8 content strategy mistakes you might be making
Last updated on April 7th, 2025 at 10:14 am
Developing a content strategy is not without its challenges. Find the balance between reactive and proactive and make sure your content is the best it can be without missing the mark. One of the big mistakes is it not being of interest to your audience or just making your content too sales-focused.
Content marketing is equal parts art and science. To get your content marketing strategy right, you need to do so much more than just create content on a whim.
Creating great content certainly isn’t easy.
Developing valuable content is all about finding balance. So here are eight content mistakes that you might be making and how to fix them.
Strategy vs agility
Lack of strategy
There are all kinds of indicators of a lack of a strategic plan in content marketing.
Content might be too infrequent, and that’s usually a sign that it’s an afterthought. Or it is way too much, trying to do everything all at once, which is a sign that you haven’t gotten a grasp of your audiences, their appetites and behaviours.
Social media platforms could be awash with irrelevant subject matter. All this serves to do is confuse your audience, they don’t quite know what you’re trying to achieve and what you’re about. So they switch off.
The more you keep publishing content that’s just plain irrelevant, the more they’ll keep doing it.
Lack of agility
On the other side of the coin is a lack of agility.
If all you are is rigidly adherent to a content calendar, you’re really missing out. Sometimes, the best of most successful content marketing elements come when you’re reacting to something that happening in real-time.
That might be a big sector shift, some new regulation, or even be something as simple as a new bakery opposite your office. Give yourself the freedom and the opportunity to create content that is reactive and relevant, if that means breaking from the shackles of your existing content calendar, then do it.
How to fix it
There’s no exact answer. Just be as reactive as you can in content creation.
But you also need a firm content strategy to know what direction you’re going. Know those guard rails to see how far you can push them!
Practically, you could allow yourselves pots of time to be reactive to topics and situations. Perhaps you had a big thought leadership blog planned. You’ve set aside the time to create the draft, but then something comes up, out of the blue, that’s way more pressing and potentially way more valuable.
It’s in these moments that you need to be comfortable in leaning into agility.
That time you’ve planned, pull it forward. Rearrange and do some logistical feng shui with your content. Try not to see the way you create content as a time-filling exercise.
The algorithms and search engines don’t care about your resourcing plans. Fuel your content marketing efforts on what’s right and relevant rather than just filling time.
Quality control?
Not enough focus on quality
If your video and photography look like it was shot on a potato or if your white papers or online content looks like it was created in MS Paint people aren’t going to like it. They aren’t going to engage with it, and it won’t have any kind of benefit or cut through.
One of the main reasons for the sacrifice in quality is that people post just for the sake of posting – more on that later.
Too much focus on quality
The other side of the coin is too much of a focus on production quality.
You’re making a TikTok or a Reel, you’re not Stanley Kubrick. It doesn’t need 437 takes, a majestic overture and a perfect grade. It just needs to be fun and done!
In some cases, Instagram Reels and TikToks, for example, engaging content is more often than not fairly low-fi. Compelling content doesn’t have to be shot in 8k.
Now, a word on audio-led content. If you are leaning into podcasts and the like, one thing you cannot and should not lose focus on is audio quality. You may not have the greatest camera set-up, but do everything you can to ensure your audio is tip-top.
How to fix it
‘High-quality content’ can have a confusing double meaning
It can mean content that is of an informative and engaging quality. This means the actual substance is of great quality. Then there’s the production, how it looks, sounds and feels. Try to draw a line between the two because you’ll quickly find those lines blurring.
The subject matter needs to be aligned to business goals; it needs to serve a purpose, have a meaning and offer something genuinely helpful, insightful or entertaining. That is high-quality content.
How you then produce that content, that’s can be a big hurdle for some.
Let’s say you’re producing a 20-page industry white paper or a key topic. If you spend nine months pouring over page layouts and kernings and arguing internally over the 240gsm silk versus 370 Satin print, then you’re going to miss the boat.
Perfect is the enemy of good. So, work to balance your production challenges.
An insistence on production ‘perfection’ on everything is just impossible. It prevents the implementation of good work and creates bottlenecks.
You physically cannot treat every output in your content marketing strategy as a magnum opus. If you do, you just won’t get anything done.
To sell or not to sell
Insufficient CTAs = insufficient impact
All successful content marketing strategy is grounded in this understanding.
What are you trying to do?
If you understand the change you’re trying to affect, the pain point you know you can fix, or the pattern of behaviour you’re seeking to shift, then you can craft more effective calls to action.
Weaving these calls to action throughout your various pieces of content, be it blog posts, video marketing or white papers, you need to ask yourself, what is it we’re trying to achieve with this?
But there is such a thing as going too far.
Too salesy too often
If everything you ever say or do is bookended with a hard sales CTA, this is not going to work.
The social contract between brand and consumer is wearing thinner. The sheer amount of content customers are bombarded with every day is frankly exhausting
Who is going to be rewarded with customer loyalty? Will it be the business that looks to entertain, to engage, to offer insight and to build a relationship?
Or will it be the business that only seems to care about taking your money?
Chances are it’s going to be the former
What you want vs what you need
Content creation is fun, and it’s exciting. But with that excitement comes the risk of getting caught up in doing more than you need to be.
Not enough content variety
If your content strategy is built around just keeping things ticking over, publishing content in the bare minimum of formats, that’s not really enough.
A couple of blog posts and the odd industry white paper is not content strategy. You need to be looking at how and where you can create content that’s going to have an impact and cut through.
That means looking at trends – for both subject matter and format. What kind of content are search engines pulling through as priority? Are there new channels or content styles that are becoming more popular with your audiences?
Once again, this comes back down to the balance of sound strategy and agility.
But you can go too far the other way.
Too much content
You can easily lose sight of the guard rails of your marketing strategy and that’s understandable because you’re trying to be experimental, you’re trying to push the envelope.
That’s a good thing, but knowing when to row back is just as important.
Understand where the potential for greatest value lies and focus the majority of your efforts there. If you want to dedicate a little bit of time and resources to doing more experimental strategies and tactics, that’s great.
But don’t make those things your bread and butter, you need to prove they have the potential to work for you first.
Quality content is only quality content if it hits the right people in the right places.
How to fix it
Good audience research will often give you the insights you need into the channels and formats that your target audiences are most receptive to. In this sense, your content marketing campaigns should be carefully considered and targeted.
Leverage your social media insights and Google analytics to see what formats and topics are doing particularly well for you and do more of that.
What within your existing content machine is working particularly well? Try to learn how and why, and seek to replicate these successes through a fresh lens.
Note that investing in costly high-production content might seem great and exciting, but everything needs a business case, and everything needs to have proven ROI. Yes, you should be making quality content. But if that content isn’t tracking into tangible impacts, then why are you still doing it?
Think about cause and effect. Input vs impact.
The fine balance
You’ll likely have noticed a recurring theme throughout all of this: that content marketing strategy should exist in a state of fine balance.
In content creation, strive for a fine balance between inputs, outputs, impacts and outcomes.
You want to create content that has an impact. But that has to come at a reasonable cost and time. You don’t want to pour all your efforts into one great big hero project and become so entwined in it that opportunity for activation passes you by. Nor do you want to be so solely focused on agility and reactivity. Because then you’ll just be constantly chasing shadows, there’ll be no order or function to your content marketing and you’ll miss out on having those big pre-planned, pre-arranged moments.
Know that not every post will go viral. Work hard to bridge the gaps between what is attainable and what is merely a pipe-dream. Somewhere in the middle is where you’ll find your groove.
Understanding your target audience will give you that critical first step in understanding and developing your content marketing strategy. Be bold, but set boundaries.
But if you’d our help on your content journey, we’d love to hear from you. So get get in touch
