Content marketing is a must-have plan for any industry maven who will leave no stone unturned to become a market leader. However, content marketing can be quite a minefield, with just so many ways to blow it up. Some of the biggest mistakes that must be avoided with content marketing are, therefore, discussed here.

Inconsistency or giving up

Content marketing in India is about building a long-lasting relationship with your audience. Publishing content consistently adds authority and credibility to your brand. Besides, with more and more businesses realizing the importance of a well-developed content marketing strategy, the competition in this space is rising tremendously. Consistently shared content establishes you as a thought leader in your industry. Also, the longer you have been posting content, the more legitimized you appear. Content marketing takes time before it shows favorable results, so giving up in the expectation of overnight results is a mistake.

Not writing for the audience

Understanding the target audience before generating content for them is crucial to a successful content marketing strategy. No matter how good your content is, if it fails to resonate with your audience, your content marketing strategy is bound to fail. A common mistake is to create the content first and then find an audience for it. The right way of approaching the audience is to know them first and then write nothing but what they look forward to reading. Do not use your content for talking about things that interest your company. The key to success lies in saying what the audience wants to hear.

Content marketing that is not optimized

Writing content that lacks well-researched keywords that are searched by a large number of people and is not SEO-optimized is probably one of the biggest content marketing mistakes that your business can make. While capturing the attention of your audience with useful information is really important, making the search engine notice your content is also non-negotiable. In fact, optimized content is the best way to attracting the ‘right’ audience.  

Using multiple social media channels

While not being active on social media can be a mistake, trying too hard to register your presence on all social media channels can be a blunder too. If you stay distracted by too many channels, chances are you might miss out on reaching the right audience. You must determine the ideal social media platforms after carefully studying your target audience and gauging the ROI with the platforms you are picking.

No variety in content type

Relying on just one medium of content to convey your brand story could be an act of sheer negligence on your part. While text remains evergreen as a medium of sharing content, videos and pictures have their own charm. Your narrative about your brand must include a good mix of different content types to keep your audience engaged and excited about your content.

No call to action

Another grave content marketing mistake is to produce content with a dead end, i.e. without any call-to-action. You must give clear instructions to your readers as to what should they be doing post reading. Your content can call them to subscribe to your newsletters, or buy your product/service, or send you their feedback/comment, or simply share your post.

Not measuring your efforts

There is absolutely no way you can call your content marketing efforts a strategy if you aren’t measuring those efforts. Moving ahead with your content marketing plans without measuring them is being a rocking horse that’s constantly in motion but scaling no distance. Measuring the outreach of your content, conversion to client rate, ROI are some of the most important parameters in any content marketing strategy.

Ignoring customer comments/queries

Most marketers struggle at understanding what their customers want from them because they ignore their queries and comments left below their content. You must spare some time figuring out the top queries or problems faced by your customers. You can also use forums and review sites as a resource for determining and analyzing these comments/queries.

Content marketing in India

The art of storytelling has held deep roots in India, since times immemorial. Citations from epics like the Mahabharat or the Panchatantra, on numerous occasions, have underscored our affinity for storytelling. However, when it comes to storytelling from a content market perspective, we witness a seamless narrative here. While majority of the marketers agree that content marketing is a core ingredient for brand awareness, but lack the confidence or knowledge to go all in for it.

Over the next few years thought leaders in the marketing space in India need to avail the opportunity to put India on the map of great content markets globally. Besides, not just content marketing, but content marketing that’s done right should be the goal of every business. Mistakes discussed above can be easily checked or corrected, giving you an effective content marketing strategy.