Creating content for your business’s website, blog or social media is one of the best ways to engage your audience and keep them coming back again and again. But in trying to create effective content, you may be falling prey to some common mistakes that could actually be hurting your progress. Always avoid the following eight marketing mistakes if you want your content to be truly valuable.

What’s the top content marketing mistake you see a lot of companies making, and what should they be doing instead?

1. Using Subpar Content

Using subpar content is a big mistake. You should never go with a quantity-over-quality strategy when it comes to content marketing. The Internet is already overrun with folks using such a strategy, and it just doesn’t work. Every single piece of content you produce should be well-written, creative, thoughtful, accurate, relevant and engaging. Going any other route isn’t very likely to end well. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

2. Writing Clickbait Headlines

I still see some companies publishing content with clickbait headlines. There’s no reason to mislead visitors with promises you can’t keep. I suggest focusing on providing tangible value to your audience. Consumers are far more likely to trust your brand when they click a headline and get the content they were promised. – John Brackett, Smash Balloon LLC

3. Targeting Everyone

Your content marketing efforts will work only when you know exactly who your audience is and what they want to read about. The best way to do that is to start with research. This will help you identify who your target audience is and what they are interested in. Creating content around those lines can easily help you get the best results. – Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite

4. Overemphasizing Keywords

Many companies overemphasize the use of keywords in their content. But search engines have evolved past the use of keywords to tell whether a post is relevant or not for a search query. What you should do is focus on building context, answering questions and creating the best user experience possible. Do keyword research to inform your content but not to fill it up to act as SEO signals. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

5. Focusing on Quantity Instead of Quality

A huge content marketing mistake that people make is focusing on quantity instead of quality. They’re so eager to grow their brand that they produce tons of blog posts and social media content that doesn’t convert. Why? Because they aren’t publishing relevant, useful content for their audience. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms

6. Overselling

If someone is interested in your product or service, they will eventually click-through and become a customer. When every single post on your blog comes with a call to action to buy your product, you’re going to discourage some readers. Instead, strategically include offers when it fits the theme of your post. – John Turner, SeedProd LLC

7. Not Promoting Your Content

People won’t know about your post unless you tell them about it. Simply publishing them and considering your job done is a major mistake content marketers make. If you want to convert through your content, you need to promote them and attract more readers. Social media is the best platform to get started. So share content with relevant hashtags to attract readers. – Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster

8. Ignoring Analytics

One of the biggest content marketing mistakes I see business owners make is when they publish what they think their audience wants to read instead of reviewing their analytics. If you want to see success with your blog, you have to understand what kind of posts will help your audience. Look at your most popular posts and customer feedback and create content that matches your customers’ needs. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights