Creating unique and useful content is a great way to inform clients and potential customers about your brand, product or service.
Content can help you connect with your audience, generate feedback, build trust and fuel other marketing activities.
So it should come as no surprise that you really need to give your content the attention it deserves.
Start off by cluing up on a few of the content mistakes you need to avoid.
1. Forgetting to research those all-important keywords
Don’t pour all your effort into a killer piece of content before spending valuable time doing keyword research. It’s so much harder to go back and add in keywords (and make them sound natural). Make it easy on yourself; do your research first and then cleverly pepper the keywords throughout your writing.
2. Boring content
Dumping content on a page without stopping to consider if it’s a) relevant to your audience, b) interesting and c) likely to cause a reaction or offer something of worth… is a common mistake.
3. Making it all ‘me, me, me’
Yes, your business/brand/project might be pretty darn special. Of course, you want to shout about it from the rooftops, but if all of your posts/articles/blogs are self-centric people are going to tune out fast.
That’s not to say you can’t big yourself up every once in a while, remind people of your skills or offering but remember— “you create an audience not by selling but by giving something valuable.”
4. Posting content that is jam-packed with grammatical errors
‘Pet hate’ alert! It’s so cringe worthy to see a professional business posting content that is poorly written. A blog post that’s full of typos and grammatical inaccuracies looks amateurish and does nothing to elevate your brand or company.
We’re not all great writers and that’s ok (if we were, I’d be out of a job!). A key part of any business is to recognise your strengths and weaknesses and to find people to fill the jobs you can’t do yourself.
5. Ignoring your audience or analytical results
While the internet allows many people to anonymously voice an opinion – which might not always be positive or the feedback you were hoping for—it’s important not to totally ignore comments or replies to your content.
Absolutely, you should take some feedback with a pinch of salt, but after you’ve cut through the clutter you might just find some interesting and productive thoughts, advice or questions. These might guide your content or give you ideas for new products or services.
6. Layout is vital
Perhaps you just wrote the most interesting and engaging blog of all time, but if you dump it on the page it’s going to fail. Why? Because there’s more to ‘great content’ than simply the written word.
Visual appeal and ‘stickiness’ is imperative.
· Make sure you have killer headings that grab your audience’s attention
· Use short paragraphs to make your content easy to digest
· Bold keywords or sentences to highlight important aspects
· Hyperlink words to make your content more ‘sticky’ (helps to keep your audience engaged for longer and spend longer periods of time on your site)
· Use bullet points
· Source interesting/creative images
And finally, don’t forget to share your thoughtful, interesting, well-written content across various (but relevant) social media platforms.