In content marketing, good writing alone is not enough: people have to find your content and want to read it. The most common mistakes are weak headlines, the wrong length, spelling errors, a tone that misses the audience, a repetitive style, big blocks of text, too much or too little SEO, and writing for yourself instead of your readers.
Writing is a creative task, especially when you write fiction. But many kinds of writing serve another purpose than entertainment: they inform, instruct, seal a contract, or sell. Content marketing is one of them. Businesses create useful content, such as articles, guides, and videos, to reach potential customers and build a connection with them.
Whether you create content for your own business or are paid to create it for someone else, the mistakes and problems are the same. Your content may be good, but that is not all it takes to compete. People have to find and read it, or you are wasting your time. Here are 8 common mistakes that may be the reason why your content is not doing well.
1. The title
Sometimes the reason why your articles or posts are not doing well is not the content itself. The title, or headline, plays a huge role in attracting readers. If the headline does not make people want to read your article, all the effort you put into writing it is wasted.
Headlines are the first thing your potential readers see. They are what shows up in search results and what is most often shared on social media. So the title has to be interesting and attractive to your audience. Here is everything you should know about headlines.
2. The length of your content
There is no general rule for how long your content should be. Some bloggers and SEO experts prefer longer posts, because they believe these rank better in search engines than short ones. A longer post also leaves more room for keywords and keyword-rich subheadings.
Does that mean short content is wrong? Not necessarily. For some writers, such as the author Seth Godin, who is known for his short blog posts, short and concise content is the key to engaging their audience.
So what should you make of this? As so often, the answer is a mixture. It is fine to publish some short and some very long articles, as long as the length fits the subject and gives your audience valuable information. If you want good exposure and good readability, though, write more than three or four sentences.
3. Spelling and grammar mistakes
Typos happen. That is normal, and a typo is easy to overlook when you check your content before you publish it. But if spelling or grammar errors are scattered across your text, or even appear in the headline, your content has little chance of being read, let alone shared.
Even the best writers make mistakes, and some are hard to spot when you already know your text well. So a second pair of eyes, or even an editor, to proofread your text should be a must. If you do not have the time or the means for that, the Spell Checker can help you catch the errors before you publish.
4. The wrong language
Something that a spell checker cannot detect, and maybe not even a human proofreader, is whether you use the right language for your audience. Poor language, or a tone that does not appeal to your readers, is just as much of a problem as a spelling mistake.
If your audience is technically experienced, skip the simple explanations and the basic concepts. If you write for readers who want an insight into your business but lack the technical background, step back from the tech talk and explain complicated things in terms that are easy to understand.
5. No variation in style
As a writer, you have your own style, just like everyone else. But if you always use the same words, phrases, and metaphors, your content quickly becomes boring and predictable, especially for regular readers. Mix it up. You do not always have to use carefully crafted words to get a point across. Slideshows, videos, and infographics can liven up your content, and so can different kinds of articles, such as how-tos, tutorials, or a simple but informative list.
6. Big blocks of text
Another thing that catches the reader's eye right away is the formatting. Huge blocks of text are hard to read and tire the eyes, and they look daunting to a potential reader at first glance.
Short paragraphs with white space between them break up big blocks of text and are far easier to read. Subheadings within an article group several short paragraphs. They show readers where to find the parts that interest them most, and give your whole article a common thread to follow. See how long paragraphs should be for more.
7. The wrong amount of SEO
As with length, it is hard to say how much SEO, or search engine optimization, your article needs. Of course it is important to optimize your content so that search engines index it and show it in the results for specific keywords. But texts written only for search engines are quite unattractive to real readers. So keep SEO in mind, but make sure it does not disturb the flow of your article.
8. Not writing for your audience
This last point goes hand in hand with the one on SEO. You are not writing for a search engine or a web crawler: you are writing for your audience. Use your keywords, but wrap them in a readable text that your readers enjoy.
Also keep in mind that you are not writing content for yourself, your brand, your company, or your service. You are writing for your target audience. Find out what they are interested in, or which problems they face most often, and write about that. Your content should always give your readers something of value.