Content creation is the most common form of online marketing nowadays. In this article, I’m going to share with you the eight mistakes that I see so many content creators making. Whether you are a beginner content creator or an older content creator, I guarantee that this article is going to be relevant for you.
They don’t have a niche
The first deadly mistake that I see, is that many content creators, especially when they’re starting out, don’t have a niche. They don’t know who their target audience is, and they also don’t know what their target audience wants.
Having a niche is really important, because at the end of the day, people need to have a reason to subscribe to your page or channel, or to follow you on your social media accounts. If you are not clear in what you’re delivering to your audience, what is their incentive of following you back? If you do not develop a niche for your content, your audience wouldn’t know who you actually are and what you deliver.
This is particularly important when you are just starting out. Once you are able to secure quality traffic for the first niche that you begin with, you can consider expanding your niche to include broader content categories. But when you are a beginner content creator, you can’t really do that. First you need to build the tribe and following that just supports you no matter what type of content you produce. Then you can expand from there. When you’re starting out, you want to be as focused as possible, because when you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.
They melt down over lost followers
The second deadly mistake that I see so many beginner content creators doing is literally having meltdowns over lost followers or subscribers. And I get it, I get that it stings, I get that it hurts when those numbers drop. But at the end of the day, I really want you to have it in your mind that it’s always going to be about quality over quantity. Instead of crying over the people who left, make sure that you’re delivering the most value to the people who stayed. Treat them like gold. It is such a bad mindset to constantly chase these numbers of people who decided to leave anyways. Maybe they’re even using bots, and doing unfollow/follow. You should rather be focused on building your connection with the people who have decided to be there for you, and continuously try to provide great value to them.
They don’t think long-term
The third deadly mistake that I see content creators making is that they aren’t thinking long term. What I mean by this is that I see a lot of content creators just solely focusing on the vanity metrics, or just posting things in order to grow their social media accounts. However, they don’t ask themselves, “Where am I actually going with this? Where am I taking this site or channel? Am I going to create a personal brand? Am I going to monetize anything? Am I going to launch any products in the future?” These are questions that content creators should be asking themselves, or otherwise, you’re just going to be someone who gets some quick following for a while, but are not able to make money out of all the content that you produce. Even if you are able to make few bucks through affiliate marketing or something, it will be hard for you to scale it up, if you don’t plan for the long-term from the very beginning. So if you want to make money as a content creator, you really need to have long-term goals.
They don’t build an email list
The fourth deadly mistake is not building an email list. Some of you might think that an email list is totally outdated. But as a professional content creator, I can tell you that an email list is actually very important for your business and brand.
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They don’t know how to collaborate with others
The fifth deadly mistake is making poor collaboration pitches. I see so many content creators trying to collaborate with other content creators, but doing it in a totally wrong way. If you are a smaller content creator, and you’re reaching out to a content creator who is much, much larger than you, you have no right to straight-out ask them to hop onto your site and help you out. That makes no sense. The same goes for brand deals. You cannot go to a brand and ask them to help you out. I see that a lot of content creators approach people and brands in a very inauthentic and selfish way.
If you really want to successfully collaborate with other people and brands, you need to put your thinking hat on, and ask yourself what you can do for them. Let’s say you are a foodie blogger, and you want to collaborate with another foodie blogger that has 10 times more audience than you. Instead of spamming that person’s contact form or Facebook page with tons of messages, and begging them to collaborate with you, you can let them know that you share a similar audience as them. Then you can offer something of value that you can do for them, and in return ask them to let you promote your site or brand in one of their events, maybe through a keynote speech or a banner at the event’s venue.
They share their content on irrelevant places
The sixth deadly mistake that I see content creators making is sharing their posts in irrelevant promotional groups. I understand that when you’re starting out, you just want to plug your links everywhere. However, what you don’t realize is that if you are promoting your content in the wrong promotional groups that aren’t even within your niche, that’s going to absolutely kill your readership or views. If you do that, the moment somebody clicks on a link to your site, they’re just going to click out immediately, because they realize it’s not for them. You need to avoid spamming your links in all irrelevant promotional groups, without realizing the impact that it can have on your readership.
They don’t engage with their audience
The seventh deadly mistake that I see a lot of content creators making is that they aren’t engaging with their audience. This is a huge no-no if you want to become a successful content creator, and if you want to successfully form a community and a tribe. Keep in mind that if you want to make a living as a content creator, you won’t be able to do that without the people who are currently supporting you by engaging with your content. So make sure that you show some appreciation, some gratitude, some love, and engage back with the people who want to see your work.
As you grow in this field, obviously, it becomes harder and harder to message back every single person, answer every single question, and also reply to every single email. I completely get that. However, when you’re first starting out, really make a conscious effort, and figure out how you can make each subscriber, each follower, and each viewer to feel as important as possible.
They give up too early
Last but not least, another deadly mistake is when content creators give up too early. Now, even in my content creating career, I’ve wanted to give up so many times. But soon I started noticing that it is easy to scale in this field if you can maintain little bit of patience and consistency. You never know when you hit a huge snowball effect.
For many beginners, the moment that they don’t see the results as quickly as they expect to see, they get too disappointed and resort to giving up. That’s not good. You should instead have a solution-oriented approach to content creation. You might have days when you feel like it’s all a waste of time, but if you can get through those days, you’ll start seeing that results do begin to show up.
I really hope this article made you feel better. I want to assure you once again that it’s all about having patience and being consistent. If you devote your full year’s attention, working on and building your own publication site like I did, I assure you it’s only a matter of time until you become successful and start making a living as a content creator.