You know that brand publishing is the content marketing direction for 2015. You know the elements of brand publishing that will strengthen your social media platforms. You have spent 2014 building your content campaigns and you are now resolved to go in all the directions you identified to be a brand publishing great! With 2015 in view, you are ready to push your content efforts into overdrive by utilizing every methodology and strategy to deliver content success!
There’s just one problem: You are going to fail.
Why? You are poised to make 5 major content mistakes that will sideline your comprehensive brand publishing intentions – forcing you to rethink your content marketing path in 2015 as you curb your enthusiasm to achieve greater, more targeted content success.
Watch out for these 5 crushing content mistakes – all threats to successful brand publishing!
You don’t know your buyer personas! Who are your buyers? Who is your target audience? What research have you done to determine the social media habits of your key buyers? How can you deliver a cross-platform content strategy incorporating blogging, social media, inbound marketing, thought leadership positioning – and not know with conviction exactly who you are targeting as readers? Identifying your buyer personas will result in your content being tailored for your ideal audience – your best customers and potential customers. Before you launch a content marketing strategy to propel your brand publishing, take time to uncover who your buyers are – and what topics matter to them most.
You are doing too much content – too fast! You know content will create opportunities for social media ambassadors, brand loyalists, SEO gains and increased lead generation. You are hungry to be an epic brand publisher! You are going to put out white papers, ebooks, blogs, social media campaigns, email newsletters and you are going to power out as much thought leadership as you can with great guest blogs and contributed expert articles on multiple industry platforms. Take a moment to contemplate the enormity of this exercise in content creation. If you are a one man band or have a small staff, can you really hit all the content marks at the same time? How much time are you going to focus on blogging, as opposed to creating inbound content pieces? How many content directions are you traveling in – and can you maintain your course? Before you launch out in a score of content directions, get organized – and be realistic! You do not want to generate content with a volume approach – you want and need consistency and quality to achieve brand publishing validity. Create a content plan that is not only effective, but attainable – and do it smart.
You don’t know anything about adaptive content! According to the Content Marketing Institute, adaptive content is a content strategy technique designed to support meaningful, personalized, interactions across all channels. The urgency of supporting personalization that considers multiple channels is apparent from stats like these. Ninety-four percent of businesses say personalization is key to success. And 48 percent of shoppers say they prefer to use a smartphone to shop while actually standing inside stores. Today’s consumers want to see personalization somewhere in your content stream. Why? It reflects not only your ability to relate to their motives, challenges and needs, but also expresses your desire to deliver a superior and uniquely tailored customer experience. Adaptive content can boost presale and marketing content, as well as influence post-sale engagement. Researching and incorporating elements of adaptive content will benefit your 2015 content strategy greatly.
You don’t really get the power of inbound! Inbound marketing is everything from optimizing blog content to generating website traffic and conversions with strategic white papers and more. Inbound marketing is about developing customer-centric content and leveraging that content to produce results — new clients. Inbound marketing is all about creating original content that engages your target audience — buyer persona — in a conversation. According to HubSpot, inbound content best practices include researching and understanding buyer personas, creating content tailored to both your buyer’s persona and your buyer’s three journey stages — awareness, consideration and decision — and leveraging your content to serve your business goals by optimizing distribution channels. Creating remarkable content that is delivered to your ideal audience via your blog, social platforms and website is the core of inbound content strategy. Go inbound in 2015 — and see how your buyers react.
You have no plan for videos! How can you call yourself a brand publisher when you have no intention of incorporating videos – or visual content in general – into your branded content? To be a brand publishing influencer, you must boost your social media platforms with visual content – and your website should be rich with a few creative videos that share your brand, philosophy and speak to your buyers. You should have at least one great video on your website that points to your branding, services and power. If you are committed to being a brand publishing great in 2015, you must incorporate a strategic and vibrant visual element into your content strategy – one that supports your overall marketing drives. Get creative with infographics, memes, charts, graphs and even cartoons to tell your brand’s story and win over brand loyalists — especially on your social media platforms. Don’t have a Pinterest yet? Stop neglecting the opportunities visual content will create for your online marketing endeavors. Odds are, your competitors are moving in a visual content direction. Don’t be outdone or outdated.