Inbound Marketing Content Mistakes
Inbound Marketing Content Mistakes
We have shown you many reasons to adopt an inbound marketing strategy, comparing it to outbound marketing, showing you good tools to use, and filled you in on all the benefits of good content, from images to memes. But what about the other side of the coin? What about making sure you are not headed off in the wrong direction? There are so many things you can do wrong when establishing your inbound marketing content strategy and creation, so I am going to give you an overview of what not to do.I know, I know, I have said content is king about a thousand times. But guess what, not all content can wear the crown. If your content does not engage your audience, then even original writing and images can have a negative effect. Here are several things that can suffer the most from bad content.
Poorly Written About Us Page
According to HubSpot, most about us pages are just there to boost the ego of the owners of the company and their parents.¹ Make your about us page something that people would actually want to read. People do not want to read a novel about your company. Make sure that if they only give you enough time to read the first sentence that they are getting the jist of what you are about. Then you can give some more summarized details about the company. Finish it by giving the reader direction into the rest of your site by having good navigation for them to discover more about you.
Overly Wordy Writing
38% of people never get past the beginning of a webpage, states slate.com.² And the numbers continue to drop from there. If you take too long to get to your point, you are going to lose a large portion of your audience. The more scrolling they need to do, the less likely they will read your content. Get to the point quickly, grab their attention and then do not jibber jabber. Fluff is not needed online, just the meat.
No Strategy
If you do not have a solid marketing strategy, all of your efforts will be for not. That is a bold statement, but it is true. Whether it’s inbound or outbound you need to have goals and a plan to reach them. This will become very apparent in your content. There will not be any flow to your articles and blogs and you will not be able to properly engage your audience. And you will want to make sure that strategy includes using all available platforms. If you are strictly tweeting or blogging, where a research strategy would have shown you that your target audience is mostly using Facebook, you are wasting your valuable resources. If your inbound marketing content strategy is not in alignment, your content creation won’t be cohesive and the overarching ideas will appear disassociated and confuse the audience.
Not Writing with Confidence
The whole goal of an inbound marketing campaign is to establish you as the authority. But if you do not sound like you know what you are talking about, or that you are not 100% committed to your beliefs, then how do you expect your perspectives to trust you know what you are doing. Ask the questions you know your audience is asking, and then answer those questions with short simple answers. Use statistics to back up your statements. ContentPlus states that 60% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content on its site.³ That is a statistic from a reliable source that will reaffirm the point that content is king.
Bottom line is to know what you want to say, say it with authority and do not ramble on. The direction will make you life easier and your readers will be more likely to engage in your content.
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