Internet marketing campaigns revolve around 3 things – search engine optimization, social media and content marketing. These marketing efforts are referred to as pull strategies. These are the marketing efforts that are designed to “pull in” your target clients, instead of pushing them to make favorable buying decisions.

The oft-repeated adage in Internet marketing – content is king – remains as relevant as ever. After all these emerging developments and shifts, the content of your Webpage remains to be the lynchpin of Internet marketing. Search engines scour the pages of your Website to assess if such pages measure up to the search query. On the other hand, your target readers will follow the content of your blogs, whitepapers, articles, etc. in order to get a clear picture of the product or services that you are offering.

This means that you need to generate quality content to build your reputation online. You have to exert extra effort to show that you are a trusted and reliable source of information. Thus, if you want to hit the jackpot in your Internet marketing campaign, you have to work on your content.

There are 4 common pitfalls that you must avoid in your Internet marketing campaign. These are the following:

Inadequate Fresh Content

Fresh content is the lifeblood of content marketing. This may appear to be a perfect case of redundancy. How would you perceive a blog site where the latest post is already a few weeks old? Blogs that are generally stagnant are considered by readers as fairly useless and won’t waste their time reading through the content. You are losing out on the opportunity to rank well at Google since each of the posts in your blog can target various keywords and these can help improve your online presence.

Connecting With the Wrong Audience

Follow the basic rule in marketing – profile your potential clients. You must monitor who are reading your blog posts regularly. Carefully assess if you are missing out on some earning opportunities from other segments of the market. Determine what your priorities are. Do you want to build your reputation as an expert in a particular field or niche? Or do you want to share information with your target clients? You must also get a good grip of the online behavior of your target readers and find out what they are looking for when they browse the Web.

Coming Off As a Hard Sell

You will surely mess up your Internet marketing campaign if you treat your content marketing as your medium in selling your product or service. You have to remember that your primary objective is not to sell but to market your product or service. You are into content marketing to “help” your potential clients. Your readers will surely not appreciate it if you sound a bit too “promotional” when you provide content for your blog.

Producing Content Without Promotional Value

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you should find ways to promote your product or service without going overboard and appear to be a hard sell. Learn of the “stealth” techniques so that you can get the desired response from your readers. When you produce a great article or white paper, you can get positive response from your target audience. This puts you closer to your main objective of developing a potential business through higher CTRs. Make yourself visible on the Web. Get those posts on your social profiles, company newsletters and social bookmarking sites. Of course, don’t forget to put share buttons on your blogs so that your target audience can republish or link to them.

Most people have the sense to find a leader to guide their steps fairly soon after they decide upon a direction they wish to take. Unfortunately, I have never been one of them. It has taken me ten years of wandering largely in the deserted wastelands of the Internet to come to the conclusion that I ought to get myself a mentor. The advantage of this time lag is that I have been able to choose a mentor whose progress I have had the opportunity to observe over the course of a decade or so and, indeed, I have been fortunate enough to be able to persuade one of the very first Internet ‘gurus’ whose newsletters I ever subscribed to that I might make a reasonable candidate for mentoring.

These guys are a little fussy, you know. It’s no longer just about the money they can command from wannabes when they reach the dizzy heights. It’s about ensuring that their pupils go out into the virtual world and become a credit to their teachings. A guru is only as good as his last disciple, so to speak. Well, I hit the jackpot, as it turned out. My new mentor suggested that, rather than take instruction from him alone; I join one of the longest-standing groups online, run by a team of firmly-established Internet and Social Media marketing experts and consultants. Agreeing to do so was, without a doubt, one of the better decisions I have made in my life.

Apart from the incredible talent and experience that has been made available to help me on my way, the software that is provided for members to use is astonishingly cutting-edge and probably worth many times the subscription fees. In fact, just recently, I was sent a link to the latest software developed especially for the group which, apart from being incredibly helpful in the business environment, has enhanced my enjoyment of using the Internet as a whole and made some of my erstwhile tedious chores turn into pleasurable tasks that are quickly completed.

Amongst the materials available to members are a wealth of training videos and also a series of thoroughly readable documents of various kinds, each designed to give clear indications of what is still working, what no longer works, why and why not. Some of the documents are also made freely available to the public outside the group and I have taken pleasure in sharing them with anyone who wanted some straightforward guidance without having to buy it.

There is something very reassuring about being in the company of those who lead the markets that everyone else runs to try and keep up with, after so many years of being amongst the stragglers who turn up at the table when all that is left is the scraps from what clearly must have been a wonderful banquet!

One of the highlights of my week is Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report blog. Every week there is something interesting, pertinent and of practical use to all Internet marketers, whether newcomers to the scene or veterans of long standing. It is to be hoped that you will take advantage of the fact that one need not even be a member to enjoy the mine of useful information in Jack’s blog at jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/ every week.

You may like to start with: Track Your Social Marketing Enjoy!