Creating content is a great method to stay connected with your audience and to provide them with informational and entertaining posts, whether via a blog or social media, which in turn will boost engagement and visibility and help you with branding your business. However, it is no easy feat, and it is certainly not meant for everyone. And any veteran content creator will agree with me on the fact that there are many obstacles along the road, and it will become easier with experience since you will be able to pinpoint which mistakes to avoid, and in this blog post we will discuss exactly that in the hope of making your lives a little easier!
Creating Content for the Sake of Creating Content
Yes, posting content consistently on your platforms is quite important and should not be taken for granted, but at the same time if you are only delivering irrelevant content that does not align with your brand you will be taking several steps back rather than going forward. In fact, the main aim of content creation is to showcase the brand of your business and familiarize your audience with your niche. This way they will know what type of content to expect from you and will be looking forward to it, thus, do not post randomly and without a strategy since it can come to bite you later!
Not Targeting a Specific Audience
Earlier we mentioned finding your niche, this step is very important in order for you to target a specific audience. You should not try to create content that caters to everyone, rather focus on one single target audience and try to personalize your content towards what they want to see and read. This will help in planning future posts as well as researching that specific subject or area of concern.
Not Targeting the Right Audience
This one might be a little tricky but bear with us! We insisted on focusing on a single target audience but it also needs to be the right one. That being said, if you target the wrong one, you will find great difficulties in connecting with them and it can affect your engagement rates. The perfect audience has to share the same values and beliefs as your business so that they will be interested in what you have to say and share on your platforms.
Not Having a Clear Vision or Goal
Finding your personal goal and vision should be done before starting to create content. People love authenticity and uniqueness; thus, you need to find what makes you different as a brand and what you specialize in. For example, if you are a makeup brand, try to focus on beauty related content that you know will attract you audience and stimulate their curiosity. By posting beauty hacks, new trends, and other similar stuff your audience will stay engaged and will automatically link your brand with those specific topics.
Focusing on Quantity Over Quality
This is a trap that most amateurs fall in. We keep insisting on consistency over and over to the point where small businesses and new pages will endeavor to maintain a posting schedule for everyday without giving a great care to the contents of their posts. However, it must be brought to light the fact that a few amazing posts a week will provide a better result than several average out of the mill posts. Quality over quantity is the key for everything, and content creation is no different, so make sure that all your posts are thought out and well planned!
Not Using Images or Videos
Images and videos are essential tolls that you should be taking advantage of right now! Nowadays, all content is visualized to the point where people do not have the patience nor the willingness to read a long boring post full of paragraphs. For this reason, pictures are the ideal way to break your posts in order to keep you audience engaged and focused, and videos are great alternative to articles in you want to spice things up! Try alternating between written and visual content for ultimate results. Our personal favorites at the moments are reels, we just can’t get enough of them!
Creating Irrelevant or Outdated Content
You must stay on your top game or else you’ll be left behind or forgotten! No one likes old content that has been used over and over again, it will become repetitive and boring and you will find yourself losing reader or followers as a result. So, to steer clear of this situation, I usually look for inspiration by skimming through the posts of other accounts in my niche. It’s a great method to stay updated and look what is working and what is not, as well as finding new ideas foe my future content!
Not Measuring your Content Strategy Results
Yes, it is true that it’s not good to be obsessed with numbers and engagement rates, but it is still essentials to be on the know about what is giving you good results and what should be changed or removed completely! For this step an analytics tool is needed to make this tedious process easy and quick. Personally, I prefer using Growapp to track our social media traffic and engagement rates, since it can go back to really olde posts and compare them with your current ones, and it also allows me to see how am I doing compared to my competitors, this way it keeps me on my toes and encourage me to do even better!
What do you think? These are all mistakes that are pretty easy to avoid if you know what you’re doing, and not diving head first into content creation. As they say, work smarter not harder and don’t be afraid to cheat your way towards success!
If you are interested in learning more about this subject or other related ones, feel free to check our blog posts here.