bad content marketing tactics

Do you know what’s super spooky? The easily avoidable content mistakes happening all. The. TIME. It’s almost 2020 – a year people used to dream about when they thought of a high-tech future – but here we are. People are still committing basic content marketing mistakes (sometimes unknowingly, but ‍♀️). These scary mistakes aren’t something to laugh about, either. They cost you a lot. Think Google rankings, traffic, leads, conversions, a loyal audience, and general content ROI. If you want your content to perform well (who doesn’t??), if you want to keep your website from becoming an abandoned, haunted house where no one dares step foot… You must know and avoid these mistakes as if they were monsters prowling the dark of night. Don’t get too comfortable, don’t get close, and if you spot one, RUN, and try to fix it. 10 Content Marketing Mistakes That Are Undermining Your ROI 1. Prioritizing the Quick Sale Over Building Long-Term Trust 2. Not Investing in Valuable, Useful Content 3. Buying Fake Followers (Follower Ghosts!) to Grow Your Online Presence 4. Targeting Focus Keywords and Related Keywords Incorrectly 5. Posting Content Whenever the Mood Strikes 6. Publishing Skeletal Content and Expecting It to Rank 7. Putting Out Lots of Scary-Quality Content 8. Letting Duplicate Content Haunt Your Domain 9. Participating in Ghoulish Link-Buying Schemes 10. Forgetting to Champion Your Reader Don’t Let Bad Content Marketing Tactics Haunt Your Brand Presence [bctt tweet=”There’s no need to have a sixth sense for us to see dead content. Low-quality copy and unethical marketing practices should get that straight to the grave. ⚰️ Save your content now by avoiding these 10 bad content marketing tactics!” username=”ExpWriters”] Run the Other Way! 10 Scary Content Marketing Tactics Undermining Your ROI If you commit any of these, call a priest – you need an exorcism to save your content marketing soul. 1. Prioritizing the Quick Sale Over Building Long-Term Trust Repeat after me: Content marketing is not about the quick sale. In fact, it’s not really about the sale at all. Now, hear me out. Yes, the eventual end-goal is to build up enough trust with your readers so they feel confident buying into whatever you’re offering. BUT. More revenue is just one possible end by-product. It’s not the point. The point is trust. When you look at a solid definition of content marketing (like this one I constantly reference from the Content Marketing Institute), note there is no mention of sales, money, or revenue. Instead, the emphasis is placed squarely on your audience/customers. Specifically, content marketing is about: Attracting and retaining your audience Driving profitable actions from customers “Profitable actions” aren’t necessarily sales. Instead, a profitable action could be adding a new subscriber to your email list, or earning another loyal blog follower. These are profitable situations because they signify interest and growing trust in what you offer. These people may eventually become not only customers but also brand advocates. That compounding future interest helps spread your brand name as an authority, builds relationships with people, and, ultimately, leads to more conversions. Trust breeds trust. Once the relationship is there, the sales will come later — but they’re not the point. Don’t settle for pushiness and try to close your leads today. That’s not content marketing. Instead, focus on building that long-term trust that wins real industry positioning tomorrow. [bctt tweet=”Don’t be a real-life undead chasing humans to get them to buy your product or service with your salesy content! ‍♀️ Start building long-term trust instead with attractive, relevant, and useful content. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] 2. Not Investing in Valuable, Useful Content Content that wins trust and builds loyalty is high-value, useful, and relevant to your particular audience. If your content is none of those things, you won’t reap the rewards of content marketing. It’s that simple. Conductor did the first-ever study investigating the impact of educational content on customers. The results were incredible: After reading a brand’s educational content, people were 131% more likely to purchase from them 78% rated a brand as “helpful” and 64% rated them “trustworthy” immediately after reading the brand’s content One week later, the above numbers increased by 8-9% Useful, valuable content has a direct effect on your readers. Without those traits, however, your content will be useless. If you want the rewards, you have to invest in creating and publishing the best content you can produce. No ifs, ands, or buts. 3. Buying Fake Followers (Follower Ghosts!) to Grow your Online Presence Have you ever been tempted — when you’re green with envy over your competitor’s follower count — to just buy some fake followers and call it a day? (And, just to be clear, I’m talking about non-real followers, i.e., computer-generated follower ghosts that don’t exist in real life. ) Don’t do it. Not only is buying fake followers majorly frowned-upon, but it will also have consequences that will undermine what you’re trying to do (build an engaged audience). HootSuite did an actual case study on buying fake followers on Instagram to see what would happen, and the results were laughable: 1,000 followers, each of them obviously bot-created at random, with zero engagement from any of them. If you have a large follower count but no engagement… well, that’s an oxymoron AND a red flag. Instagram will easily find your fake account and shut it down, according to their Terms of Use. Likewise, other brands won’t want to associate with your account. Getting their content or products in front of a ghost audience will do absolutely nothing for them. And don’t think you can hide it – there are tools for analyzing accounts (like IG Audit and Fake Follower Check) and estimating the percentage of the audience that’s real. Not worth it. [bctt tweet=”Ghost followers surely make your total follower count look good, but buying these non-existent accounts will just drag you to social media hell — flagged and shut down. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] 4. Targeting Focus Keywords and Related Keywords Incorrectly … Read more