The Content Treadmill
Current content marketing best practices suggest you post at least 4 times per week on your blog while also creating multiple social media posts per day. Creating this volume of content often strains writing muscles, especially if you have other priorities (like running a marketing department). To help maintain your content writing machine, avoid these blogging pitfalls.
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Typos – Make sure to proofread content and catch any typos. When you’re writing on a deadline it’s easy to miss things, so be sure to go back and check for errors. One way of doing it is to ask someone else to quickly look over the post. Often your own eye skims and misses things. Another is to read the post backwards or out of sequence. That will stop your brain from skipping over any problems automatically. To help catch typos or grammatical errors, check out the Grammarly app.
Create a discussion – Hopefully your blog posts start conversations, not end them. When you’re writing a blog post think about the questions your readers would ask themselves. Encourage conversations with open-ended questions. Of course, not all blog posts will leave the comment section bulging, but the ones that do are the ones that prove valuable. If you look at the most popular blogs, valuable information and commentary is contained when readers offer their opinions and experience. 
Don’t forget images – This one is pretty simple. However, you’d be surprised at how often B2B content lacks interesting visuals. Break up your text with images, videos, or infographics. People will read a long blog post but looking at a screen for a long period without some kind of ‘break’ for the mind and eyes is difficult. We include two images into a post that’s around 500 words, adding an extra image if it gets much longer than that. As well as helping the reader, you’ll also have a slight SEO benefit from including some visual content and setting up the alt-tags appropriately.
No jargon – Blog posts are typically for customers that are new to your business. So try and avoid jargon whenever you can. Or, when applicable, explain any jargon to help the newbies as well as remind veteran readers when new terminology emerges.
Avoid click-bait titles – Taylor Swift Said What At This Awards Party!? -Don’t do it. It doesn’t reflect well on your business. It’s cheap and tacky. While it might get you clicks initially, in the long run, you’ll turn people off your content. And Google’s Panda is on the hunt for offending sites.
Avoiding Blogging Pitfalls
If you can avoid these five blogging pitfalls then you should be able to continue to create useful, readable content that brings in website visitors. Are there any aspects of creating regular content that you struggle with?
How can we help?
What blogging pitfalls scare you? Do you find the pressure of creating content difficult to deal with?
We are Spectrum Group Online, and we offer strategic and tactical consulting so you can monetize your online presence. Call us for a complimentary 30-minute consultation to discuss your website’s user experience and translate that into sales.
Photo credit – Top: Pixabay
Photo credit – Bottom: Alexander Baxevanis
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