“Content is king,” they say and they’re not wrong. But with king-ly power comes responsibility! What you produce is public and whatever you decide to put out there controls what happens to the future of your brand. Therefore, it’s important to know common beginner’s mistakes in content marketing to prevent unwanted backlash from producing content.
Here are our top 3 beginner mistakes when making content:
1. Spreading Misinformation
The main goal of content marketing is inform your visitors. Your content influences your viewers to unconsciously support your brand because you’re giving them reasons to trust you by giving them valuable content. When you spread misinformation knowingly or unknowingly like invalid statistics or questionable facts, you’re giving your viewers a reason to not only dislike your page but also give them the impression that your brand can’t be trusted either. It takes a long time to build trust but you can lose credibility in an instant.
This is very crucial especially if you’re just beginning. Remember that first impression lasts.
If you are not new to the business and you already have a lot of loyal viewers, there’s a chance that they might let a mistake slip. You had to work a lot to build this loyalty, lets not drop the ball now for the sake of putting out content. If the content is not accurate and you are not sure if the information is correct, do not post it.
Before publishing content, always fact check and do your research no matter how knowledgeable you think you are regarding the topics that you make content about. You have absolutely every reason to play it safe.
2. Stealing Content
Viewers might not notice or even care that you have stolen content published on your page, but stealing is still a crime. Someone else worked hard to create that content. It’s definitely okay to take inspiration from another piece of content but not okay to copy and paste the whole thing and change a few words, or use a article spinner. Copying someone else’s content could result in legal lawsuits.
If you’re not familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it is a law that heightens penalties for copyright infringement on the internet. If you are found stealing content, it is likely for you to receive a DMCA notice.
If you find someone stealing your content you are also entitled to file a DMCA complaint. Find out how you can file a DMCA complaint here.
Looking at other content is good. In fact, it is recommended to be able to know which content people really like to see so that you may draw inspiration from them and create even better things. What’s not good is when you claim their content as yours. If you really need to use other brands’ content, summarise it and put a link to the original article in your main content.
3. Pushing Too Many Boundaries
A survey from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) and Brand Safety Institute (BSI) shows that 90% of consumers would prefer if brands stayed away from dangerous, offensive, or inappropriate content and more than 80% would reduce/stop buying from brands that are advertised near said extreme and dangerous content (read more on this link).
If your goal is to just lure visitors into viewing your content, maybe publishing something controversial would be beneficial to that goal. After all, bad publicity is still publicity, like everyone in marketing says. However, using these statistics, do you really want to risk it? Remember that you’re only just at the beginning of your content making journey. Again, first impressions last. Although sometimes, it might feel like it’s good to impart your views, it’s better to stick to people-pleasing content that would suit all kinds of people, even if you think it might help you. The greater the risk, the greater the return is not applicable to everything.
Content marketing is very effective when done right. People prefer seeing content than advertisements! But take note that your content has the ability to affect other people’s emotions and people are usually part of tribes, at least online. When you affect these viewers’ emotions negatively, it can cause major backlash. If you think making content in-house is too hard or you want to make sure that you’re doing the right thing all the time since you’re just beginning, there are a lot of resources you may refer to. Or you could always hire an expert to do your content marketing for you to make your life easier.
In Summary, there are a lot of holes in the content marketing journey, and you don’t have to fall in one of those. Follow this quick guide
- Fact check your content and if you are not sure if it’s accurate or cannot prove it, shelve it for now
- Don’t copy other people’s content, you can get ideas and write your own very similar to theirs but copying and pasting and changing a few words is no go
- Don’t push ethical boundaries and be very careful with offensive content, internet doesn’t forget and it will keep reminding you for a long time
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