When creating content people tend to do a lot of research into what material is available on the topic and the latest developments in the field. This makes it easier to flow into the subject and write anything; a blog, article, campaign, proposal, or a simple social media post. Every writer and content creator always tends to have findings in the subject they have to write on. However, people rarely spend time analysing and finding things one should avoid when attempting to create high-quality content. These things come in the way of getting a premium level of content created for your audiences that will actually be celebrated and widely read.
Go on reading if you want to know the most common mistakes people make creating content online even if it’s just curation. Once you have an awareness of your work, you’ll be better able to navigate through and find better ways to write the same stuff.
#1 Writing trendy but not evergreen content
Focusing on trending topics and content can help you bring good visibility for some time but in the long run, it wouldn’t fetch you much audience because as the trends move out so will your content. To ensure against this try to keep your content from becoming redundant and pick topics and articles for subjects that will let you produce evergreen content. This will not only allow a vast majority of the audience to read through your content for solutions and clarity but you can also reuse the same content sometime later for newsletters, webinars, E-book or simply for marketing campaigns on your social media.
#2 Not researching enough
When you are writing on anything, you ought to know what you’re talking about. Even if you’re speaking about something as simple as the music choices people are inclining more towards, you should have a fair idea about the different genres of music and the kind of people who like them. If you haven’t researched fairly well, you will lose credibility with your audience and people will not trust your opinion on anything. Put in the work to have a clear understanding and then you can have an amalgamation of ideas read and then go on to write.
#3 Failing to understand your audience
You are writing content for it to be ultimately read. For this reason, you need to know your audience in and out. This includes knowing their preferences, the kind of websites they like to surf, the content they enjoy and in fact, even the slang or language that they use. When you are able to connect to your audience from where they are and what feels natural to them, you will be in a better position to communicate and appeal to them with your content.
For this, do some research on your demographic. In fact, basic research on your audience and their likes and dislikes would give you a fair idea about how to implement the right topics and language.
#4 Forcing a connection
Don’t strive to mimic other brands in forging a connection with your connection, that’ll always backfire. Find your own appeal and let your audience gravitate towards that. Even the campaigns that you implement should represent the core values of you as a brand and not look like an attempt at getting an audience. The thumb rule to remember here is you’re not writing to sell and make a purchase in the first chance, you’re there to tell better about what you’re offering and let your audience make an informed choice.
#5 Operating unstructured
Failing to plan is planning to fail. When you plan your content well in advance, you safeguard against any sudden occurrences and are well equipped to handle anything that is thrown at you. Devise a content calendar that helps you be on track and respond to the requirements of your audience regularly and consistently.
Further, don’t forget to keep your content also structured. Divide your content into paragraphs and give them attractive headings and of course follow the basic structure of a heading, body and conclusion. A structure helps your audience know what to expect from the content in front of them and navigate accordingly.
#6 Creating just for SEO
Many companies are still making the mistake of creating content simply for SEO purposes. This ends up generating content that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the rankings of useful articles that people might actually be searching for. These posts remain hidden in the blog sections and help users in no way. For this reason, invest time in planning and executing your content to produce content that is not only useful today but worthy four years down the line.
#7 Writing but not optimizing
Quite the opposite, there are also times when amazing content is being published but not reaching the right audience because of the lack of the right optimisation techniques. Make sure you use long-tail keywords and don’t forget to optimise every aspect of your page to help it reach the people looking for it. Great content with simple optimisation techniques can go a long way in getting great rankings and visibility.
