1. Not knowing your audience
Every single piece of content that you create needs to be geared around your readers. Okay, maybe not every piece, but for them most part at least 50%, so keep the following points in mind:
- Clearly define your target audience, which means that you must specify the demographic that you’re trying to reach while planning your content marketing strategy.
- Identify your customers’ problems and use your content to offer the solutions they’re looking for.
- Use a voice that resonates with the audience that you’re trying to reach. Obviously, you’ll need to communicate with 20-something women in a very different manner than you’d speak to retired men.
Your entire marketing strategy needs to revolve around your customers and their needs, so tailor your content to them. One way that many marketers commit this mistake is by creating content that interests them — not their customers… NO!
Suppose you run a financial advice website. You’re fascinated by penny stock trading, but your readers are intimidated by it — they’d rather read about more conservative mutual fund and bond investing strategies.
If you only ever publish content on stock trading, you’ll alienate your readers. This doesn’t mean you should never touch the topic, but you must be sure the bulk of the content you produce meets the stated needs of your target audience.
2. Being too self-promotional
There’s a fine line between proving that you’re proud of your brand and endlessly boasting about it — an important balance that every marketing strategist needs to strike.
To engage with your readers and earn their trust, you need to maintain a certain level of objectivity, which can be accomplished by using quotes and studies from other brands or by leveraging unbiased user-generated content.
Promotional content will always play an important role in marketing, but successful brands need to recognize the importance of engaging with their audiences and addressing their needs if they want their content to be read and shared. Promotional messages must, therefore, be subtle and supported by valuable content.
3. Failing to use attention-grabbing headlines and calls to action
You can create the finest piece of content on the Internet, but your customers couldn’t care less about it if they don’t notice it!
Read: Make Your Blog Posts More Clickable In the WordPress Reader
Failing to use attention-grabbing headlines and calls to action is a major mistake, as you only have two seconds or less to get your customers’ attention and convince them to check out your content. As a result, you’ll need to create powerful headlines and calls to action if you want your content to get the attention that it deserves.
Properly optimized headlines are much more effective at engaging readers and encouraging them to pay attention to the rest of the content, so follow these tips to create headlines that lure your audience to your content:
- Use power words that prompt curiosity with your readers. Boost Traffic has a list of over 300 power words that encourage readers to engage with your headlines.
- Try using list posts with odd numbers.
- Make sure that your headlines are long enough to draw attention and convey your message without being unnecessarily verbose.
Test different strategies to see which kinds of headlines draw the most attention and get the most clicks for your unique content pieces.
After the day or week is over, write down the top 3 headlines that got the most clicks and use them to your advantage to improve the other headlines that were not so popular.
Thank you for the tips! Do check out my blog too: critiquesofacritic.wordpress.com
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Great tips to increase followers & views of your posts
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Awesome! Too many people focused on hard bargaining and full on self promotion, create value and then people will follow. Thanks for the tips, check out my blog for some similar content and provide some feedback, would mean the world to me 🙂
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I like this advice, and I will use it. I write daily. It is not a chore. I finish quickly and go on to the next post. I believe it takes some time to get followers. I will stand on my head to get their attention, but it is really up to their point of view at the time. I do visit groups on Reader, and spread my wings on other blogs. Writing is a hobby.
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This is a good piece of advice, a writer will reach people when consider the audience and write for them! I am trying to make this a key point in how write for my new blog. http://www.beyoubestrongblog.com
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I’m taking a class all about this stuff right now I’m using spreadability and networking in hopes to get an audience. This is great info thanks for the tips! The last part about utilizing bold headlines is something I’m going to have to try
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Looking at better headline titles as we speak! Thank you 🙂
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Their people who make a difference and you are one of them. Thank you for letting us know where we are going wrong.
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This is great thank you 🙂
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Thank you!
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