https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/best-practice-traps-content-marketing
Almost everybody loves best practices.
They let you learn what’s worked for someone else. They save you time because you don’t have to do research to understand the best way to proceed.
But many people erroneously equate “best” with “infallible” or “in every circumstance.” That’s not the best thinking for best practices.
But some best practices get repeated so often they’re followed without question – and that’s where the trouble begins. Let’s look at five seemingly harmless best practices you should start to question. (Many of the items on this list were suggested by CMI community members Luke O’Neill, a writer and content consultant in the fintech and financial services industry, and Amy Brennen, brand manager at Rapyd.)
I like this one. Frankly, too many businesses think only about themselves when creating content. They create content to put the company, product, services, and employees in the best light. But in doing so, they fail to consider the interests and needs of the audience outside their business.
So, I’m all for creating content that the audience wants. But if you stop at that idea, you’ll miss out. What about the content the audience doesn’t yet know it wants?
For example, let’s say a governing body quietly passes a new regulation that will affect your industry. Your audience may not realize anything has happened. Wouldn’t it make sense to create information the audience doesn’t know they want or need?
Or, what if your content marketing team interprets data to help your audience in a way they didn’t know was possible?
If you only create content you know your audience wants, you’ll cover the same old ground and may eventually bore them. Leave room in your plan for content experiments, surprises, and education. Finding new helpful information or presenting fresh angles can reinvigorate your content’s usefulness for your audience.
This approach does wonders for your editorial calendar. Don’t forget to experiment with content formats, too.
For example, you may not offer audio versions of your company’s blog articles because the audience hasn’t clamored for them. But if you added the feature, you might learn that a segment of the audience appreciates that audio option.
Most advice about content performance analytics pushes you to focus on how the audience interacts with the content, not how many people saw the content. Views, impressions, and reach often get disparaged as “vanity” metrics.
But narrowing your analysis to look only at engagement is a mistake. Luke O’Neill explains it this way: “Some of the audience is invisible. They don’t comment. They don’t share. They don’t sign up for emails. And yet this invisible audience is often still paying attention at different times – waiting in the wings. They can become customers or clients years later. They may be missing from many metrics, but we still need to serve them.”