How Not to Make Content Marketing Fail You in 2015

Content marketing is undoubtedly one of the best methods of online promotion these days, and the trend is only likely to follow into 2015 as well.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that content marketing is a fail-proof method. In fact, even the top players out there still make mistakes and suffer the consequences.
Let’s take a look at some of those mistakes and talk about how to use content marketing in the next 12 months.

1. User Generated Content Isn’t Always the Best Solution
Some marketers attempt to set up online forums and then use the content generated by the users to rank better on the search engines.
However, as it turns out, Google is aware which pages are user generated and which are editorial. Therefore, improving your rank with user generated content might be a good idea only in theory.
2. Quality is Key; Not Quantity
Having a big number of pages as part of your site is a good bonus, but it will not make you rank well all on its own.
In other words, you are much better off investing in releasing just a couple of pieces of content every month, rather than trying to spit out multiple posts a day just for the sake of it.
3. Be Aware of the Spam Problem With User Generated Content
If you’re still thinking about hosting a forum on your site, keep in mind that you will have to deal with a lot of spam, both in terms of spam accounts as well as individual spam threads.
Various forum admins report that spam accounts can make up even up to 95 percent of the entire forum’s “user base.”
The worst thing about spam is that Google is very good at recognizing it, and they will even let you know through Webmaster Tools (if your site is hooked up to it).
4. Indexing Trouble
Not all content pages are indexed easily these days. In fact, the more you produce, the longer it will take Google to notice your individual pages.
This might be one more reason behind publishing only a handful of good pieces of content, rather than a bigger number of mediocre ones.
5. Promotion Requires Investment
One aspect of content marketing that people are usually quiet about is promotion.
It is a fact that content marketing can bring a lot of people in and introduce them to your brand, but this won’t happen on its own. In other words, you really need to invest in promotion to get people’s eyeballs on your stuff.
Whether it’s advertising, link building to individual pieces of content, social media promotion, solo ads on email lists, or some other technique, you absolutely need to do something.
That sums up our list, so now it’s over to you. How are you planning to utilize content marketing in 2015?