infographics, videos, imagery, and text combined to reinforce your message. This way, you can rest assured that your content is reaching your target audience in a way that works best for them.  

Mistake #2: Leaving out a Call-To-Action (CTA)

Providing relevant information is the first step in an inbound marketing strategy, but if you don’t give the reader something to act on, you’ve just basically said, “Thanks for reading, bye!”

In order to capture marketing leads, all content formats should let the customer know exactly what to do next. This is known as the call-to-action, or CTA. Without a strong CTA, your chances of collecting the reader’s information, or converting the reader to a lead, will significantly decrease. 

Some examples of effective CTAs ask your audience to: 

  • Like or comment on your blog or social media posts
  • Download an e-book for a step-by-step guide
  • Schedule a free trial or consultation of your products and services
  • Subscribe to your mailing list for new updates

If you’re writing with the intent of generating leads and increasing revenue, don’t forget to include CTAs in everything you publish. While they are quite commonly found at the end of blogs, you can break up the text with a quick CTA, directing them to additional content that they may find helpful in their situation. For example, “Want to learn more about how to generate new, quality leads? Download our 30 Lead Generation Tips here.” This guides your audience to take an action that you want them to take. 

Mistake #3: Not Measuring or Tracking Results

Great content can be created and published on multiple channels. But, if you are not tracking the results of your campaigns, your efforts could be going to waste. Measuring your success from each type of content and traffic source will give valuable insight on what is performing well and what may need to be adjusted or dropped. Consider these metrics when measuring content marketing performance:

  • Pageviews, by content piece: track which topics and pieces of content are generating the most inbound traffic.

  • Leads, by content piece: track which offers are successfully converting the most readers and getting the most downloads

  • Conversions from blogs: track which blog topics are converting the most readers through CTAs on the page.

In order to evaluate your overall performance, set goals for each format you create. Some resources for reporting are Google Analytics and the HubSpot Page Performance. These provide valuable insights on traffic sources, time spent on a particular page, form submissions, and more. Additionally, you can use heat maps to understand exactly how your audience interacts on your website. This information can be used to improve the placement of your CTAs and forms on a page.

If you use social ads to promote certain pieces of content, be sure to track them. You can download our step-by-step guide and learn how to easily calculate just how much money your ads are bringing in to your business. 

Mistake #4: Lack of Continuity

Some businesses believe that publishing a few pieces of content here and there makes for an effective content marketing strategy. Unfortunately, this is not the case. 

When businesses publish disconnected pieces of content randomly, your audience doesn’t know what to expect from you. Since they don’t know when you will be providing them with new information, it may send them looking elsewhere for the solutions to their problems. 

Fix this mistake by having a consistent content creation strategy! 

When you establish continuity, your audience will trust your company to provide them with fresh, valuable content regularly. They will be excited to receive and open your messages because they know the information you provide will help solve their problem. Over time, your company’s credibility will increase, making your audience more likely to follow and subscribe to your content or use your products and services

One effective way to do this is by using a content creation schedule. This will make it easier to provide a steady flow of lead-generating content pieces to your prospects. The schedule also allows you to keep track of the different types of content you create and ensure you are addressing all of your buyer persona’s needs.

Mistake #5: Rushing Results

Content marketing, like SEO, is a long-term strategy that requires a period of time where relationships and trust with consumers are built. Some businesses interpret content marketing as unsuccessful if only a few leads are generated in the first couple of weeks. This common mistake can end up hurting their long-term results.

In the initial stages of content marketing, you will be creating pieces of content, optimizing the flow and on-page SEO of your website, developing your social media platforms, and using CTAs that will drive traffic to your content. After updates to the content on your site, you must wait for search engines to crawl the site and re-index the pages. 

Amongst the thousands of companies included in a recent report conducted by MIT, the average 12-month content marketing project increased site traffic by two to three times. Additionally, inbound leads increased by five to seven times. While a year may feel like a long time, if you are patient and work hard to consistently create valuable content, you too could see similar results and increase your traffic and leads.

Content Creation That Works

Remember that patience is key! Great things don’t just happen overnight. Once given the proper time, these content creation efforts will provide profitable results that increase your business’ revenue with each new lead that converts to a customer!

If you need help tracking your progress, or creating a clear inbound marketing strategy for your business, we can help! From Paid Search to Branding Services, our team of experts at Pinckney Marketing work to ensure that all areas of your digital marketing plan work together to reach your goals. Contact us to schedule a free strategy session with our experts and learn how you can take your marketing efforts to the next level.

This post was originally written on August 22nd, 2018 and updated on July 13th, 2020.