Digital Marketing Insights

Today, marketing is everything. Both big and small companies and businesses are trying to hire the best content marketers to run their strategy and skyrocket their brand. Without a killer content marketing strategy, businesses can’t go very far. This is why a content marketer plays one of the crucial roles in the success of a business.

Still, not all content marketers are experts that provide impeccable content. There are still those who make mistakes and create content that needs improvement. But, the most important thing is to always keep learning. This article will help you understand the most common yet very damaging mistakes that content marketers make. These mistakes are killing the marketing strategy and are doing no good for the brand. If you want to avoid them altogether, you can check list of top writing websites and choose professionals that can help you out with content. If you are all determined to work on content yourself, have a look at the list of 9 most common content writing mistakes.

1. Not Outlining

Every content writer has a writing routine they prefer sticking to. This routine is the key to their success since it allows them to follow a winning formula and get the most out of every writing session.
Outlining needs to be a part of your standard writing routine.
Although you may find outlining to be childish or unnecessary, not doing it is a serious mistake that might damage the quality of your content.
Outlining helps you:
– brainstorm ideas
– organize your thoughts
– structure your article
– build a coherent whole out of it
– prepare for proper research
– produce quality content
It will only take you around 10 minutes to do it, but it will help you and guide you throughout the entire process of writing that piece of content.
Don’t make the mistake of skipping this step and acknowledge it as an important piece of the puzzle.

2. Huge Chunks of Text

Most beginner content writers feel like the most important thing about a piece of text is the content itself.
While it’s immensely important that you focus on value and information, the way you structure your text can be even more important.
People online want information and they want it now. If you write a blog post and make it three huge paragraphs long, no one is going to read it. Instead, here’s what you need to do:
– divide the article into smaller paragraphs
– use headings and subheading to split it up
– use bullet points to make it easy to scan the article

source: Forbes

Online readers will open your blog post, scan it for two seconds and determine whether they want to read it or not.
Hopefully, the information provided will be satisfactory, and they’ll dig deeper into the text.
But, if the text is unscannable and just a huge chunk of words, they’ll bounce.
Make sure you don’t make this basic mistake and keep the structure of your content appealing for the eye of the average reader (scanner).

3. Lack of Editing

Regardless of your level of expertise, or years of experience in content marketing, you should stay humble. Believing that you can always do better is a great way to never stop improving and working on your professional growth.
This is exactly why you have to edit your work.
A single writing session can hardly produce the perfect piece of content that you have the potential for writing. But, going back to that text at least once or two more times will make the whole thing better.
The best way to edit your text is to:
– write the first draft and let it sit
– come back to it after a couple of hours or better yet, the next day
– read it and make notes as you go
– rewrite it to make it better
Editing will polish your writing and help you produce better-quality content every time.
Without editing, your content will be of poorer quality and that will damage the entire marketing strategy.

4. Waiting for Inspiration

While writing is a creative process, you still have to remember it’s your job. And, there’s no delaying or procrastinating when it comes to your professional life.
This is why it’s important that you separate creative writing you do for your soul, form the content marketing writing you do as a job.
To put it simply, when you feel like you’re uninspired or you may be facing a writer’s block, you don’t have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to kick in. Instead, you have to fight this:
– change your work environment
– do a 10-minute exercise routine
– lay down for 15 minutes and do nothing
– meditate
– talk to yourself in the mirror, saying you’ve got this
Do whatever you need to do but don’t give up and watch TV until you’re inspired again. This will lead you to deadline issues, sloppy writing, and poor quality content.

5. Use of Unreliable Sources

The next thing you need to worry about whit your content writing is the source of your information.
You’re not a know-it-all and you don’t have the answers to all the questions. This is perfectly natural and shouldn’t worry you.
But, if you know nothing about proper internet search and building your research skills, you might be in trouble.
The Internet is filled with information, articles, blog posts, and facts written by millions of people. It’s your task as a reliable content writer to recognize the reliable sources from those that are unreliable.
For example, you should use reliable sources such as:
– scientific articles
– academic papers
– authority media sources such as magazines and news portals
– industry experts
You have to learn which information is trustworthy, reliable, and confirmed so as to avoid misinforming your readers.
Naturally, make sure you reference your sources to avoid being accused of plagiarism.

source: Huffington Post

6. Giving Opinion Instead of Advice

There’s another common mistake that content marketers make. When writing a piece of text for your online readers, you need to keep the goal of the article in mind.
In most cases, people want to find an answer to a question or have someone solve a dilemma for them. In other words, they want advice.
But markets tend to simply give their opinion on the subject matter and leave their audience not convinced to follow through.
Instead of giving an opinion, you need to:
– analyze available information objectively
– compare the opinions of different experts
– give actionable tips
– give clear steps and guidance
– help your readers get to their goal
The information you provide needs to be of an informative, and actionable nature. Don’t make the mistake of simply stating your opinion and hoping people will agree with it.

7. Sloppy Proofreading

As we’ve already mentioned, presentation plays an important role in the way your audience perceives your content. Poor grammar and spelling of your content will spoil user experience. This means that you have to be very careful about making your content impeccable before you publish it.

Therefore, quality proofreading is a must.
You need to make sure that your content:
– has no spelling errors
– has no grammar mistakes
– uses proper vocabulary
– uses proper sentence structure
Imagine reading an article online and finding a spelling error. You’ll automatically dismiss the source as unreliable or at least unprofessional.
This is why, before you publish the text, you need to:
– proofread several times
– ask a colleague to proofread for you
– use a proofreading tool such as Grammarly

source: Grammarly
Publish only once you’re 100% certain your content is impeccable.

8. Disregarding Your Audience

Most content marketing writers juggle several writing projects at the same time.
For example, you could be writing a car maintenance guide for one blog and a digital marketing tools review for the other. The most important thing you have to remember is the audience differs for each of your projects.
Disregarding the audience is one of the worst mistakes you can possibly make as a content marketing writer.
To avoid making this mistake, you have to know your audience:
– learn about the audience for each new project
– determine what are their main characteristics in terms of age, sex, social status, location, online behavior, etc.
– craft a specific style of writing for that audience
– write with that specific audience in mind
You have to understand who are the people your content is aimed at.
If you don’t do it, you’ll be writing content that isn’t going to achieve its goals and that the target audience won’t be interested in reading.

9. Ignoring SEO

Finally, there’s one last thing you absolutely have to take into account when writing content for your marketing strategy.
SEO is an important tool you have to use to make your content:
– more popular
– higher ranked in Google search results
– easier to discover

Learning the art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will help you master content marketing and create content that is at an enviable level.

Final Thoughts

As a content marketing writer, you constantly need to work on improving your skills and being the best version of your professional self. Learning about the potential mistakes you can make is great for your future projects and will help you polish your writing.
The content writing mistakes listed above can seriously damage your marketing strategy. Make sure you read each of the points, and learn how to avoid making these mistakes.