A while ago, I posted an article titled “8 Content Marketing Lessons I’ve Learned In 6 Months”.
Since then, another 6 months have passed, I’ve blogged for another 6 months, I’ve gained another 6 months of Content Marketing experience and here I am writing another blog posts sharing 7 important content marketing lessons with you:
1. Avoid Multitasking
Many startups or small businesses make the mistake of assigning their employees to take on too many roles at the same time, simply because there aren’t enough employees.
To be fair, many employees love multitasking as well, taking up as many roles as possible to display their full array of skills.
However, if you think that by multitasking you are saving money for the company, you are wrong, very wrong.
Dr. Susan Weinschenk, a psychologist and cognitive scientist, states that multitasking is really more of task-switching. And switching tasks rather than sticking to one single task will most likely end up taking up more time to finish.
Most of us have the misconception that we’re good at multitasking because we can switch from one task to another. But in actuality, we lose a considerable amount of focus each time we switch task, and that is causing more harm than good.
In fact, multitasking is found to be very expensive! According to studies, multitasking actually reduces productivity by a whopping 40%.
Negative effects of multitasking.
The reason why multitasking reduces productivity by such a significant amount is because every time you switch tasks, you have to backtrack and repeat a bit to find out where you last left off.
Besides that, multitasking will also damage your brain, lower your intelligence, make you more likely to cheat, lower the quality of your work, etc.
What you should do instead
Instead of picking up several tasks at the same time, focus on one single task. Focus on completing the task you have on hand before moving on to the next task.
If you have too many tasks that you need to complete and find it hard to focus on just one task, you can try listing all your tasks down on a paper or a spreadsheet. Take a few minutes to plan what you want to complete and achieve for the day. Doing so can help you improve your productivity and keep you on top of your game.
2. Use Tools
Physically, we’re not more superior than animals. We are not as strong as elephants, or gorillas, we are not as fast as cheetahs, or leopards, we can’t run for as long as horses, or camels, we can’t swim as fast as the dolphins, and we most definitely can’t fly.
But obviously, we are far ahead of all animal species because we know how to use tools. Not only do we know how to use tools, we also know how to design and invent highly complicated, effective tools to help ourselves with all sorts of tasks.
We use hammer, spanner, crowbar to leverage our strength, if that isn’t enough we have cranes, excavator, drills. We have bicycles, cars, trains, ship, planes and even rockets to help us travel around. We have the abacus, calculator, and computer to help us solve mathematical problems.
The point here is, using tools can save us from doing repetitive tasks through automation, reduce the time we need to complete a task, amplify our strength, keep us safe, reduce the amount of energy we need to exert, improve the quality of our work and ultimately, it improves our productivity.
So unless you’re a fictional character like Captain America, use an axe to split wood, not your bare hands.
“Sharpening your ax will not delay your job of cutting wood.” – Chinese proverb
It might take you some time to learn how to use a new tool or software, but once you’ve learned how to use it, you’ll save yourself a huge amount of time and energy.
Great content marketing tools you shouldn’t miss:
Buzzsumo
BuzzSumo is a great tool for finding the hottest trend on the internet in a specific niche. Just key in your search query and select what type of content you want from the left sidebar.
You can use Buzzsumo for free, however, you’ll only get the top 10 results with the free version.
SEOPressor Connect
SEOPressor Connect is suitable for anybody that owns a WordPress site and wants to SEO their site.
SEOPressor Connect would analyze your page content, then provide feedback on how you should optimize your page for search engines. SEOPressor acts like an SEO mentor that looks after your SEO and help you optimize your page.
Blog Title Generator
Blog Title Generator is one of our secret weapons against writer’s block.
We decided to create this tool a year ago when we ourselves were facing writer’s block. There were other title generators but we found them all slightly lacking. They were able to generate amazing titles, but they were are all slightly too generic and we couldn’t use them on our blog.
We wanted a title generator that could generate more specific titles, titles that are more relevant to our niche and can be defined by the category of the keywords. Which is when the idea came up for us to create our own Blog Title Generator.
Our developers and designers quickly went to work and produced this blog title generator. It is great and many bloggers have used it to inspire them and to overcome writer’s block.
Canva
Canva is a web based graphic design software that is designed for the everyday man. It doesn’t have as many functions as a professional graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, but it is sufficient enough to design simple stuff.
Whenever our graphic designers are too busy, we would use Canva to design stuff that doesn’t require too much design work such as our blog post feature image, blog images, ad banners, etc.
Grammarly
Even if you’re not a content marketer, you’ll find Grammarly to be really useful. By installing the Grammarly browser extension, you’ll get your language checked whenever you type on your browser.
This works when you are writing emails, drafting your blog post on WordPress, writing your tweet, or even replying a Facebook message. Grammarly saves you a great deal of time from double-checking for any grammar mistakes or typos and saves you from any potential humiliation of committing grammar mistakes.
3. People Love Infographics
After creating and publishing over a hundred blog posts, we found that blog posts with infographics are clear winners in term of performance.
Infographics outperform normal blog posts by almost 3 times when it comes to social shares. Other metrics such as traffic, time on page, etc are also significantly higher than posts that are without infographic.
Here are the infographic posts that we’ve published:
So what does this tells us?
This tells us that people love visual content, and infographics is a great method to present boring information in interesting ways. We know that you’ll also love infographics, which is why we’ve found an infographic to explain why people love infographics.
Credits: Neomam Studios
Although infographics would require much more effort to produce, the numbers have shown that they are worth the extra effort. If producing infographics prove to be too difficult for you to produce, you can consider outsourcing the task to freelance graphic designers.
4. Make Your Content Skimmable
“On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.”
Even if your content is really great, insightful, valuable, and must-read, your readers will still skim through your content.
Only after skimming through the entire page, your reader will decide whether they should invest more time to read your article in-depth. Therefore, if your content is not skimmable, your readers will not get anything out valuable after skimming and would just leave your page. This is why it is really important to make your content skimmable.
How To Make Your Content Skimmable
Here are some related articles that you should read to learn how you can increase the likelihood of your readers reading through your entire article:
5. Input > Process > Output
Writer’s block is a common problem for writers. To avoid having writer’s block, first, you’ll need to understand how the human brain works. Our brain works similarly to a computer, in which you need input, then you process the data, then only you are able to produce an output.
So to be able to produce an output constantly, you’ll need to feed your brain with information constantly too. And you can do that through various methods. Consume as much information as possible, read other blogs, read the comments on it, read the news, read the comics, listen to conversations, opinions, conduct your own experiments, etc.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Without input, it is simply impossible to have output. Which is why we should read as much as we could. However, the quality of your input also affects the quality of your output. Remember the GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) theory. So make sure to feed your mind with only quality information.
6. Social Media Is A Double-Edged Sword
By now, most of us should know how Social Media work, but try as we may, we will never truly understand it.
Who would have predicted that the “Damn Daniel” clip, the blue black /white gold dress, and recently, the Chewbacca mom would become viral and has everyone talking about it non-stop for days?
The dress that have everyone arguing about is color.
A mother with a Chewbacca mask became the most viewed Facebook live video.
Social media works in mysterious ways, and it is highly unpredictable. Using social media as a marketing platform could be really beneficial for your brand, but one mistake and you could destroy your reputation within seconds.
Here are some social media do’s and don’ts you should follow:
1. Be Genuine & Transparent
In this internet age, there’s nothing much you can hide. So instead of hiding negative comments by deleting it (which will likely create more backlash), learn how to handle them with grace.
If handled well, you could even gain the trust and respect of more audiences. You can learn how to handle negative comments on social media by reading this article.
2. Don’t Spam
We know that you’ve published a great content and you want as many people as possible to read it, by if you’re constantly shouting about the same thing, your audience might get sick of you and start unfollowing or unsubscribing you, which is really bad considering how hard you’ve worked to get them follow you in the first place.
The key to success is knowing how often you should post on different social medias. On Twitter, things move really fast so tweeting 6-12 times a day is fine. On other social medias such as Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn, try not to post more than twice a day.
Related article:
The Best And Worst Times To Post On Social Media — And The Science Behind It
3. Don’t Just Self-Promote
Nobody likes a shameless self-promoter
Instead of only sharing stuff that suits your interest, focus on sharing content that your audience would appreciate. As long as a content is entertaining or valuable, and is not offensive, you can post it on your social medias so that your audience can expect variety from you.
4. No Spelling Or Grammar Mistakes
There’s really no excuse for poor grammar or spelling mistakes. These language errors will reflect badly on you, and would hurt your reputation and credibility. To prevent making these mistakes, double-check your post, have someone else proofread before you publish a post.
5. Use Visual Content
Visual content such as photos and videos can increase your social media engagement significantly. Tweets with images get 1.5 times more retweets, 89 percent more favorites, and 18 percent more clicks. Using visual contents are especially effective if your industry relies heavily on visuals (like real estate or interior design).
6. DON’T USE ALL CAPS
WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING? WHAT DID I DO WRONG? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? CAN YOU PLEASE STOP SHOUTING?!
Holy crap. Thanks. That’s much better. Don’t ever shout again please, thank you.
7. Be Consistent Across All Platforms
Brand consistency is vital in establishing your brand’s voice and image. Being consistent will make your brand more memorable. To do this, you should use the same profile picture, same account handle, account name, color scheme and even tone of voice.
8. Don’t Abuse #Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to broadcast your post to more audiences. However, do not abuse it, as a rule of thumb, you should have 3 or less hashtag for each post. With this limited amount of hashtag, you should do some research to pick only 3 of the best hashtags to include in your post.
9. Reduce Automation
Automation is great, no doubt. It saves you from a lot of time and work. However, it might not be such a good idea when it’s on social media, where you connect and communicate with another human being. Automation takes away the personal touch that people yearns for, and you’ll miss out a great opportunity to form a genuine connection with your customers.
7. Things Change, Adapt Or Lose Out
If you do not keep up with the times, expect to be phased out.
The world moves really fast, and even faster on the internet, and if you don’t keep up with it, you’re going to fall behind.
Since last month, Twitter changed their 140 character limit policy, Google increased the length of title and meta description, Facebook changed their newsfeed algorithm, Instagram redesigned their logo and changed their newsfeed algorithm.
These are all big changes that affect the entire industry, and these changes are happening fast and frequently. To keep up to date, you’ll have to be constantly in the know. You’ll have to keep up with marketing news and trends by reading every day.
Don’t rest easy yet, just knowing the latest happenings on the internet alone isn’t sufficient, you’ll need to adapt to these changes too. Take time to understand each new change and the reasons behind the change. Learn how to use these changes to your advantage.
Keep up with the change or be risk being obsolete.
Final Thoughts
Obviously, I have much more to learn since I’m still relatively new to content marketing. I would love if you could share your thoughts on these lessons and share your own Content Marketing Lessons with me!
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This post first appeared on User Experience Affect SEO? Here’s What You Need, please read the originial post: here
