Mistake #1: Forgetting to Promote Content

If you’re like many content publishers, you take great pride in your work and painstakingly create awesome content for your readers. But no matter how great our content is, if we don’t actively promote it then we’re cutting our opportunities short.

When you publish any content, make sure you put in as much effort into spreading the word as you did to creating it in the first place.

Share your content with your mailing list.
Announce your content on your social media accounts.
Redistribute your content to other websites.
Ask friends in your niche to share your content.
Make sure you have social sharing options for the readers of your website.
Provide affiliate links to your content, so your affiliates can share it too.
Use paid advertising options to promote your content even further.

The important lesson here is that creating content is only one piece of the puzzle. You also need to work to get people to read it.

Mistake #2: Failing to Reuse and Repurpose

If you’ve been publishing in your niche for a while, you’ve probably created a ton of content and covered a wide variety of topics. The great thing about all the work you’ve done is that you can use it over and over again. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time you create new content because you’ve already done a ton of the legwork.

Here are a few ideas for you:

Articles can be bundled up into a special report and given away freely, as a bonus, or even sold as part of a product.
If you have a report, it can be broken up into articles and redistributed.
Submit your content to print publications like newspapers, magazines and local newsletters.
Create a video or slide show presentation out of your how-to articles.
Have your audio and video materials transcribed into written format.
Build on existing content by expanding certain points, introducing new ideas and more.
Share older popular content with new members of your audience.

There’s no sense in letting your hard work just fade away. Keep your content working for you instead.

Mistake #3: Missing Call to Action

For many, content creation is a labor of love. We love the topics we cover and are passionate about our subjects. We just hope that somehow that passion will turn into profit. We’re told that if we create content, people will see us as experts and they’ll buy our products and use our services.

But here’s the problem with that idea.

If you don’t tell your readers about your products and services, they aren’t going to know they can buy them.

Each piece of content should have a purpose and a call-to-action. Whether it’s to get a quote for your roofing services or an opportunity to get a free crochet pattern, it doesn’t matter. Content should always have a purpose and you should know what that purpose is.

Mistake #4: Not Understanding Your Target Market

Having a deep understanding of your target market is key to content marketing success. If you don’t know what makes your readers tick, how can you possibly create the content they’re looking for?

An understanding of your target market can come in a number of ways:

Keyword research that shows you what people are searching for in your subject area.
Paying attention to blog and social media comments.
Asking your readers questions. What are they concerned about? What do they want to know?
Consulting published market research, but understanding that this is just a start point because your unique audience may have different interests.

Know who you are marketing to and the right topic ideas will be easier to find.

Mistake #5: Creating All Your Own Content

We’ve already established that content marketing isn’t simply about creating content. There’s plenty of planning and marketing involved outside of what gets typed on a screen.

The most successful content publishers get help with their content and rarely write it all themselves. Guest writers can add fresh and new perspectives to your website.

When you get help in creating your content, you can focus more on getting results from your content.

Mistake #6: Lack of Relevance

Have you ever signed up for a mailing list and then scratched your chin at some of the stuff the list owner sent to you?

For example, you sign up for a mailing list about work at home and suddenly the owner sends you offers for weight loss products. Sure, we can make the connection between working at home and weight loss. After all, those of us who work at home can attest to the fact that getting enough exercise and maintaining one’s weight can be an issue, but it’s not what we signed up for when we subscribed.

The more relevant you can be, the better your results will be in the long term. Your readers will know what to expect and you will continue to grow your understanding of what your audience really wants. Be relevant. Every time.

Mistake #7: Not Prioritizing Content

There are many options when it comes to content publishing. You can write and distribute articles. You can blog. You can email your list. You can post a video to YouTube. The possibilities are nearly endless.

But one thing becomes quite clear – different methods will work better for you than others. It’s important to focus on those methods and make them a priority.

There’s no sense in trying to juggle too much and do everything in a mediocre fashion. Figure out where you really shine and put your focus there.

Mistake #8: Not Sharing Other People’s Content

It’s natural to stay focused on one’s own content. After all, we’ve taken the time to create the content and it has been designed to promote our business. However, there are a couple of benefits to sharing other people’s content.

First, by sharing content with your audience, you can be seen as a valuable resource for great content. Introducing your readers to new perspectives and ideas is a good thing.

Second, by sharing you’re forging relationships with your fellow publishers. If you readily share content, people are more likely to share yours.

Take the time to find some useful content for your readers and share it via email, on your blog or through your social media accounts. Make it a habit and see what happens.

Mistake #9: Not Interacting With Your Audience

There’s no getting around it. Today’s web is interactive and our readers expect interaction. As a content publisher, you should be prepared to respond to comments, answer questions and engage your audience frequently.

This doesn’t mean that you have to open yourself up to answer phone calls and individual emails every day. That’s not a good use of your time. But do be available through the content channels you operate on. There is no such thing as a one way conversation.

Mistake #10: Quantity over Quality

It’s true that more content gives you more opportunity to be seen, but focusing on quality means your content can go even further. Take time to produce more detailed content. Make it more visually appealing. Publish it in a variety of media. Take the time to do things well.

When you do things well, people will recommend your content. They will come back for more.

If you instead publish thin and barely helpful content, they won’t tell anyone else and they sure won’t be back for more.

If there’s anything that’s clear from these 10 content marketing mistakes, it’s that you need to put your focus into what works and to put in a complete effort to reap the full benefits. Publishing content…even great content…simply isn’t enough to grow your business. There are many pieces to the content marketing puzzle, but once you put them together, the results can be amazing.

How to Create & Share a YouTube Playlist in 7 Easy Steps

by Nicole Munoz

A YouTube playlist is a great way to sort your favorite videos. For example, you can save all your favorite music videos in one playlist, your favorite funny videos in another and your favorite inspiring videos in yet another playlists.

Playlists can also be shared. If you want to share a playlist of 15 videos to your friends, it’s as simple as sending a link.

Here’s how to create and share a YouTube Playlist.

Step 1: Go to a Video You Like

Find a video you like that you’d like to add to your playlist.

Step 2: Click the Dropdown Arrow by “Add To”

Under each video are a series of options. Click the drop down arrow by the “Add To” button to access the playlist menu. Click the “New playlist…” button to create a new playlist.

Step 3: Name Your Playlist

A naming box will appear. Type the name of your new playlist in and press enter. YouTube will confirm that your new video has been added to the playlist.

Keep going through your favorite videos and adding them to your playlist. Add as many as you want in as many playlists as you want.

Step 4: Go to Playlists

To change or share your playlist, click on your name in the upper right corner and select “Playlists”.

Step 5: Select the Playlist You Want to Edit or Share

On the left of the Playlists screen, select which playlist you want to edit or share.

Step 6: Edit Your Playlist

Change the order of videos on by moving them up or down. Click the checkbox next to any video and click remove to delete a video.

Step 7: Share Your Playlist

To share your playlist, click “Share” along the top of your playlist. Copy and paste the playlist URL that appears to share your playlist with your friends!

That’s all there is to it. You now know how to create playlists, add videos to playlists, re-order your playlists, remove videos from playlists and share your playlists.

Top 10 Benefits to Integrating Your Social Media

by Nicole Munoz

If you’re serious about social media, you need to be using social media integration tools. If you’re not using these tools, you’ll be wasting a lot of time while inefficiently managing your social media. You’ll have a harder time connecting with your followers and won’t be able to build your connections as easily.

The reality is, using the default settings on tools like Twitter and Facebook work for the majority of social media users, but aren’t terribly effective for a business with a strong social media strategy.

For example, Twitter and Google’s tools won’t natively allow you to schedule your posts. Instead, you can only post only the moment you post a status update. That makes it impossible to “pre-send” your messages for the next few days at one time.

Still not convinced? Here are the top 10 benefits to integrating your social media.

Benefit #1: Post across Multiple Social Sites at Once

Instead of having to log into your various Twitter accounts, your Facebook pages, your Facebook accounts, your LinkedIn accounts and so on to post status updates individually, with social media integration you can just post to all of them in one place.

This can literally save you dozens or even hundreds of hours over the course of a year.

With social media integration, posting one status update to 5 different social media sites takes just 30 seconds. Without integration, just loading up and posting that update to 5 different sites will take a few minutes. However, if you have to log out of Twitter and into a different account every time, it could easily result in 5 to 15 minutes wasted per update.

If you’re updating several times a day, or even just several times a week, this very quickly turns into a lot of time saved.

Benefit #2: See Your @Replies, Direct Messages and FB Messages in One Place

With social media management, you get to see all your messages in one place. You can then reply to all your messages in one place as well.

If you had all your messages scattered over numerous Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, chances are responding to all the messages would simply take far too long.

Furthermore, they would weigh on you psychologically. You won’t ever really know if your inboxes are empty, because it’s too much effort to log into all your accounts to check.

With an integrated social media strategy however, you’ll know exactly how many messages you have at any given time. They’ll be visible from your feeds.

You’ll be able to respond to messages faster, which creates more of the impression that you really care about the people who communicate with you.

Benefit #3: Schedule Posts

With just about every social media website, you can’t schedule posts. You can’t tell Twitter to post tweets every two hours. Instead, you have to log into the site and post your tweets exactly when they want to go out.

This is fine for the casual user, but terrible for a serious social media marketer with a lot on his plate. One strategy you’ll often want to use is to sit down for 30 minutes and hammer out all your posts for the next few days.

With an integrated social media strategy, all you need to do is go into your tools and create the new posts. You can drip-feed your content at any rate you choose. You can schedule posts for multiple social media accounts all at once.

This capability alone is really enough for any serious social media marketer to use social media integration.

Benefit #4: Integrate Blogging and Email Marketing

Your social media strategy should be integrated with your blogging and email marketing strategies.

That means that whenever you post a new blog post, you should send out a tweet about it. Whenever you send out a new email, if there’s high quality content in that email, you should probably post a status update or send out a tweet as well.

This also works as a two-way street. If you regularly post valuable content to your social media communities, you should try to find a way to bring that content to your blog. For example, you might use widgets to put your Twitter feed on your website so your website visitors can see your latest 10 tweets.

Treat your whole social media, blogging and email marketing audience as one whole community, rather than segregated marketing tactics. Using social media integration will allow you to integrate blogging, email marketing and social media into one seamless strategy.

Benefit #5: Manage Social Media as a Team

Trying to manage social media as a team and execute a complex, multi-tiered strategy without social media integration is extremely difficult.

With integration tools, you can easily all stay on the same page about your social media strategies.

Various team members can schedule posts ahead of time and other team members can see what’s going to be posted in the future and adjust accordingly. Reports and analytics can inform a whole team’s decisions and the team can work as a whole to respond to follower inquiries.

Without social media integration, the time wasted on logging in and out of various sites is compounded. Each team member wastes a few minutes here and there logging in, which at the end of the day translates to massive wasted time for the company.

Furthermore, there’s no inherent way to work together in native social media platforms. Facebook isn’t really built for a team to execute a strategy together; but most social media integration tools are.

Benefit #6: Competitive Research & Feed Management

Social media integration tools will allow you to track a number of different feeds in a very simple manner. This is a fantastic way to stay on top of what’s going on in an industry.

For example, let’s say you’re in the electronics industry. You might want to regularly follow a couple different feeds about the latest electronics discoveries. You also want to follow feeds from your competitors to see what they’re offering.

You want to follow these feeds across Twitter and Facebook. If you had to use just Twitter and Facebook, you’d have to visit the individual pages or hashtags every time you wanted to check up on these companies or technologies.

That takes a lot of time. Chances are, you just won’t be able to keep up that level of research on a regular basis.

On the other hand, with social media integration tools, you’ll be able to keep those feeds all on a dashboard for easy viewing. You can easily observe new trends and see when new big topics are being discussed.

Social media integration makes competitive research and staying on top of an industry much, much easier.

Benefit #7: Unique Analytics and Reporting Capabilities

Different social media integration tools offer different reporting capabilities. These reporting tools can often report cross platform, giving you unique data that none of the sites couple independently give you.

For example, let’s say you wanted to explore the clickthrough data from your Facebook page. You want to know what kind of posts and what kind of media generates the highest clickthrough.

That’s something that Facebook’s insights can give you. However, what Facebook’s insights can’t give you is data on how those customers then behave once they’re on your website. They can’t tell you if they stay for longer or shorter than the typical browser.

Social media integration tools can give you this kind of data and more.

Furthermore, if you’re managing social media for clients, you can even brand the reports so it looks like it was generated internally rather than through external tools.

Benefit #8: Share Relevant News and Breakthroughs Quickly

Sometimes getting the edge in business truly is time sensitive. If you run a financial advisory firm and Google’s stock suddenly takes a 10% nosedive, the very first firm to be able to put out a comprehensive analysis is probably going to get a whole lot of traffic and backlinks.

With something like this, the difference of just 30 minutes can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Often time’s responding to big news can be crucial to your business. If you’re in the music business, Michael Jackson’s death should have been considered big news that you should have responded to. It would have generated a lot of discussion and connection with your audience.

Sharing these kinds of news responses and big breakthroughs is extremely difficult if you had to log into and post manually to all your social media connections. On the other hand, if you’ve integrated your social media platforms, you’ll be able to quickly and easily respond to urgent situations all in one place.

Benefit #9: Discover New People to Follow

Using social media integration is a great way to find new people to follow. There are both formal and informal ways to do this.

Some tools, such as Sprout Social, actually have deliberate tools designed to help you find new people to follow. They’ll explore feeds of people who you’ve interacted with in the past, as well as feeds of influencers. Then they’ll determine what kind of topics you tend to be interested in and make recommendations if there’s a match.

This is great for finding new sources of advice, news and interaction. It’s also a great way to find new influencers to reach out to, in order to see if there’s a way you can work together.

Even if you don’t use these deliberate tools, social media integration can still help you find new people to follow. By integrating your feeds, you’ll be able to spot “super fans” who’re interacting with you across multiple media.

You’ll also start to recognize names that are showing up across different feeds frequently. For example, if people are regularly talking about the ideas of Joe Smith, you might want to check out Joe Smith’s feed to see what he has to offer.

Benefit #10: Updates by Email

What if you don’t want to spend ages on social media? What if social media is only part of your overall business plan and you don’t want to dedicate too much time to it?

Social media integration can definitely help there. Instead of having to log into your various social media platforms to make sure your networks are alive and healthy, you can use email updates instead.

Tools like Nutshell Mail will mail you reports about how your social media networks are performing. If problems arise or if your engagement levels are trending downwards rather than upwards, you’ll be able to quickly spot it. If they’re going up however, you don’t need to spend too much time checking on it. Instead, you just receive a quick email daily.

These are some of the many benefits of integrating your social media. The message is clear: If you run a business and plan on using social media as part of your strategy, you’ll probably want to seriously think about integrating your social media. There are immense benefits and very few drawbacks.

Top 10 Benefits to Integrating Your Social Media from Nicole Munoz