It’s easy to make content marketing mistakes, especially when you’re first using online content to promote your business.

People like you and me — people who actually care about the audience we want to reach with our content — can come out winning when bad content marketing proliferates.

Why?

Because we know better.

Let’s start by looking at content marketing mistakes straight in the eye with an unflinching gaze …

The most common content marketing mistakes:

1. Unfocused content that rambles on and on
2. Content that looks like a big, unbroken “wall of text”
3. Overtly promotional content that reads like a sales brochure
4. “Lite” content that is too short on details to be useful
5. Content that’s unoriginal or (even worse) boring
6. Visually dull content with zero images of any kind

You’ve seen these mistakes. Maybe you’ve made them yourself from time to time.

Truth is, in 2020, it’s more challenging than ever to stand out online.

I believe bad content is a good thing for those of us who truly care.

You see, there’s a process of natural selection happening right under our noses online.

And those of us who take the time to learn a process for creating consistent, high-quality content that genuinely serves our audience?

We’re going to come out on top of the evolutionary heap.

Choose to avoid making content marketing mistakes

There are two types of people creating content on the internet today:

• People who create high volume, low-quality content. These people aren’t getting results the way they used to. And …
• People like you and me, who genuinely care about the audience we want to attract. We’re willing to put in some time and effort to create content that stands out.

I know you care.

First though, you might be wondering …

Do I have to be a writer to use content marketing?

A quick story:

Back in 2010, I knew I wanted to build an online business.

And I knew that the #1 way to reach the people I wanted to serve (regardless of where they lived), was this thing called “content marketing.”

There was on tiny problem …

I’m not a born writer.

How was I supposed to create content when I’d never written before — especially not publicly?

Well, 10 years of blogging, plus more than 130 guest posts on sites like Copyblogger, Convince and Convert, Smartblogger, Neil Patel, Constant Contact, and Problogger — and after writing two books on content marketing — we can safely say that for this “non-writer” …

Content marketing has become an obsession for me.

(How about THAT for a run-on sentence?) ?

Content marketing isn’t working like it used to

I’m still a true believer in the power of content marketing, even as it’s getting tougher to stand out.

Just look at these stats, courtesy of Hubspot:

• Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages on search engines.
• Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to achieve a positive ROI for their efforts.
• 70-80% of users ignore paid ads and only focus on organic results.

It’s hard to ignore numbers like those.

And if I can do it, you can, too!