Content content writing mistakes – yes, even experienced writers can make mistakes. You might be writing excellent quality content, but still making mistakes. What are these mistakes which may ruin all your content efforts?
Content writers all over the world face innumerable challenges throughout their careers. Contrary to the popular belief, the job of a content writer is not quite simple as it often seems to many.
It is not always about writing good content, it is about considering various facts that goes into the creation of high-quality content.
How does a content writer ensure that the created content serves its purpose, it is useful, it is SEO friendly and it is not flagged by Google?
We hear the phrase “Content is the King” everywhere. The importance of creating valuable content for growing a business online is not a secret anymore. But like every aspect of digital marketing needs proper planning and strategy, creating content also doesn’t mean just writing for hours.
Below we are about to discuss 5 common mistakes to avoid while writing content to unleash its full potential that will benefit any business having an online presence.
Content Writing Mistakes – Not determining your target audience and a clear purpose
Determining your target audience should be the foremost thing to consider before writing any piece of content. Without properly having any idea about who will be benefitted from your content, you cannot be helpful to them. Having a target audience, knowing their pain points, goals and other relevant data will help you organize and structure the content based on what they want. Along with this you also need to have a clear notion of what you want to achieve from your content. Plan ahead and determine if you want to persuade, entertain, or just give information to the visitor and create the content accordingly.
Writing without a proper structure
It is crucial to plan a proper structure of your content beforehand to increase the value of the content. Try to grab the user’s attention in the very first paragraph and continue your content using the rule of 5 W’s: who, what, when, where and why to explain further. Apart from this technique use proper headlines and subheadings for a better user experience. Create separate paragraphs for each different section of the topic and conclude by briefly summarising the main points in the end.
Not using a clear Call-to-action
The most common mistake in writing content is not adding a clear CTA at the end of your article. Adding a proper call-to-action will help to urge the reader to take the next step after getting the value from your content. This doesn’t mean it has to be about selling your product or service; it can also lead them to download a free resource related to your content or share the content on various social media platforms.
Not fulfilling user-intent
Remember whenever you are writing content, you will have a motive for writing the content. Any user who comes to read the article will have a question in mind for which he or she will seek a solution. Thus, through your content, your writer will be looking for a solution. Your content should be able to fulfill this and provide a solution.
Helping the users by fulfilling their queries with valuable information should be the priority of writing any content. Even if your content is meant to entertain the reader make sure that they can take away at least some value after reading it. This is also important to rank your blog or article on the search engines as delivering user-intent is considered to be one of the utmost priorities in SEO as well.
Don’t forget to promote
You might have written the best content available on the internet but it is pointless without properly promoting it. Make sure to share the content on various social media platforms or preferably where your target audience hangs out for better engagement. This not only will have you a source of the traffic to your content but it will also help you to build a social presence. Apart from this, another effective long-term strategy is to have a mailing list to provide exclusive content to your subscribers.
Okay, so now the question is how to improve your content writing ability?
There are several ways any content writer can slowly and steadily improve the quality of writing. No, your writing is not going to improve in a day or two. It involves lots of practice and dedication and it will take time.
Let us talk about some unconventional ways of improving the quality of your writing.
Read your Competitors Blogs:
If you are writing for your own blog and you have time in hand, do a bit extra as research. Go ahead and check what and how your competitors are writing. Read more of other blogs – how well they are writing, their style of writing, their tone, their topic selection and how they are presenting.
Know the Trends:
If you are in content writing, you should always be aware of the latest trends. What do search engines need when they choose to index content? For example, these days Google is simply in love with long content.
But here is trick – suppose you are asked to develop a long content, you are not supposed to fill in words just to meet the desired length. Your content needs to be comprehensive. Make it to the point, elaborate, and cover everything.
Let us consider one example:
For example, you are asked to write about the skills of a content writer and your word count is 2500.
Well – we all know that it is impossible to write a good 2500 words article based on the skills of a content writer. So, how will you progress?
This is where most content writers make a mistake. They begin with an introduction and simply write about the skills. But it will probably cover around 1000 words – how will you write more?
So, let us break it up into pieces
- Introduction – Instead of writing on content writing, write about content writing as a profession
- Write about the job opportunities, scope, and growth potential
- You can move ahead with the need and importance of writing well to succeed in the profession.
- Then move ahead to talk about – basic qualifications, training, and content writing courses.
Now, when you write the above, you will be easily able to cover 1200-1500 words. This will never be fluff or unwanted because it is useful to the reader.
- Once you cover that, you can talk about the skills.
- You can mention online courses, offline courses and how writers can develop their skills, and so on.
Any reader who is searching for skills of content will find the article useful as it is all in some way associated with writing good quality content.
Writing quality content is crucial for growing any business and avoiding these mistakes will ensure you to be a step ahead of others.
