1. Not understanding customers’ needs.
Content is only effective if it meets the users needs. The first step to producing good content is finding out what information prospects want. Simple and low-cost research investments, like a 4Qs web site survey can help gather this information. Once you know what your prospects are looking for, you can provide content to meet those needs.
<br />2. Expecting too much too soon.
It takes time to build trust in a relationship. You need to start building trust by providing useful information to your prospects. If you can provide valuably information to the site visitor, you can start down the path of looking like an expert to them.
3. Being inconsistent.
Develop a consistent message and voice for your website and stick to it. When a prospect is browsing multiple sections of your site, you want to speak to them in a consistent voice and provide them with a unified message throughout the site.
4. Thinking content is just text.
There are many ways to provide useful information to a prospect. White papers and web pages are good but videos, podcasts, and interactive applications can be great ways to provide information and get your message across.
5. Forgetting to be human.
Being personable and genuine helps build a positive customer experience and build trust. People do business with people, the more comfortable you can make a prospect, the higher likelihood you have of converting that prospect to a lead.
6. Forgetting about call-to-actions
A solid call-to-action should be included on every page. It is important to remember that a call-to-action doesn’t have to be buy now or signup for a newsletter. Call-to-actions should be used to direct the prospect to the next logical step in the information finding process. If a user is on an industry related page, a logical call-to-action would be to get them to click over to a specific product page that is relevant to that industry.
These are just a few important things to keep in mind when producing content for your website. It is also important to remember that website content is a constant work in progress. There is never a set it and forget solution for website content. It is important to always be looking at conversion rates of pages and user metric statistics from an analytics package to measure the success of your web content.
