Has your small business invested time and money into creating original content but is thus far getting no returns on your investment of resources? If that’s the case, it’s likely your small business content marketing strategy isn’t working. Here are 6 common content marketing SME pitfalls and how to fix them.
1. No overarching strategy
A strategic plan is highly essential for successful content marketing. Your content needs to be linked emotionally with your audience and consistently tied into wider marketing campaigns. Without a strategy, success or failure is just a matter of luck.
2. Your content is too “salesy”
Your content should enrich your customers’ knowledge and display your understanding of their pain points instead of showcasing all the features of your product or service. In any case, content marketing is not exactly an opportunity for hard sell.
3. Content is poorly produced
If your content is not well-produced, no one will take it seriously unfortunately. Quality content costs money since it will reflect your business and brand. Remember, being cheap with content development meaning presenting a discount image of your brand to the prospects.
4. You aren’t promoting it
Your content can be valueless if people don’t know it’s there. It can’t promote itself so ensure that your strategy is transparent on your distribution channels and promotions. There are many ways in which you can promote your content including sharing it on social media, incorporating newsletter, paid ads, etc.
5. Your SEO is not quite right
A basic rule of thumb is keeping your keywords to the most important search terms that people might use when looking for your content. Also, your content should definitely include the keywords which you’ve identified as significant to your brand.
6. You’re not capturing your leads
Content marketing is a lost cause if you have no way to record who is consuming your content. Ensure your website is build to capture these leads for your database so you can retarget and nurture them.
By: Lucy Ng, SBC writer
