23 Wrong Ways To Execute Your Content Strategy

A core component of every business’ digital marketing strategy is to have a great content strategy. However, there is a wrong way to execute your marketing strategy. In fact, there are 23 wrong ways to execute your strategy.

Whether it’s blogs, videos or social media posts, a content strategy can dramatically improve a business’ online presence, affecting SEO, brand recognition, and conversion rates, so it’s important to recognize these mistakes and avoid them at all costs.

1. You’re Not Having A Clear Objective

If your company is creating content just because a consultant or blog told you so, you’re neglecting your content strategy.

You should have a clear focus as to why you’re creating content. Are you driving traffic to your website? Do you want your target audience to buy your new product? These are a few questions you should be asking yourself when executing your content strategy.

2. You Don’t Understand Your Audience

Knowing your audience should be a top priority in all aspects of your business. Your content strategy should cater to them; not create something that you or your boss like.

Making content that doesn’t resonate with your audience is a waste of company resources and can even backfire and hurt your brand. You want to make sure that the content you produce is exactly what your audience wants to read and share.

3. You’re Using Unimaginative Ideas And Themes

Similarly to a lack of understanding with your audience, using regurgitated or cliche content is a terrible way to represent your content strategy.

Your content will most likely be buried in the depths of the internet and will also show a lack of originality, something that every user craves. Try outside-the-box thinking when coming up with topics or content delivery.

4. You’re Not Delivering Your Content Correctly

Part of the reason your content strategy is failing is because you are not delivering it the right way.

Whether you’re choosing the wrong channels, the wrong mediums, or you’re taking too long to execute, delivering your content in a way that doesn’t resonate with your target audience will always yield poor results.

5. You Have A Bad Promotional Campaign

You’ve created an excellent piece of content, but when you begin to promote it, no one responds. That the direct result of a bad promotional campaign.

Figure out where your audience likes to consume their content and cater it to them. There should be no reason your promotional campaigns aren’t aligned with what your following believes in.

6. There’s A Lack Of Promotion

On the other hand, not promoting enough will severely hurt your entire content strategy. Thinking that because you created it people will flock to it is an arrogant and unwise decision when executing your content strategy

Put the time and effort to promote your content adequately on all your audience’s preferred channels.

7. You’re Promoting To The Wrong Channels.

While we’re on the subject of media channels, choosing the wrong platforms to deliver your content will lead your content to be undiscovered and rot.

Much like point #4, understanding what resonates with your audience is key, so focusing on the wrong channels will limit your reach and hurt your strategy in the long run.

8. You’re Publishing Your Content Too Late

There are thousands of blogs and other pieces of content posted every day, so you may take a lax approach when publishing your content.

This kind of thinking not only encourages lackadaisical habits, it hinders your potential reach and ultimately can make your content irrelevant in a short period of time. You’ll lose precious momentum to swing your company’s recognition in a positive direction.

9. Not Using All Of Your Resources

In order to execute your strategy, you must use all of your resources to deliver the best content possible.

Ignoring the tools readily available to you, such as analytics, and overloading one aspect of your strategy without a balanced approach will increase your chances of failure. Make sure you’re using everything at your disposal when executing a solid content strategy.

10. There’s A Lack Of Organization

Your content strategy should be treated like a startup in the sense that there needs to be structure, a procedure, and goals to execute.

If you fail to have this foundation in your strategy, chances are your execution will be faulty at best. Create a content calendar and designated people at all times to both produce and maintain your content strategy.

11. You’re Not Planning Ahead Of Time

Much like lacking structure, not planning or looking ahead into your content’s future will be detrimental to your strategy.

If you think in the short term, you won’t reap all the benefits you could potentially reap with your content. Thinking ahead of time is solid business advice regardless, so it’s important to adapt that mentality in all aspects of your content strategy.

12. Setting Your Expectations Too High

Creating a blog can create great opportunities for your business such as building your email list, improving your SEO, and leveraging a following. Just don’t expect that to happen right away.

It takes time, roughly 6 months, to see your content strategy produce results. If you set the bar too high, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and can even be a costly investment. Play the long game and your strategy will be working to your advantage.

13. Your Execution Is Inconsistent

One of the reasons most businesses fails isn’t because their ideas weren’t sound; it’s because they couldn’t execute their plan consistently.

The same applies to your content strategy. If you’re sporadic with your postings and don’t have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish with your content, it will crash and burn. That doesn’t mean you need to produce content every single second of the day, but you do need to have consistency in your strategy for it to yield a positive return for your business.

14. Your Sole Focus Is Self-Promotion

Creating content is a great way to showcase your brand, what you stand for and even showcase your products. But if that’s all you’re talking about, your audience will tune you out and have a negative view on your company, not your content.

People want to receive value whenever they consume content, and if all you’re providing is information about your company, your audience will see eventually get tired of reading the same type of content. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be promoting your brands. Just make sure you have a nice balance between offering value and showcasing your brand.

15. You Use Too Many Keywords

Using the right keywords for your content is a great way to improve your overall strategy. It allows search engines and visitors to find you easier and associate yourself with the right niches and industries.

That being said, overloading your content with keywords will hurt your strategy. It can negatively affect your SEO ranking and more importantly, deter your audience to consuming your content. A good rule of thumb is to create content people want to see first, then focus on your keywords.

16. You’re Not Repurposing Your Content

When developing a content strategy, choosing a focus and a medium to launch your content is an excellent choice when it comes to execution. The problem arises when you’re not exploiting that same content in different forms.

For instance, a blog post can easily become a social media update, a video, and a topic of discussion on a podcast. This is known as repurposing and can generate a much larger audience for your content to reach.

17. You Have Zero “Call-To-Actions”

You’ve crafted an excellent piece of content, used all your resources and have promoted it in your relevant channels. But how can you fully capitalize if there are no directions you want your audience to do?

Having a Call-To-Action on your content can further improve your strategy by literally telling people what you’d like for them to do. Maybe you’d like for them to share your content, sign up for a newsletter or follow you on social media. Regardless of your intentions, not having a proper Call-To-Action is a missed opportunity to use your content to it’s fullest potential.

18. You’re Copying Your Competitors

It’s been said that imitation is the best form of flattery, but with content, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, copying what your competitors are doing not only buried your content into obscurity, it can damage your reputation and not generate the results you want.

It’s important to realize that there are tried and true methods to a content strategy which should be fully explored but trying to emulate one brand’s success won’t guarantee yours. Create content that resonates with your brand and your strategy will flourish.

19. Not Focusing On The Data

Your analytics are your most important tool when executing a content strategy. They can give you crucial insights on your audience including what content resonates best, the best times to post your content, and even break down your demographics.

When you ignore these pieces of information, it’s as if you are driving blind. Learning and understanding your data can further improve your content strategy and even help you craft better content that your audience wants.

20. Having The Wrong People Execute Your Strategy

Nothing can hurt your strategy more than having the wrong people executing your content. Just because you have a copywriter on your team doesn’t mean they’ll know how to craft a compelling blog post that your target audience wants.

In the same vein, you don’t want people who lack an understanding of your strategy as a whole to manage and promote your content as they won’t fully grasp the benefits and reasons you’re creating content in the first place.

21. Your Wasting Time

Creating the “perfect” piece of content should be your goal, but it shouldn’t dominate all of your time. Waiting for the right moment or executing too slowly can also contribute to a lackluster content strategy.

Your efforts and energy can also be wasted by promoting on the wrong channels, targeting the wrong audience, and even creating the wrong content for your brand. Evaluate your goals with your content strategy and make sure you know exactly what it’s being used for.

22. Not Holding Your Team Accountable

Just like creating goals and metrics for your company, your content strategy needs to have the same application, and that starts with holding your content team members responsible.

Having a loose structure and not having your team focus on the overall content strategy can both damage your content and your brand. Have your team members hone in on the bigger objectives and make sure they have a structure to follow and evaluate their performance when executing.

23. A Lack Of Investment

The #1 factor for your content strategy failing is a lack of investment. This can manifest in different ways such as a lack of investment in promoting, a lack of investment in your resources, and most importantly, a lack of investment of your time to do things right.

This doesn’t mean you need to exhaust your entire budget to your content strategy, but putting in the time and effort to create great, compelling content is the key to your success. Without an investment, your content strategy is doomed from the beginning.

Creating a content strategy can be both rewarding and beneficial for your brand, so it’s important to cover all your bases and be sure that you’re executing at a high level. Once your strategy is in place, you’ll be able to become more efficient and reach the next plateau of your business’ success.