When it comes to content marketing, tiny elements can mean the difference between success and failure. Learning to recognize small and nearly imperceptible mistakes is important for every writer or content creator.
Let’s look at minor content writing mistakes you should avoid making in your blog posts, social media content, and more. You’ll see a vast improvement with what may seem like small changes.
MISTAKE NO. 1: TRYING TO BE CLEVER
There’s a widespread misconception that good content has to sound sophisticated and complex to be of any value. While such an approach is great for some writing styles, it doesn’t work so well in content writing. Writing to market your business or product is different from writing for academic purposes or for literature.
When it comes to content writing, you need to keep it simple. Remember that when people are browsing websites, they’re dealing with an overload of information. Your readers have to make multiple snap decisions and browse through a number of websites before they find what they need.
They don’t have time for ‘clever’ writing, long pages of text, or jargon.
Your best work involves simple sentences, with just three lines to a paragraph. Write as if you’re speaking directly with a friend. Such writing is easier to read and helps people connect with your brand.
MISTAKE NO. 2: PUSHING CONTENT LIVE TOO QUICKLY
As good as your post looks when you’ve written it out, there’s always room for improvement. Before you hit the publish button or send your copy to a guest posting site, always wait a day or longer if you can.
When you take a long break from what you’ve written, you’re able to see your work more clearly. You’ll find small ways to improve your writing and fix errors you might have missed otherwise.
So, always make sure there’s a day between writing something and publishing it.
READING YOUR WORK IN YOUR MIND
In my business, I constantly remind myself and others to write in a friendly and casual manner.
But that can be difficult to do since the way we speak and write is different.
To test your work, try reading your blog post loudly. As you listen to yourself, you’ll find phrases that sound stilted and unnatural. Or you’ve created long sentences that are too complex.
Reading your work out loud will help you catch awkward phrasing and make your content flow more smoothly.
NOT KEEPING YOUR AUDIENCE’S JOURNEY IN MIND
In sales and marketing, a customer’s journey from awareness that they have a problem to buying a solution is represented by the ‘buyer’s journey’ framework.
It has four parts, and in some cases, a fifth is included. When building content, you need to cover all the stages with the right topics. Let’s take a quick look at the buyer’s journey framework and how you’d angle posts at each step.
1. Awareness: A potential buyer knows they have a problem. For example, a business owner is concerned about employee productivity. They might use keywords like ‘low employee productivity’ in searches. In this step, you could create posts around the topic like ’10 factors that reduce your business’s productivity.’
2. Consideration: At this stage, a buyer looks at ways to solve their problem. They might search for things like ‘how to track work.’ You would create posts titled around this. An example is ‘7 reasons why tracking employee productivity matters.’
3. Decision: Your buyer figures out they need a time tracking or productivity tool, and they look for specific solutions. To help them out, you can make posts like ‘the top 9 time tracking tools for 2022.’
4. Action: Here, a buyer would look into specifics on a product. For example, pricing, integrations, and more. And this is an opportunity to write in detail about features and to even sell directly via your blog post.
The point is that you shouldn’t be self-promotional in all your posts. You need to keep customers in mind in your writing, and a powerful way to do that is to consider the buyer’s journey.
CREATING CONTENT IRREGULARLY
There’s no easy way around it: If you want the benefits of content marketing, then you need to make great content and create new material on a regular basis. You could publish something new every week or every month—what matters is consistency.
Publishing fresh content shows that your business is active and thriving. And your content will also create positive signals for search engines.
A pro tip is to set up content calendars and use social media management tools. These tools help you plan what to write and share in an organized way. You’ll be able to document your work and track what you’ve created.
BACK TO YOU
Content marketing isn’t easy to carry out. It often takes a dedicated team or, at the very least, a single dedicated person to create content regularly.
But the rewards are clear: You get better rankings and engagement from people who recognize quality content and reward it.
Avoiding a few mistakes can go a long way to improve the effectiveness of your marketing.
Syed Balkhi is