7 Content Marketing Mistakes Made in 2015 — and Ways to Improve Next Year

You were ambitious this year. You built a plan. You took a class. You went to meetups, reached out to mentors, watched webinars and read articles on Medium. You took a number of positive steps in the right direction.

Of course, self reflection should also be a core part of any content marketer’s planning. As we close out 2015, it’s important to look back and identify mistakes you made, and find areas for improvement for next year.

Here are 7 of the most common mistakes content marketers made in 2015, and some tips on how to avoid them in the future:

Too Self Involved: Did you write posts for your blog only about your company, your product, your team, and your needs?

The Fix: Focus on your customers. Develop a deep understanding of their pain points and aim to create content that helps them achieve their goals.

Too Easy: Did you fail to tie content marketing efforts to hard lead generation numbers? Did you measure success based only on raw output? Number of blog posts or Twitter updates?

The Fix: Tie your content marketing efforts directly to sales. Start evaluating efforts on how many marketing leads your sales team can actually work, not just total responses.

Too Insular: Did you fail to develop a content partner strategy? Did you find like minded thought leaders to help validate your ideas and approach?

The Fix: Fear of rejection is the most common reason these efforts never get off the ground. Just accept some rejection as par for the course and pursue multiple opportunities.

Too Reactionary: Did you post on social media infrequently? When you did, was it mostly in response to complaints?

The Fix: Get excited about social and take it seriously. It can be a long slog, but once you achieve scale it’s powerful. Just ask Oreo. Or Burger King. Or Toyota.

Too Impatient: Did you stop investing in your content initiatives like social media or blogging because they didn’t show results in only 30 days?

The Fix: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Great content marketing takes both patience and skill. There are no shortcuts to building a following who actually loves your content. Stick with it.

Too Smart: Did you fail to understand your customer? Did you create content that was too sophisticated and hard for them to understand?

The Fix: Smart people value smarts. Customers on the other hand, value products that solve their problems. Stay focused on your customer’s needs.

Too Ambitious: Did you poorly execute on your content plan because it was too ambitious and resource intensive?

The Fix: Start small and get the basics right. Blogging, social media and email are the building blocks of effective content marketing. Show progress and upgrade tools when the time is right.

Perhaps you didn’t make any of these mistakes? That’s great, you’re on track for another successful year of content marketing. However, if you found you made one, or two, or even more of the mistakes above, don’t get discouraged. Get motivated and put a plan in place now so you can avoid making the same mistakes next year.

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7 Content Marketing Mistakes Made in 2015 — and Ways to Improve Next Year