Content Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make

The world of content marketing is vast and growing by the day. This growth is not only with the total number of websites and portals that exist, but also with the content that is being created, shared and viewed over the Internet. Unfortunately, with this amount of content being created, content marketing mistakes are bound to be made.

The 6 worst content marketing mistakes small businesses make

  1. Does not offer mobile support
  2. Relying on outsourced material or poor writers
  3. Dissemination of irrelevant content
  4. Don’t deliver visual content
  5. Being inconsistent without a posting schedule
  6. Losing focus of your strategy

Here are a couple of statistics for you to think about the growth of the industry:

  • Blog content is getting longer on average, and now includes many more visual materials. The average length of blog entries has increased by 19%, with a total weight of almost 1,050 words.
  • Long-form blog posts generate up to nine times more leads than short-form content.
  • An astonishing 45% of marketers say blogging and content production is their number one and most important content strategy.

What is this cascade of statistics for? It just goes to show that content marketing and content creation are getting more and more popular. A growing number of brands are beginning to rely on the medium as a form of marketing, and have added content production to their routine.

That also means there is a lot more competition in the space, leaving more room for others, like you, to fail.

As a small business that competes directly with much larger brands, you are already at a disadvantage because they have the influence. They also have more capital to put their weight behind content production, both textually and visually.

What can you hope to do to keep up, let alone get ahead?

The short answer is that you can fine-tune your content marketing and production efforts and fine-tune the process to create more effective, engaging, and quality material. But before you can do that (start a well-oiled machine), you need to understand what content marketing mistakes you might be making.

Content Marketing Mistakes: The Worst You Can Make

The key to optimizing or fine-tuning any process is understanding what works and what doesn’t. In your case, you need to correctly identify the areas of content marketing – even potential ones – that are holding you back.

1. Do not offer mobile support

Almost all digital platforms, especially WordPress, support mobile users. If you’re not offering a mobile-optimized version of your content stream, you’re hurting yourself and your readers. In most cases, enabling mobile responsiveness is as easy as enabling or activating a specific feature on your CMS or backend.

Have you ever tried to read long-form content on a mobile device designed to be viewed on a desktop? Scrolling, scrolling, pinching and joining the different points on the screen is just exhausting.

A mobile optimized version will always adapt the text, layout and even images to fit on the screen of the smallest mobile. It’s easier, more convenient, and non-frustrating, which is super important.

Consider: 80% of Internet users have a smartphone. Eighty percent! If you are not serving mobile users, what are you doing with your time?

2. Rely on outsourced material or poor writers

Look, we know you’re on a budget, but if content marketing is your game, you can’t skimp on creating original content and keeping it fresh. Outsourcing work or hiring cheap and unreliable team members is not the way to go. Even as a small business, you need professional and skilled writers.

Bad grammar, terrible writing styles, and confusing sentences negatively affect your brand. If your content lacks a professional touch, people aren’t going to waste their time.

Does that mean you have to throw millions of dollars at content creators? Not! You just have to build a team of writers and creators who are passionate and who love what they do. Most importantly, reward experience and quality over quantity.

3. Dissemination of irrelevant content

Your brand has style, personality, and reputation. Yes, it is possible to change some of those things over time, but your audience and customers know you well and come to you for a reason. Focus on what it is and really focus on delivering useful and engaging content in your niche.

Are you a local tool and hardware store? Get started creating content on DIY projects for homeowners.

Do you run a bakery or restaurant? Start sharing recipes and cooking techniques that people would love to learn and share with others.

Own your niche, whatever it is, and create relevant content that really resonates with your audience. Don’t be the brand that is severely out of touch and posts confusing and random content.

This applies to other forms of marketing as well, at least when it comes to your content marketing team. Offline marketing can be very industry specific, for example.

Offline marketing, as you may already know, includes any form of marketing that is not deployed on the Internet. It involves radio and print advertising, telemarketing, television commercials, and more. The ultimate goal is to keep content relevant, adjusted, and related across all channels, even offline.

4. Don’t deliver visual content

Yes, blog posts, articles, guides, and tutorials will always be a staple of content marketing and production. But there is a reason that platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are so popular. People love visual content too! This includes videos, images, infographics, and more.

Don’t make the mistake of limiting your content to text only. Cheer things up!

If you absolutely feel the need to stay focused and organized, you can keep blog text and content confined to your official website, while saving more visual content for social media. In fact, this is a great way to separate the different media, without sacrificing one form of content or another.

5. Be inconsistent without a posting schedule

Here is the most important takeaway from this article. If you don’t remember anything else, take this advice absolutely. People expect you to be consistent and predictable. It’s okay to take a detour every now and then for a special event or announcement, but you want to keep your content from your regular mainline.

Don’t miss a scheduled publication date. Meet all of your deadlines, and that means staying ahead of your content production team if you absolutely have to. Writers can be a fickle bunch, but they are used to meeting deadlines – don’t be afraid to force them to meet them.

If content marketing is your game, then make it your game. Make it a critical component of your brand strategy and stay consistent. Failure to do so is a big mistake.

6. Losing focus of your strategy

If you want your content marketing strategy to be successful, especially in the face of monumental brands, you must follow these basic, yet crucial guidelines. There are other things to consider, of course, like finding the right audience, engaging and reacting appropriately to them, encouraging action, paying for the promotion, and more. But the most important elements of content creation and the worst content marketing mistakes to avoid are listed above.

Editorial note: All opinions, analyzes, revisions or recommendations expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and have not been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of these entities.