The 5 Biggest Blunders of Content Marketing

Content is the key to connect with your customers on social media and hence, having an engaging and interactive content marketing strategy is very important. Very few brands are able to develop that cutting edge strategy to engage and interact with the customers.

You may be producing frequent, good content, but there are chances that it is not generating expected engagement. Wondered why?

Following are some of the biggest blunders made by content marketers that can impact the brand and business in the long run.

Lacking Proper Content Marketing Strategy

There are many content managers who have only a vague content strategy in place and they create updates on a daily basis. Not only does this make the work ad hoc and random but also much more time consuming.

Content marketing, just like any other form of marketing, should have a strategy that clearly defines its objectives, expectations and expected results. Without appropriate and sustainable strategy, you may end up doing so many things but without attaining the desired outcome. This strategy should be in line with the positioning and key messaging of the brand.

Do: Prepare a well-defined content strategy keeping in mind your brand objectives and expected results. Prepare content as per this strategy at least 10 days in advance. Use this advance preparation to include the various brand executives who can give key insights.

Not understanding your Target Audience:

There is always a gap between the people behind a brand and their target group. It can only be bridged through frequent and ongoing efforts by brand executives to understand the target group. Social listening can really help give key insights into your target group

Sometimes the fans in your community would themselves suggest what they want. Choosing to go the extra mile helps create the right community environment.

Have you heard of this app GoGujarati? When we started the GoGujarati community for our client, our fans requested the use of Gujarati language on all updates, as after all it is a community for Gujarati people.

We went the extra mile, brought a Gujarati language expert onboard, to provide high quality Gujarati content with every update! It has definitely made a difference in our community engagement.

Do: Identify the right channels to monitor conversations and news relevant to the target group. Follow the influencers in the field to remain in the loop of insightful updates.

Not understanding the insights

Every social media content update has some or the other lesson to take away from it. Merely understanding your target audience is not enough. It is crucial to also gauge how your audience is responding to your content, what are they liking or disliking and then change your strategy accordingly.

Not to forget, consumer is the king, and thus consumer insights cannot be neglected. A social media marketer needs to analyse the past content in order to improve the future posts / updates.

Do: Schedule brief analytics overview sessions every week. Compile detailed monthly & quarterly reports.

Similar content across all the social media platforms

Do you think that the psyche and the behaviour of your target customer on, say for example, Facebook and Twitter is going to be the same? The culture on each platform is different and people expect brands to keep this in mind.

Also, each social media has its own niche. You might have the same followers on all the platforms, but their approach will be different as the platform is different. There are two main points to be considered here –

• What is the purpose of the platform / what is its niche
• How do users interact / behave on that particular platform

Thus, ideally, the content shared on all the social media platform should be customized as per the purpose of the platform and the way audience interact.

Do: Identify the strengths and weakness of the various social platforms you are active on. Research other popular platforms your target audience is on. How can you leverage the strengths of each?

Too much of selling

The apt way to explain this point is taking Red-bull’s example. Red-bull has adopted a simple strategy - to wow its audience and generate content that they can share.

Their content on Facebook as well as Twitter mostly has images and video link of the athletes sponsored by them. Thus, rather than opting for direct selling, Red-bull creates brand influencers / advocates and follows the strategy of promoting the brand subtly as a lifestyle choice and not a simple caffeinated drink.

There are a few updates which directly talk about the product but even those really connect with their overall brand strategy and customer rapport. For eg: this car made from Redbull cans.

When done right, subtle is strong!

Do: Evaluate the content where you are directly marketing your brand. Ask yourself whether this is the most customer friendly way to go about it.

To conclude, we social media marketers are communication experts. We need to understand not only the brand we work for, but also the audience.  Thus, content marketing should be done keeping in mind the customer interests and brand goals. Also considering the real time nature of the media, it is crucial to have strong, organized backend processes in place that remove the hassles and allow creativity to flourish.