Content Marketing Mistakes you should avoid as a blogger

You could be writing and publishing quality content consistently but you don’t see  any positive results in terms of engagement or traffic to your blog. “What could I be doing wrong?”,  This is the first question that crosses your mind. If your content is not bringing in the results you want, it is time you review it and find out if you could be making  some of the following content marketing mistakes.

Using text-only content

Note that content isn’t just text. There are many forms and formats such as videos, audio, white papers, infographics etc. Each type will attract a different audience if it relates to the relevant niche topics and their needs. Therefore try to find out the best form and format that engages your audience the most, and use it.

Posting content only on your blog and not promoting it

While writing quality content is a key requirement for blogging success, it could be a waste of time if you don’t promote it, in fact the content may never be seen. As soon as you hit that publishing button, it is now time to start promoting your content on various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Content Promotional Communities.

Content Marketing Mistakes you should avoid as a blogger

You can also read the following articles for more information on this:

Writing strictly for SEO and not your audience

Even though SEO is important for your blog, the first priority should be your readers.  Try to find a balance between optimizing your content for search engines and keeping your audience needs satisfied.

Blogging without a content marketing strategy

If you are blogging and you don’t have a plan on how to push your content to reach your desired audience, then you may get lost on the way. Having a content marketing strategy is like having a business map to success. This will guide you where to go, how to go there and what you need in order to reach your destination. Create a content marketing plan and follow it. You can always revisit your plan and make necessary changes.

Inability to back up your content with social proof

When you use resources to back up your ideas and assumptions, your audience will see you as an authority on the topic. Try as much as possible to give references where necessary or quote your source and link back to it so that your audience knows where you got the information from.

Overusing automation tools

While using automation tools will help you manage your social accounts easily, you need to interact with your audience to gain their respect, earn their trust and build relationships.

You can also read:

Bottom line

Becoming a successful blogger is a long learning process that requires dedication and patience. If you are making some of the above mentioned content marketing mistakes, you can easily make a correction, and see if there are changes in your results.

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Author: John Mulindi

John writes on a variety of topics. He blogs on topics ranging from social media marketing (SMM), search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, business, personal finance tech, entrepreneurship to personal development. In free time he likes watching football, reading, listening to music and taking nature walks.

244 thoughts on “Content Marketing Mistakes you should avoid as a blogger”

  1. i have been trying t push my content out to social media more but things have been breaking for a little bit

    1. Hi Jimmy, I think you should try to find out the best social media network that brings in the most engagement and focus on the one network or invest more time, don’t waste time trying to be on every network.

  2. Great tips! I love all the advice you give on your blog, not only on this article. And I really hope I will also be able to start such a lovely community and to have the engagement level you have on your blog. I am new to this but I admire the way the comment section looks on your blog. I have so much to learn just by reading it.

  3. Great tips John and still so true, I can’t pick one out as especially important as I think you have them all covered well…

    1. Hi, promotion requires time and dedication, therefore it requires effort on part of the writers and few are willing to sacrifice their time to promote. Otherwise I appreciate your feedback.

  4. John these are excellent tips. Checking in after a while; it’s been a long time since we chatted. One big error I see is a refusal to network genuinely. Bloggers usually just want to drive Google traffic and collect big checks or to manipulate fellow bloggers into giving them what they want. Neither approach works for sustainable, long term growth.

    1. Hi Ryan, I couldn’t agree more. Every one is in for something in return, and that seems to be happening all over the place. So getting genuine networkers can be challenging.

  5. Hi John,

    I never thought you could over-use automation tools.
    However, time-saving tested and tried resources and tools are, engagement gives your readers and audience the real-time experience.
    This is a golden piece of writing.

    H Emma

    1. Hi Emma, I think the key is to finding the balance in using some of these tools with human interaction. Try as much as possible to engage your audience directly in addition to utilizing automation tools otherwise thanks for reading.

  6. Great points. One of my biggest learnings since starting my blog is that the writing is the easy part. It’s everything else that takes the time.

  7. I really like this article and I love the way you are explain them all out, I am hoping to put this into practice to get more engagement for my blog. Thanks for this great ideas.

  8. Awesome article. I enjoyed reading it. Even though SEO is important for your blog, the first priority should be your readers. I like how you said trying to find a balance between optimizing your content for search engines and keeping your audience needs satisfied.

    Angela Giles | http://www.angelagiles.com

  9. great and helpful post for me thanks, all points are correct but I don’t understand what do you mean by balance between audience and search engine. how to write the content which would be perfect for search engine as well as for readers, thanks again

    1. Hi, for example writing high quality content which your audience will definitely like and stuffing it with many keywords may not work well for you when it comes to search engines like Google. That is why you need a good balance!

  10. Love this! You’re so right about writing just for SEO. I’ve seen myself fall into that hole way too many times. You always have to remember that the reader is your top priority. Great post 🙂

  11. Such great tips John. This post serves as a really great reminder that at the end of the day Blogging is done by people for people. Automation and SEO are fantastic tools, but without the personal angle, it really doesn’t work.

  12. great and informative article. This is an amazing post for new and old bloggers as a lot of old bloggers makes some of the highlighted mistakes here.

  13. Writing for your audience and seo is one of my favorite points from this post. It’s something I struggled with when I first got into seo.

    1. Hey Brianna, am grateful for your feedback. Yes getting the balance between the two can be a challenging task but once you master it, everything becomes easier with regard to SEO.

  14. I agree with your suggestions but in the same time I do struggle with my own content marketing strategy because of the constant reach lowering that the social media platforms are doing. It’s impossible to reach organically a proper audience these days, even with brilliant content.

    1. Yes, I think social media networks are putting more focus on how to generate income, hence showing more users content that has been paid to be promoted rather than high quality content that will benefit them.

  15. This was really helpful and all so true. I often see some bloggers automating stuff and I’ve also seen some focus solely on SEO and not their audience – the result was posts that were fantastic for SEO but on the whole, didn’t make much sense!

  16. Great tips and especially not being overly automated. You can tell when someone is not actually on social media except for once a week to respond and schedule more posts. #GlobalBlogging

  17. I agree with and incorporate a lot of your tips in my blog but it’s always good to have a reminder and refresh my strategy. Thank you x #GlobalBlogging

  18. One of the essential part of blogging of course, is promoting our content. I think it’s the best of all and it’s very easy to do. I have heard that other bloggers have so much difficulties on getting traffic on their blog. Thanks for these helpful tips!

  19. So glad I found your post. As a new blogger myself, its great to learn from the beginning what is needed to succeed. Thanks! Joanne

      1. Thank you for the great tips. As a fairly new blogger i failed when it came to promoting my posts. All my early posts have no engagement because of this. Im now on twitter and have just started on pinterest to help promote my posts.
        Will be using most of the tips you have mentioned here to improve myself. Thank you.

    1. Dr. Elise, yes, it is advisable to do more promotional than writing, not the other way round. Most people write more than they promote, they should try to invest a little more effort in promotion, and see how this can change their results.

  20. All excellent advice. I agree regarding the automation for social media, it has it’s place, but regular engagement is so important, although I have to be careful I do not spend too much time on social media and not get anything else done.

  21. This is a great read and I will be implementing these tips. John, if you would like to be on my podcast, I would enjoy interviewing you about your blog. Thanks Ken Baker

  22. Yup! Good advice. It’s difficult to get in there and market yourself though… day jobs, family, writing argh! Thanks for the reminder.

  23. Great information… I really need to think long and hard about a marketing strategy… There’s got to be a better way to push my content than what I’m currently doing. Lots of things to think about after reading this. Thanks!

  24. These points are so true, especially the ones regarding usability. Posts without pictures are a big no no for me. I just cannot get through big chunks of text which aren’t broken up.

    I’m proud that I’ve never written just for SEO purposes. I write what I WANT to write because I’m passionate about it. Readers can tell if you’re heart isn’t in a post and also a post littered with keywords will start to sound dull and poorly written.

    Thanks for sharing!

  25. Hi John thank you for a well thought out post i will definitely use your tips. Blogging sure is fun now with your useful ideas i may get in more traffic thanks

  26. True. I can connect to that overusing automation tools point. That’s why I never use them. No matter how strenuous it is, I prefer to do it myself. Great tips.

    1. True, I think that is the big mistakes most people make online, trying to automate everything and failing to engage with their audience themselves!

  27. Thanks for the tips. I probably need to start marketing to more social media platforms now. I just promote on Facebook and Pinterest now. Maybe Instagram next?

    1. I think you should test out and see which ones work out. I personally use Pinterest and Facebook to drive most of my traffic. Though I use other networks like twitter, linkedIn, G+ but just to a small extent.

  28. Great tips! When I first started my blog I made social media accounts but didn’t post often and didn’t engage. It wasn’t until I started regularly using social media that I began to see growth. Great advice!

  29. These are really useful tips, having a good content marketing strategy is very beneficial. Promote your content in such a way as to engage your readers more.

  30. John, I am really enjoying your blog because it is very helpful to me. My blog is promoting other blogs that 1. Are in my niche and 2. Follow my blog. I would like to promote yours if you are interested?

  31. Thank you once again! In my case I would put “POSTING CONTENT ONLY ON YOUR BLOG AND NOT PROMOTING IT” in the first place. I didn’t give much credit to all the posts about spending as much time promoting as you spend writing it but it’s true!

  32. I recently heard someone say that you should spend 10 times as much time distributing your content as you do creating it. That’s a little overwhelming to think about, but I see their point. Good tips in your post. Thanks for sharing.

  33. It’s so important for bloggers to write to their audiences and not just for SEO. Sometimes it’s hard reading some articles when you know it’s ALL just SEO. Great tips!

  34. Great tips,

    I actually today used the Anchor app to add audio clips to my posts for the first time. It definitely does add a little something extra. Still working my way up to video lol.

  35. Useful tips, especially for a beginner who can feel or get lost easily. Thank you for sharing them with us, so that the whole stuff after posting an article becomes less scary. 🙂

    1. Hi, I appreciate your comments. Twitter can generate some good traffic if well used. You need to strategize things like when to tweet, how many times, which hashtags to employ etc.

  36. This is so helpful! When I started blogging I had no idea what I was doing, and due to online communities and posts like this (and hours and HOURS searching for them) I finally got into the groove. This post is super helpful for beginners! Never be afraid to do your best work and promote yourself!

  37. Great post! I started blogging a month ago and under the importance of video. However, I don’t like my voice over audio so this will be a challenge for me to implement.

  38. Thanks for your insights. I agree, finding a balance between optimizing for search engines and people is so important. These days, I lean towards optimizing for people. If done well, you should get some good results with search engine queries.

  39. Thanks. I love to blog, but it is not as profitable as I would like. I hope to make it so this year. I really appreciated your social media suggestions.

  40. I know that this is what I am some what struggling with now. I need to make a strategy to make my post more likable. I am trying to
    hard because I need to make money with my blog yesterday! Thanks for the tips and info.

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