Content marketing can be a very lucrative career, once you have an established portfolio and client list. It takes time and hard work to build yourself up into a reputable writer that can attract clients. Getting there can be a difficult process and you will learn many lessons over your career. Here are some comment mistakes many new content marketers make.

Falling for these common scams

Scams are rampant these days, and it’s almost impossible to avoid running into a least one while working as a content marketer. A good rule of thumb to follow, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam. This can be from a client not paying to stumbling on a website that ends up giving your computer a virus. But the biggest scam I have seen out there is websites promising to give you the answer to becoming rich as a content marketer in a matter of weeks.

A common scam I have run into researching content marketing are people who have you watch a 45 minute video offering you the tips that made them rich as a content marketing. These videos are packed full of basic information a quick google search can provide you, but here’s the catch, if you stay to the end of the video they promise to give you the secret to success. So you stick it out and watch to the end, only to find out you have to pay 3 easy payments of $300 to get answers you are looking for.

The truth is, there is no easy way to becoming a content marketer. It takes time to build a reputation as writer and attract clients to you. Good old fashion hard work is the secret to your success. Sure, you need to be a decent writer and understanding of how to create a piece that will be acceptable, but most of that can be learned overtime. Doing research and taking classes on SEO, content writing, and marketing can help you will all of this.

Inaccurate research

Not everything you read on the internet is true, as a content marketer you want to make sure the information you are providing is 100% accurate. This means you want to use website that are trusted. For that you want to look more towards the .org’s or the .gov’s. If you see that same information on mutable sites, you can start to see that there is a greater chance the information you are finding is true.

Not editing your work

This one speaks for itself. We are all human and make mistakes, but your clients aren’t going to want to keep paying you if you can’t edit your own work before sending it off. I have been guilty of this in the past, especially when I’m rushing to deliver a piece to a client. This is why I have a policy to give myself a whole day with a finished piece before I send it off to a client. Once it’s done, I wait for the next morning to email it. That way I can have one more look at it with fresh eyes, to catch any mistakes that my initial edits have missed.

Forgetting to look into the audience and their needs

Content marketing is intended to bring in leads for our clients business, but the way we do that is by providing their audience with valuable information. This allows our client to build a better relationship with potential and current customers. If we fail to take a look at what the audience wants or needs, we are failing to provide them with the information that they come to find. This can cause our client to not get the sales they are looking for by employing you as a writer.

If you are looking to becoming your own boss, content marketing can open many doors for you. There are going to be many mistakes you make along the way, but failure means you are growing.