10 Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

The written word is very important when it comes to content marketing. Reading gives the reader time to understand how everything fits together.


And reading is best when it comes to tutorials. As the student can copy the example, correct mistakes, and understand how the model works.

Many writers make mistakes with content marketing and are left wondering why their content was not received well. Below are 10 content marketing mistakes to avoid.

1. Pushing and promoting social media tools

I can't count how many articles I have read (that get a lot of shares) that promote social media automation tools.


At a basic level, it's good to have a posting automation tool, and following tool, but all these tools add to the blogger's monthly expenditure.


There's one tool that helps you follow hundreds of followers without getting on Twitter's radar for doing the wrong thing, but on top of your monthly subscription fee, you have to pay to follow a batch of 100 or 1000 people.



Yes, they make you pay US10 or US$20 to follow people. This is how they can afford to have an affiliate program.




It can be attractive to sign up, but I don't believe in ripping people off to the tune of over US$100. There are alternatives out there where you pay the subscription fee and are not billed again until the next month.




Unless you have a business that is making huge amounts of money or money is no object to you, you will search for an alternative.

2. Filling Articles With Fluffy And Time Filling Stories

Personal stories that illustrate points made in the blog post are good but stories about how your cat played with some wool for twenty minutes do nothing beneficial to get me 500 extra Twitter followers per month.



And repeating a point that you have already made for the second or third time also constitutes filler.

3. Writing Articles About The Same Topic

If you keep repeating yourself and write content about the same content with different wording, this can annoy readers and make them stay away.



It is usual for many bloggers to refresh old content and re-purpose, and bring it up to date, but other articles in your blog will need to be written about other topics to maintain reader interest.

4. Not Promoting Content 

You need to promote your content in social media and content sharing portals to ensure you are not writing content to pass the time.



There are many content sharing portals to choose from. These include article sites like Medium, or portals like Triberr, and a gamified site like Empire.Kred.




Medium allows you to post an article on their site and then share it on social media. Members of the site can browse Medium's articles and also share them on social media. The standard of writing varies depending on the article's subject matter and the author.



I have not used Triberr much but I understand that you can follow other authors and share their content with other people that are following you (members of your tribe).




Empire.Kred is networking gamified. You are given an amount of currency to get started to buy shares in other members.



It really depends on people with more shares buying shares in you to give you a chance to play the game.



You can, of course, buy currency from the shop and become wealthy in that way.



It depends on you playing every day and networking with other players.




Another thing that can attract buyer is sharing your social media and blogging accounts with other players.



If you are not sharing anything about yourself then you are not as interesting as someone who is sharing information.

5. Keyword Stuffing

Google and other search engines now penalize websites that keyword stuff and that write only to secure a search engine ranking.



If you keyword stuff you might think you will secure a high search engine ranking but the most important reader, the person, will quickly hit the back button if your content is substandard.



SEO is important but you really only need to use a keyword once in the first sentence, once in the body, and once in the conclusion.



It's best to write around keywords rather than write for them. You are writing about a subject and sharing information to help the reader not to write about a keyword.

6. Using Acronyms and casual lingo

Using undefined acronyms can be extremely irritating for the reader when reading your article as the meaning gets blurry.



Journalists in news articles often do this and do not seem to be writing for the reader at all but to do a job.



Some bloggers will use casual lingo to maybe be seen as being friendly.



All it seems to be is out of place. You are reading an article with language that should be professional and not a fiction article with characters.

7. Writing Your Article In Broken English

Articles written in broken English don't make for fluent reading and make the writer's point difficult to understand.



If you are learning English practice your article writing until you can write an article that English readers can understand.



The short-term solution to needing to set up a blog or website with well-written articles is to hire a freelance writer to write the articles for you.

8. Using Spun Articles

Article spinning software may be improving but the end product is often of a poor standard.



Using spun articles really indicates to the reader that you are not interested in helping the reader with their problem, but instead are only interested in finances.

9. Selling

Readers do not read blogs to be sold to. If the reason you are blogging is to sell the mirage of never leaving the beach and driving a convertible sports car, most readers have already seen their share.




Blog posts need to be written to solve a problem and help the reader.



Everyone has seen the amazing income screenshots and photos of sports cars and mansions that can be downloaded on the internet.




The blogger's job if they are promoting a product is to give information about the product and pre-sell the customer and get the customer ready to buy.



The sales page does the selling.

10. Not Including Images In The Article

Writers that don't put themselves in the reader's shoes are writing to get a job done.



Expecting the reader to wade through large slabs of text with no whitespace or images to give the eyes a rest, risk a high bounce rate.



Images help to illustrate the writer's point and get the reader to picture how all the points fit together.

By avoiding these 10 content marketing mistakes your content will assist the reader better and as a result, lead to longer sessions of articles read on your blog.



And more people reading and sharing your content.