Content Conversion: Dodge 32 Mistakes for Better Engagement

Common Content Marketing Mistakes

1. Slow Loading Time

If your site takes too long to load, you'll lose visitors. Make sure your site loads quickly and easily on mobile devices and that your pages are optimized for search engines.

Several things can cause this:

• Too many images
• An abundance of widgets and other elements that take too long to load
• An excessive amount of code on your page.

If your site takes forever to respond, people will get frustrated and leave your site.

2. Poor Website Performance

Poor website performance is one of the biggest conversion killers. You can also experience poor digital content conversion rates if you don't take advantage of all the features available on your site. Ensure your website has all the elements necessary for a good user experience, such as social media integration and contact forms. According to a recent survey, poor website performance is the most common mistake made by businesses.

This can happen for a variety of reasons

1. Poor landing page design
2. Little or no video content
3. Too many redirects (or redirect chains)

3. Telling Your Audience Who You Are

One thing that makes content marketing so powerful is the ability to tell a story. You are the author, you know your brand and what it stands for, and you know what your audience wants most from you. Be authentic in telling your audience who you are. Have a conversation with them. You're trying to convince them that what you have is worth their time and attention.

It's important to ensure your tone is friendly, relatable, and conversational. When writing content for conversion, think about how you would talk to someone in person if they asked you the same question.

• Would you be excited or matter-of-fact?
• Would you use more formal language or more casual?

When connecting with your audience on a more personal level, ensure that you're doing so genuinely, not forcefully.

4. Target Audience

If you're having trouble deciding what kind of content would appeal to your target audience, here are some common mistakes to avoid:

• Don't be vague about what you're selling
• Don't focus on features rather than benefits
• Don't take yourself too seriously
• Not Focusing on Your Client

You need to know your audience and what type of content will resonate with them. If it's not relevant, they won't read it. It would be best to show them your product or service is relevant and valuable to them.

5. Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to reach your audience. However, here are some social media mistakes you should avoid if you want to ensure your efforts are worthwhile:

• Mistake #1: Not using hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to expand your reach and increase engagement with users who might not be following you currently. For example, adding the hashtag "#marketing" or "#ecommerce" to your post can bring in new followers interested in those topics.

• Mistake #2: Not posting often enough

While posting too often can annoy followers, not posting enough can bore them! If you only post once or twice a week, people won't consider your account active and might unfollow you. You might be tempted just to throw up a few posts and call it a day. However, if you want your social media presence to be successful, you'll need to do some work.

• Mistake #3: Not monitoring your analytics

If you're not monitoring your analytics regularly and tracking the results of your efforts, you won't know what's working (or not) on social media. This will make it impossible for you to tell which posts are drawing in new followers or leads and which ones aren't worth the effort.

6. Headlines

Headlines are your first chance to convince a reader to click through.

Here are the top mistakes people make when writing headlines:

• Writing a boring headline that doesn't explain what the post is about or why someone should care
• Focusing on keywords instead of an engaging, benefit-driven headline
• Trying to write too many different types of headlines at once

7. Visual Interest

Images are great for adding variety and visual interest to your posts. However, it's essential to ensure the images you use are relevant to the content of your post. If you're writing about a new product release, for example, don't just throw up an image of a happy customer; make sure it relates directly to the product or service you're talking about.

If you want to use images in your posts, ensure they're high quality and look professional.

Videos are another great way to add variety and visual interest to your content.

8. Copyediting and Proofreading

Copyediting is correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage errors in a piece of writing. It should be done before you get to proofreading. If you don't edit your work first, you could miss important details that could otherwise make or break your content.

Proofreading is the process of looking for typos and other errors after the copyediting process has been completed. It's also essential to make sure everything flows together well and that there are no inconsistencies in the language used throughout your piece.

9. Measure Content Performance

It's easy to get too busy or feel too overwhelmed to take the time to measure what your content is doing. However, if you don't know where you're at, how can you know where to go?

• Start with the basics: How many views does each piece of content get? How many shares does it generate? How long do people stay on each page?
• Look at long-term trends: If a particular piece of content is getting more traction than usual, is there something special about it? Does this mean there's an opportunity for more engagement and sharing?
• Check out competitors' actions: Are they using similar language or tone? Are they posting similar types of content? What kind of results are they getting?

10. What Is Your Audience Searching For

To maximize your audience's interest in your content, you need to know what they are searching for. The best way to find out what people are searching for is by using Google Analytics. Google Analytics will tell you what keywords people use when searching for things related to your business. It also gives you data about the number of visitors who arrived on your site because of a specific keyword search.

11. Disregarding the Stages of a Buyer's Journey

If you're trying to sell a high-priced product or service, do your best not to give away too much information in the first paragraph. People are looking for a solution. They don't want to read through a whole blog post before they find out what it is they can buy from you.

However, if you're marketing a low-cost or free product (like an e-book), don't be afraid to write as much as possible about it.

12. Failing to Plan Content in Advance

It's no secret that content is the lifeblood of your blog. However, content doesn't just happen; it needs to be planned and strategized like any other part of your marketing strategy.

Planning your content is like planning any other aspect of your business. It takes some work upfront, but it will pay off big time!

Decide what kind of content you want to create. You can either pick one type (like blog posts) or split them into categories (like posts about SEO). Then determine how often you want your content to post.

13. Writers

You can hire writers and content creators to help with your website, social media channels, and other marketing efforts. As you consider hiring a writer for your business, consider these mistakes to avoid:

• Overlooking Your Writers' Understanding of Your Business

First and foremost, ensure that the writer understands your business before they begin writing content for you. If they don't know what you do or who your customers are, they won't be able to create content that speaks directly to those people.

• Writing Without a Defined Brand Voice

No matter how great the content is on its own merits, it will stand out like a sore thumb if it doesn't use the same voice as everything else on your site.

• Publishing Content as Received from the Writers

It's also important that you don't publish content received from the writers without checking it. Make sure you go through it yourself before publishing.

• Hiring Writers

Ensure they have experience writing content for your niche.

14. Creating One 'Endless' Long-form Content for Each Topic

One of the worst mistakes you can make when creating content is writing a long-form article covering every aspect of a topic. This is boring and difficult for people to find what they're looking for. Focus on creating valuable, relevant content to help your target audience solve their problems.

15. Excluding Your Sales Team from the Content Creation Process

The content creation process is a team effort. When creating new content for your website, blog, or social media platforms, some business owners make the mistake of excluding their sales team from the content creation process.

Although marketing teams are responsible for creating content that will drive traffic and lead generation, sales teams have valuable insight into what content resonates with customers.

By including your sales team in the creation process, you'll be able to create better content overall.

16. SEO

Optimizing your content for search engines is critical to the modern marketing mix. You must take the time to ensure your content is optimized correctly. This will help ensure it ranks higher in SERP (search engine result page).

It's easy to get distracted by all the different SEO strategies. People often confuse content strategy with SEO strategies. While they both play an essential role in any good marketing strategy, they're not the same! Content strategy helps determine what kind of content will resonate with your audience. SEO strategies help ensure people find it when they search for something relevant to your business or industry.

17. Relevant Internal and External Links

Internal links are a great way to keep your site organized and navigable. They make it so readers can jump from one part of your content to another without leaving the page, which is especially useful for long pieces.

External links are also important for SEO. They tell search engines your content is related to other relevant topics, which gives your site more credibility.

18. The Right Calls To Action 

The right call to action (CTA) is a crucial part of your landing page. It makes you stand out from the crowd and can help you convert more visitors into customers.

Your CTA needs to be clear-cut and easy to understand.

So how can you create a compelling CTA? Start by asking yourself these questions:

• What do I want my visitor to do?
• What action will benefit them most?
• Is my CTA clear and concise?
• Is it easy for the visitor to understand?
• Is this C-TA consistent with my brand voice and tone?

19. Publishing Content Regularly

Publishing content consistently is one of the most important things you can do to grow your blog and reach more people. If you don't publish regularly, it's unlikely that anyone will ever find your blog.

Publishing content consistently also helps with SEO. Google wants to know you're an active website providing value to its users. If you want to get noticed by Google and other search engines, it's essential to post regularly so that they can index your content easily.

20. Too Many Typos: Content Having Errors

Typos are the bane of any writer's existence. This is because there are so many ways to make them.

Being vigilant about typos is important. They can impact your credibility as an author. There are plenty of tools out there that can help you spot mistakes before publishing content!

21. Not Creating Buyer Personas

The purpose of a buyer persona is to help guide your content creation efforts by focusing on how you can best address the needs of that specific type of customer.

22. Stealing Others' Content; Being Original

One of the most common conversion mistakes is stealing content from other websites. When you're trying to get customers to visit your website, you want them to be excited about what you have to offer. However, you don't want them to come across a page that looks like every other company in your industry wrote it.

Research! Find out what other companies are doing, and then find out how they're doing it better than you. Your goal is to create a unique experience for each visitor, and sticking with the same tried-and-true formula won't get you there.

23. Content

Are you making any of these common mistakes when it comes to content?

• Uninteresting and Non-Creative Content

If your content is dull, boring, and uninspiring, it will not catch your target audience's attention. Therefore, you must write exciting and engaging content. It would be best to use words that will excite your audience about what they're reading.

• Not Focusing on Quality and Fresh Content

You can't just churn out mediocre content without thinking about how fresh or relevant it is for your target audience. Instead, focus on providing quality content created by professionals who understand the needs of their target audience.

• Creating Content with Little Value

It's also essential you don't create content with little value for your target audience. This will make them lose interest in what you offer.

24. Stay in the Funnel

If you're a content creator, losing traffic in the conversion funnel is one of the worst things that can happen to you.

The funnel is the process by which people enter your site and go through a series of steps, eventually leading to a purchase or other desired outcome. Unfortunately, if you're not tracking how many people are falling out of the funnel at each stage, it's easy to lose track of what's going wrong.

Staying in the funnel means staying on-topic with your content and avoiding anything that would drive away potential customers.

This includes:

• Off-topic content
• Too much information
• Bad design

25. Mismatch Between Expectations and Reality

When it comes to content conversion, one of the biggest mistakes companies make is not keeping their expectations in line with reality.

When it comes to conversion rate optimization and content marketing, there are no shortcuts. You can't just throw money at the problem and expect everything to be okay. Instead, you have to be smart about promoting your product or service, which means setting realistic goals.

26. No Customer Support or Help Available

You must have customer support when trying to sell your services or product. Your customers should be able to reach out. If there is no way for your customers to contact you, it can make them likely to purchase from you.

27. Treat Accessibility as a Value Add

When creating a new piece of content, ensure it's accessible to all your readers. For example, your content should be written in an easy-to-understand way that uses clear language. As a result, your audience can understand the information in your article, and they'll be more likely to pay attention because they don't have to work as hard to read it.

If you're writing something like an article or blog post, you should never forget that your readers may be skimming through it quickly. If your writing is too complicated for them, then they might skip over it entirely.

28. Force the Connection

No matter your sales goals, you want your content to seem like it's written for the reader—not just for you. The only way to do that is to avoid "force-fitting" your content into a sales pitch. For example, if your product is a new skincare line and the blog post's goal is to get people interested in buying it, try not to say things like "our products are better than the competitor's." Instead, talk about how the product works and why it's excellent without mentioning your competitor.

29. Fail to Get Sufficient Information

To convert your web visitors into customers, you must ensure you're asking for enough information. If you're not asking for enough information about your site visitors, you're missing out on opportunities to personalize their experience.

30. Not Exploring Different Content Channels

When it comes to content marketing, it's easy to get stuck in a rut. If you want your content to stand out and be shared by your audience, try switching things up! Try exploring new channels like podcasts, interviews, or videos. You can always repurpose existing blog posts as podcasts or videos.

31. Not Making Good Use of Your Evergreen Content

If you're not using your evergreen content well, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to boost your content conversion rate.

Why? Because evergreen content is simply that, content that isn't tied to any specific date or time and can be repurposed at any time in the future. Evergreen content is precious because it's:

• Always relevant
• Always fresh
• Always current

If you aren't taking the time to repurpose evergreen content, you're wasting an opportunity to increase your conversion rate.

32. Hiring Professionals

Hiring professionals is a great way to ensure your content conversion campaign is on track. However, like any other business practice, there are certain things you should watch out for when hiring a professional.

First and foremost, hire someone with experience in your industry from a personal perspective. If they've never worked in your industry, they may not understand what kind of language and tone will most effectively convert customers. Even if they have experience writing about another similar product or service, the writer must understand how yours works to describe it to readers accurately.

Hiring a professional content writer is the best way to optimize your content visibility, increase your website's popularity, search engine optimization (SEO), and generate more leads you can convert into customers. Designers and writers can work together to create engaging, compelling articles.

Conclusion

If you're ready to create more articles for your business, find a designer in gardenpatch right now. Hiring gardenpatch has never been so simple! From calling and meeting with potential clients to ensuring everything is running on schedule, content conversion tools and services are a great solution if you don't have the capacity to handle all your content needs.

Talk to one of our growth specialists today!