Here’s 10…how many do you have?
Here we go…
- Selfish content marketing. People don’t care about you, they care about themselves. Create content that solves customers’ pain points. Stop talking about yourself, your products, your services. If you do, make it about your customers.
- The back burner. There is no back burner. If there is content marketing creation or adaptation that is on the back burner, it wasn’t important enough to do in the first place. In the words of Yoda, “Do or do not…there is no try“.
No point of view. In order to position yourself as an expert in your industry, you need a point of view. Take a stance. Walking the fence is boring and, more importantly, usually doesn’t work.- Lack of push. Is your content taking your customers to new places? Solve your customers’ pain points, and then take them to places they haven’t been to or seen before. That’s thought leadership.
- No process. I see it every day. Scenario: Marketing campaign…ads to be placed…then someone asks about the content plan…people scurry about…someone runs out to get the content. Plan upfront to create, repurpose and distribute content. From each content idea, plan for at least five repackaging concepts.
- Where’s the call? Each piece of content should have a call to action or behavior you’d like to see. What would happen if you asked, “Why?” to each piece of content you create? I’ll tell you what…you’ll either know the call to action or you’ll kill the content (for lack of purpose).
- Channel silo. Are you paying attention to one channel at the expense of all the others? It’s okay to have one main channel, like a blog, but you’ll miss the true power of content marketing by not leveraging all available channels – print, mobile, event. Think like a media company…think like a publisher.
- Forgetting employees. Employee expertise is the most underutilized content marketing asset. Your employees give your brand life. Leverage them in the creation and distribution process. Start with the 10% that get it. Show success stories and move on to the rest of your employee base.
- One word: Editing. Editing may be the most underrated piece of the content marketing process. Sometimes we as brands don’t understand that the first draft of a piece of content is called a good start. Enter the editor. Get one or hire one.
- Taking yourself too seriously. Please, have some fun with your content. You have two choices with your content…to inform or entertain (hopefully you are doing both). That, if done right, will create engagement and hopefully action.
Is your content marketing killing you? If so, what is your biggest challenge?
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