The biggest mistake content creators make today

Mark Schaefer
6 min readJul 15, 2024

The topic for this blog post came to me in a dream. I woke up from my dream thinking, “Yes, it’s true. There really is one big mistake content creators make. I should tell others about it!”

I’m sorry this dream wasn’t more exciting or titillating. Maybe my other dreams will be a story for another day. Or not.

Before I reveal my dream-truth, I need to review a basic content marketing philosophy:

Content must be unleashed.

It doesn’t matter if you’re creating epic content or the best work of your lifetime if nobody sees it. The power in your content doesn’t from the content. It comes from the transmission of the content. We want our work to move, which leads to awareness, fans, subscribers and people who will buy things from us.

The biggest mistake content creators make

OK, let’s think this through.

You create great content. You post it everywhere. Somebody bites. They click on the link and what do they see when they arrive at your website?

A blog post? A video? A podcast episode?

Of course … but what else? If you’re like most people, the answer is … nothing. And this is the problem.

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Mark Schaefer

Keynote speaker, marketing strategy consultant, Rutgers U faculty and author of 10 books including KNOWN, Marketing Rebellion, and Belonging to the Brand!