While there are numerous examples of quality content, and no shortage of experts in content marketing with insights to share, there’s also a lot of bad advice floating around out there on what qualifies as good content strategy. We want to make sure you don’t listen to that bad advice, so here are a few mistakes to avoid when it comes to your content production.
Content Must Go Viral in Order to Be Effective
We’ve all been Rick-rolled and have seen Keyboard Cat tickle the ivories, but how does that kind of shareable content translate to your business? It doesn’t. Most viral content, although viewed by a large audience, is not going to educate your customers and generate leads for your business (unless you’re selling pianos or cat toys).
Companies that ask their marketing team or agency to create a viral video often miss the point of content marketing. Content creators work hard to produce the best content they possibly can, and it’s true they do hope it catches fire and goes viral. But businesses should not let the lure of free content with massive distribution pull their focus away from creating valuable, timely content that is appropriate and relevant for their target audience.
An example of content that is business- and viewer-approved is DollarShaveClub.com. This video doesn’t use gimmicks or try to game the system in order to get likes and shares; it went viral because the content was aligned with the company’s objectives and it filled a need for consumers, not to mention it was hilarious.
Quantity Is Better Than Quality
Many media sites have figured out how to run a business on producing the cheapest content possible. The model is to publish a flood of content that drives traffic and place advertising around it, and all consumers have to do is push the purchase button.
An abundance of content helps educate your audience and create brand presence, but have you heard the adage, You get what you pay for? Unfortunately, if you’ve spent money, time, and energy building your brand, cheap content can easily reverse that trend, and you’ll be spending much more money trying to build back a brand you’ve tarnished with low-quality, factory-assembled content.
The truth is, quality, engaging content is not cheap. It may cost you more, but it’s in your business’s best interest to hire experienced media and content specialists to produce content for you. This will allow you better control of your message and branding, and will do a better job driving the right leads to your sales team.
You Should Be on Every Platform
Why are you not on Vine? You should be on Vine! Whenever a shiny new platform comes out, you will hear experts proclaim that you have to be on it. To prove their point they’ll throw out a bunch of statistics as to the new platform’s usage and growth, plus point to examples of a few companies who have been successful.
Not every business is right for every platform. Most marketing teams run a tight ship and don’t have extra hours to devote to a platform if it’s not a right fit for their target audience. Social media is a growth industry, so no matter what you do on social you will see some kind of growth by just being present. You will see even more growth by being minimally active, but is that the kind of data you’re looking for? Probably not. Those numbers are usually just vanity metrics because they look good, but in reality they don’t show how your content posting translates into actual business.
Developing a social media platform strategy is a smart way to allocate resources, position your brand consistently, and generate real growth. Alongside your strategy, you should also consider implementing marketing analytics solutions so you can track which platforms and content get the most attention and generates the most web leads and sales calls.
Great content is tough to deliver. There are a million opinions on how to do it right, but the best advice we can offer is to take all opinions with a grain of salt. Content should be of the best quality and tailored to your goals and your audience, not just what’s new and cool in the content marketing space.
If you’d like to know more about how to prove the value of your content marketing initiatives, check out our white paper: Marketer’s Guide to Proving (and Improving) Content Marketing ROI.