At last night’s Arizona Interactive Marketing Association’s monthly social event featuring acclaimed author and God-father of content marketing Joe Pulizzi, CEO of Junta42 presented to the attentive crowd of more than 100 attendees. Within his content marketing discussion, he presented the ten common pitfalls for novice content marketers and provided actionable steps to take to repair your ailing content marketing.
1.) Too many goals for your content. You either have too many goals and objectives for your content marketing or you have no clue why you are doing what you are doing. There are a myriad of reasons to create and publish content such as customer retention, lead generation, establish thought leadership, lower customer service costs, open new markets, etc. but rarely can one piece of content accomplish multiple goals. Quick Fix: Pick a goal, ANY goal. Be specific about it and stick to it!
2.) Your Content is about EVERYTHING. You have no niche. You create content on the entire industry, or even worse, you create content that isn’t even related to your industry! You end up going big, and now no one cares. Quick Fix: Pick your niche. Focus on content that presents you as the trusted provider in that region for your services or product.
3.) The Content is ALL about YOU, YOU, YOU. Remember, your customers don’t care about you. They care about themselves. You are not as important as you think you are. It’s not WHAT you sell that is important to them, it is the experience they’ll have with your product or service. Quick Fix: Focus on your customers’ pain points and create content around that.
4.) Your content is good enough: You are not just competing with your product or service competitors when it comes to content. You are competing with everyone and everything, even traditional media companies. Quick Fix: Invest in your content. Create a unique point-of-view. Make your content unique, interesting, fun (if possible), multichannel and execute. Think of creating and defining your own category.
5.) Lack of a Content Calendar. Stop thinking from a campaign mentality. If your content isn’t consistent it may confuse your reader. Creating compelling content is a promise to your customers. Quick Fix: Create and maintain a content calendar and editorial strategy. A great rule of thumb to get started with is the 1-7-304-2-1 Plan. Also, aim for creating 10 pieces for different online distribution channels (Blog, Article, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Slideshare, etc.) from every content idea. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose!
6.) Not Leveraging Your Employees. Your employees are perhaps your greatest content marketing assets (in a close run with your customers themselves). Quick Fix: Find the 10-15 percent of your employees that are inherently content creators and start to nurture that. Allow them to be a part of your brand message.
7.) That People will Magically Engage in your Content. Stop relying on magic to push your content along. Unless you are a rock star or professional athlete, you’ll have to work for it. Quick Fix: Find out where your customers are hanging out (use social listening to start) on the web and be active in those communities. Also, look into using offline channels like in person events, print, radio, etc.
8.) Your Content Has No Owner. With content being pumped out by marketers with fervor these days often times your content doesn’t have clear ownership. Quick Fix: Find your chief editor, content strategist, chief content officer or whatever you’d like to call them, internally or if you don’t have the resources in-house, look externally for help.
9.) You Don’t Have Content Experience. One of the greatest challenges in Content Marketing is developing great content that your audience would be interested in reading and/or sharing. Quick Fix: Instead of focusing on your benefits of your product or service try to focus on sharing value for your reader and help them get a feel for the experience of using your product or service. Use a little storytelling.
10.) You Don’t Internal Support for Content Marketing. Those brands that don’t have senior level support for content marketing are said to be 300{2bbd478b6aadf2a9bb5e10dcf35d17c0d0772390afbaf5ac8145fb1096668903} more likely to stink at content marketing. Quick Fix: Engage them and your chance for success drastically increases!
Interested in hearing more about this fantastic presentation from Joe Pullizzi? Check out some the wrap up post from Nick Roshon, “Awesome Content Tip by Joe Pulizzi: Create 10 pieces of Content for Every One Idea You Have,” on the night’s events or the one from Roy Reyer, “Does Your Content Stink?”. They are popping up all over the place. He must have made an impact!