LONDON – A highly effective method of attracting new customers to your ecommerce site, content marketing also provides a service when done well. Your expertise in your given area has the potential to inform, enlighten and entertain while simultaneously serving as a beacon for new customers. Of course, the key phrase in that first sentence is “when done well.” It can have the exact opposite effect when handled poorly. With that in mind here are five content marketing mistakes to avoid.
- Overlooking Keyword Research
To make the most of the search engine optimization (remember the whole point is to get your site found by search engines), focus your posts around keywords specific to your business. This way, you’ll target phrases people who might be looking for your wares will base their searches upon. If you’re having trouble coming up with suitable keywords, Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner tool can help you find the most pertinent ones to your field of endeavor.
- Spreading Social Efforts Too Thinly
Social media outlets now exist in abundance. If you think you’re going to do a good job of keeping all of them fed, you’re deluding yourself—unless you have a social media department of at least 10 people. Even then, you should focus your efforts more on the outlets your market prefers than every outlet under the sun. It’s better to be everything to a small group of passionate followers than have only passing relevance to a huge group of followers who couldn’t care less about your offerings.
- Focusing on Quantity over Quality
In a lot of cases, your content marketing effort will be the first contact many potential customers will have with your business. Whether you’re just starting out with one of the free website themes offered by an established ecommerce platform, or you’ve been in business for years, you will be better served focusing your efforts narrowly. While it’s tempting to blast out tens of thousands of words a week in support of your content campaign, it’s far better to have several thousand well-crafted words than a hundred thousand poorly considered ones. You want people to view your content as smart, entertaining and most of all credible. Quality content goes a long way toward maintaining the credibility factor.
- Failing to Stay in Your Own Lane
While you should produce easily digestible copy, it should also be focused around your particular industry. For example, if you decide to comment on something happening in popular culture, do so as it relates to your area of interest. If you sell ski equipment and you’re itching to write about climate change, you should do so as it relates to the sport of skiing or the ski industry. If you have an online art gallery and you’re anxious to say something about the new iPhone, find a way to talk about it relative to your business—without talking specifically about your business. Maintaining this focus teaches your readers to look to you for something specific, which positions you more strongly in your field.
- Not Understanding How Search Engines Rank Content
As the largest, most powerful search engine out there, advice like this tends to orbit around what works on Google. With that said, Google’s algorithm has been proven to consider the following factors when it ranks a site:
- Quality of content
- Frequency of publication
- Quantity of existing content
- Domain age
- Keyword usage in title tags and headlines
- Quantity of authoritative backlinks
- Social validation in the form of shares and likes
- Popularity
In other words, aside from developing quality content, you must also make a focused effort to meet these parameters as well as possible. Avoiding these five content marketing mistakes will put your campaign on solid footing toward achieving a concrete return on your investment.