10 Common Content Mistakes Social Impact Organizations Make

Are you tired of putting time and energy into creating content that just doesn’t get meaningful engagement from your community?

We’ve all been there. 

You’re proud of your hard work and effort. A feeling of excitement rushes over you as you hit “post” or “publish.” This piece is going places, you just know it. Only, it doesn’t. It flops. Or maybe a few people engage but nowhere near the level of traction you need to take your mission to the next level. 

It’s one of the hardest and most disheartening parts about creating and producing content. And it makes you question if any of your energy and investment is even worth it. Sometimes it feels unfair, like the algorithm holds a weird personal grudge against you, or that people’s attention spans are so short these days that they don’t engage with anything meaningful anymore. 

Other people seem to be blowing up and going viral, and their content feels generic, clickbaity, and low value. 

10 Common Content Mistakes

Here’s a question you should ask yourself before you start creating and distributing content for your brand. What’s the point? No, really?

I think we’ve all just accepted that we must be out there creating content and showing up on the latest social media platforms because that’s just what you do if you want to build a brand and nurture community. And there’s certainly some truth to this. But when you just dive into creating content for the sake of creating content, you’re not setting yourself up for the true power of an intentional content strategy. 

You need to start by thinking about this from a broader strategic perspective. If you’re focused on measuring success by looking at list and follower growth, likes, comments, shares, and other common engagement metrics, you’re not going deep enough with your thinking. 

How do you plan to leverage that engagement into meaningful action and growth that actually moves your mission forward? If you can’t connect your content strategy to your larger growth strategy, it’s destined to fail from the start.

But even if you’ve thought that through, there’s plenty of other mistakes we see many social impact brands make with their content. Let’s dig into a few of the common ones. 

Mistake #1: Spray & Pray Content “Strategy”

If you’re just tossing content out there like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, you’ll soon find out….not that much is going to stick. If your audience doesn’t know what to expect from you and your content, they end up confused and unclear about your niche and whether or not your content is even relevant to them. 

Mistake #2: Thinking About Your Content as Just “News & Updates”

There’s usually a place for important news and updates within your content strategy. But if you stop there, your content is unlikely to get much traction. Unless those news and updates are incredibly interesting, relevant, and exciting, this isn’t likely to be enough to engage an audience. Is the news exciting for you? Or for your audience? Usually it’s not as exciting for your community as it is for you. 

Mistake #3: Spreading Yourself Too Thin

You’ve got to be real about how much quality content you can actually produce. A common mistake is to try to build an audience and a presence for your brand on every platform and channel, but not doing a good job getting traction on any of them because you don’t have enough capacity to get strategic and focused to the level you need to. It’s better to focus on a few key channels and really nail it versus trying to do them all and flopping. 

Mistake #4: Picking the Wrong Channels

You need to understand where your audience actually spends their time. If you’re trying to engage grassroots supporters and a younger audience you’re going to want to focus on very different channels and strategies than if you are trying to engage a smaller group of policy makers or influencers. 

Each channel has a culture and standards around the content formats. You aren’t going to do well trying to repurpose your slow, long-form webinar content into a vertical video on Tiktok. One of the benefits of nailing a few specific channels is that it allows you to spend your time learning the ins and outs of the culture of that channel. You want to use the cultural currents of each channel to your advantage or you risk swimming upstream and making everything harder than it needs to be. 

Mistake #5: Overcommitting to an Unrealistic Publishing Cadence

If you commit to a publishing cadence that isn’t sustainable for you long term, your content is destined to take a hit. If you’re overstretched and forced to push out low-quality content, you’re not only doing a disservice to your audience, you’re going to burn out. And when you hit that point it can be disastrous and difficult to recover from. 

Mistake #6: Not Publishing Frequently Enough

On the flip side, another common mistake is to publish so infrequently and sporadically that you just aren’t giving your content a fair opportunity to get traction. You need to aim to find a sweet spot. You want to publish as frequently as you possibly can, with a consistent cadence, while maintaining a realistic publishing schedule that doesn’t burn you out. Each channel has a threshold range for meaningful engagement. Try to sit within that range whenever possible.

Mistake #7: Boring Content

This one’s going to sound harsh, but it has to be said. So much content is just straight up boring, uninspired, low effort, stuffy, and forgettable. We’ve all done it. It’s ok. But we can’t keep posting content that’s boring or we’re just creating digital pollution.

The era of stuffy, informational content is long gone. If you aren’t thinking about how to create content that’s actually entertaining and inspiring, you’re not giving yourself a fair chance to succeed. 

Mistake #8: Creating Content for You, not Your Audience

Don’t just think about your content through the lens of your goals instead of what your audience actually wants. This requires that you have a deep understanding of your audience’s preferences and motivations as it relates to your brand. You can’t just create content based on your personal preferences, or what’s easy or convenient for you to produce. 

Mistake #9: Trying to Outsource Content Creation

If you think about your content creation as something you can just hand off to an outside team or contractor, you’re never going to create truly impactful content for your brand. You can absolutely work with outside writers, designers, or photographers and videographers to help you with the technical and creative aspects of content production and even content strategy, but you have to think about it like a partnership and plan to show up and stay involved. 

What’s more, your team should be integral to idea generation and vetting, because even if you find outside help that has category experience, your content needs to articulate your lived experience and point of view to authentically reflect your brand. 

Mistake #10: Siloing Content to Your Marketing Team

Even if your marketing department takes the lead on content strategy and execution, they should still bring in leadership, staff, and other stakeholders from inside and outside your community to generate ideas, surface content opportunities, and include new perspectives. Think about your content production like a news room, and yourself as the editor-in-chief. This also helps build significantly more capacity for idea generation and content production, and it just makes the whole process way more fun and inclusive. 

Content Matters

Chances are, you’ve made many of these mistakes throughout your content creation journey. Most of these mistakes are ones we've made personally and sometimes still make today. We’re not striving for perfection here. You’ve got to develop a learning mindset and a certain amount of resilience to failure with content production.

The main takeaway here is to be intentional with your content strategy. Organizations that produce engaging content lead the conversation in their space. Promote action and showcase your solutions. Publish at a regular, manageable cadence. Reach your audience where they are.

Finally, create content that matters - not just to you, but to your current and potential supporters. Make content creation part of brand building. Make it powerful enough to stand out in the attention economy. Make it something people look forward to seeing. When you do, you’re taking decisive steps in building a movement behind your cause, your brand, and your mission.