Stop Using These Content Marketing 'Strategies' Right This Second

On its face, content marketing seems like a pretty straightforward activity. All you need to do is come up with quality content; back it with a solid-but-not-overly-aggressive social and SEO strategy; and start counting up your conversions. Right?
The only problem with this scenario is that it doesn’t account for a multitude of very human errors that can tank a content marketing campaign before it ever gets off the ground.
According to Search Engine Journal staffer, Julia McCoy, one of the most common content marketing mistakes is simply overemphasizing certain metrics.
In her recent article, 7 Content Marketing Efforts You Should Stop Making Today, McCoy points out several metrics that simply get too much credit. Here are a few of her tips that are especially relevant to casino affiliates.
Content vs Sales

As more and more web publishers focus on in-house content production, it’s worth noting that content is content not sales material.
Today’s web audiences are okay with sponsored content, but they draw the line at content that reads exactly like sales material.
If you, or your staff, aren’t capable of churning out quality content that doesn’t read like the script to a sales seminar, go ahead and farm it out to someone who who can.
What Are We Really Doing Here?
Content marketing is a noble pursuit but without a specific set of goals, all the content in the world won’t do you much good. Conversion goals are the heart of any good content marketing campaign and without them, you’ll never know if the content you’ve created is doing you any good.
The good news here is that conversion goals don’t have to be complex. If your goal is to simply get end-users to spend more time on your site, that’s completely legitimate.
Overemphasizing Analytics
We all love tracking statistics, but it’s important not to put too much emphasis on any one set of them. In McCoy’s view, metrics like ad impressions, Facebook likes, and broad-based database analysis, get too much credit.
She suggests that these metrics can paint a false picture of who is really visiting your site and how well your conversion goals are doing. For example, ad impressions are great if you want to see a big number. But if you want a useful number, click-throughs are where it’s at.
Finally
Content marketing is all about using high quality content as a means of achieving very specific goals. If your current content strategy is to paint with a wide brush and see what happens, you probably won’t get much of return on your content investment.