What is the best way to learn how to do things right if not from mistakes? If we did a mistake once, chances are that we won’t repeat it the next time. But, when it comes to content writing, things are a bit different. Content is one of the most important marketing assets you have. When you publish great content on your website, you will attract more readers and grow your visibility on search engines. Moreover, when you promote great content on social media it immediately gets viral and helps you engage and grow your target audience. There are many advantages good content can bring to your business. However, keeping the highest quality is not an easy job. Plagiarism is one of the biggest issues to deal with and hiring plagiarism editing services can be of help in such situation.
Even though you are a professional writer, it is absolutely normal to make mistakes from time to time. But, you should keep in mind that every piece of poor-quality content you publish onlinewill affect your image and make your readers doubt about your professionalism. There are already a lot of marketers out there who do a lot of mistakes when writing their content. So, if you want to stand out of the crowd and become popular, check this article and learn which are the biggest mistakes you can do in content writing and how you can avoid them.
10 Biggest Mistakes in Content Writing and How to Avoid Them
First, if you feel that you don’t have enough inspiration or time to focus on content writing, you can always ask for help and collaborate with writing services. Thus, you will have nothing to worry as your content will be written by professional writers who know exactly what they are doing. You will discuss your content strategy with them and they will follow your voice in detail. Use the tools below and you will have nothing to worry about your content:
- Rewarded Essays – you will collaborate with professional writers who respect deadlines without compromising on quality. What is more, they always offer original content, customizing each piece according to the client’s requirements.
- Hemingway Writer – this is a free tool which can help you evaluate your piece of writing and make it clearer and simpler to read. It is great to use it when you are not so sure whether your content is readable or not. This tool will teach you how to write without complicating yourself too much.
- Get Good Grade – you can count on their team of professionals if you are looking for well-researched and well-written content. They will save you a lot of nerves especially when your inspiration is stuck, and you need to post regular content on your website.
- Grammarly – this is an excellent tool to correct any grammar or spelling errors. You can use it even for your social media tweets. You just have to download its extension and you will have a “guardian angel” keeping an eye on your content and help you impress your readers with flawless pieces.
- Rated by Students – here you will find some of the best writing services to choose from. Based on the ratings and comments given by other collaborators, you will be able to immediately choose those services that fit best to your needs.
On the other hand, if you want to give it a try and start writing the content yourself, then you should stay away from making mistakes. Even though you are talented, you still need to know which are the 10 most common mistakes you could make and how to avoid them. Fortunately, you came to the right place as this article is going to show you how to make your readers excited about your content and wait anxiously for your next post.
1. Give a pitch of your idea in the introduction
Your readers don’t always have the time and patience to read your articles until the end. It may be that you wrote an extraordinary piece of content and still your readers bounce back after a few minutes. Why? This means that they didn’t find the answer to their questions from the first phrases. The introduction plays a very important role in an article. It makes the reader become curious, makes him want to find more and keeps reading it.
If you fail to attract your readers from the introduction, the first negative effect will be on your credibility. That reader who left your page because he didn’t find anything catchy to read, will ignore your next posts. He might also tell others about it and so your number of visitors will drop. Another consequence coming from this situation is your overall SEO health. When you don’t have visitors to read your articles, your content won’t be pulled by search engines and thus your popularity will suffer.
What is the solution? You should start by being more concise. Your reader should feel connected to the articles from the first lines and understand that you offer a solution to his problems. Thus, before you start writing your next post, you should have a clear structure in mind. So, your introduction will offer a wider view of your article and make your readers curious about what you have to say next. If you want to minimize the risk of losing your visitors from the introduction, you can try professional writing services like Top Writers Review, Grab My Essay, or Top Essay Writing.
2. Edit your work
Even though you felt that you wrote a great piece of content, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. Your readers deserve the best and so you should put all your efforts to offer them top quality content. If you wonder how other websites became so popular, then you need to know that editing is the key. When you feel that no editing is necessary for your content, you should leave it aside for a couple of days and not think of it anymore. Come back to it after a couple of days and you will see how you will find a lot of things that you can improve.
Successful editing means questioning every detail or example that you use. You should convince your readers that you are a professional in your business.Thus, you will offer them enough details and show you know what you are talking about. What is more, every time you discover a mistake during your editing process, you should write it down in a list. Therefore, the next time you edit a piece of content, you can use the list and correct those mistakes if they appeared again.
3. Pay attention to the tone you use
It is very important to establish a connection with your readers. When you decide to launch a website, one of the first steps you should follow is determining who your target audience is. Therefore, once you have established what type of people you want to read your posts, you will also know what tone you can use to connect with them. Even though you write specialized content, people like a casual tone, making it simpler for them to understand the information.
Keeping a casual tone doesn’t mean that you should use a lot of non-professional words. People like feeling engaged when they start reading a post, but they also like when the writer is not pushing themtoo much. So, you should be friendly but with a limit. If you find this difficult, you can start by reading your competitors’ websites and see how they write and what principles they follow. If they succeeded in making a name in the industry, then you can too. Once you understood which is their strategy, the next step will be to build your vocabulary and use it to attract more readers.
“Readers need to feel that you respect them. Even though you are talking about casual things, you still need to set some limits. A friendly tone is great, but it should also be professional and appealing. If your readers feel disrespected, they will immediately leave your website. This will affect your credibility and have serious consequences on your image”, says Martin Gibson, CEO at Flash Essay.
4. Proofread your content before you publish it
One of the deadliest mistakes you could make is publishing your content without proofreading it for plagiarism and grammar. There is hardly a quicker way to lose your readers than by publishing articles with typos and other small, but careless errors. This is why proofreading your work before releasing it is absolutely crucial. What is more, it is never enough to proofread your content just once. Even though it feels like it doesn’t have any errors, you should still proofread it a couple of times before you give the green light.
Proofreading always comes after editing. Once you have decided on your final piece of content, then it is time to proofread it and fix any grammar and spelling errors. Therefore, you will be more efficient and keep the pace with your publishing schedule. Proofreading will help you keep your reputation in front of your readers and will also keep you motivated to keep writing and surprise your readers with amazing content. If you feel that proofreading is too difficult for you and you want to make sure that your content is flawless, you can also use grammar and plagiarism tools. You can either choose a free version for a more basic check or invest in a paid tool which will proofread your content in detail. However, even though you use a proofreading tool, you should still read your article before publishing it.
5. Keep a continuous line throughout your content
The main parts of an article are the introduction, main body, and conclusion. They should follow a logic flow and offer the readers the information they are looking for. The introduction gives a short outline of what the article is about, making the reader curious to find out more. The main body gives details on the topic and responds to your readers’ questions. The conclusion wraps everything up and gives the reader some key takeaways. Therefore, starting from the first words you write in your article and ending with the last phrases, your content should provide a clear and continuous feeling to your readers. Their interest should gradually grow and reach its climax in the main body where they finally discover the solution you have to offer.
When a reader discovers any breaks or interruptions throughout the article, he will immediately leave as he might not understand your message. On the other hand, more sensitive readers might feel that if you don’t keep a continuous line you might want to cheat them, and you don’t have anything special to offer. Even though the rest of the article is well written, you might lose your readers if you talk about something in one line and then you switch to another topic in the next one. This is why editing and proofreading are very important before you publish your content.
Furthermore, a good solution is always planning things ahead. Before you start writing, you should clearly define your topic and write some of the main ideas down. Therefore, once you have built the “skeleton” of your article, you can start adding content and make the article flow in a logical way. If you are a beginner, you can take a look at how the big bloggers are writing and how they keep the continuous line in their content.
6. Do you know your audience?
If you knew you were talking to people between 18 and 25, would you still be using that serious tone? Before you start writing, it is very important to know who your audience is. You know that you wrote a successful content when your readers connect to it. And, the best way to do so is getting to know what your target audience likes, what are their biggest interests, and what they care about the most. Practically, you enter their heads and discover what makes them click when they read an article. After all, when you decide to write on a blog, you do it to attract readers and transform them into clients. If you write just for yourself, it is more likely that your business will fail.
Creating the buyer persona in the correct way is crucial for your business evolution. You will start by determining the demographics and geographic location of your target audience. Then, you will continue by finding what are their biggest motivators and desires. These elements will help you plan your content strategy and decide the tone you are going to use. There are plenty of tools you can use to establish your target audience. You can use Google Analytics to determine which are the most searched keywords for your business niche. What is more, Google Analytics will also help you find more about your potential readers’ behavior, thus helping you discover their interests. With these in mind, you can start writing and impress your readers with your professionalism.
7. Too much fluff and slang
You may think that the usage of slang will help you get closer to your readers. It is very good to be friendly and get closer to your readers, but slang is one of the most non-professional norms of writing. You won’t attract your readers with this type of language. You need to create a professional image and slang is not the best choice for it. What is more, when someone enters on your website, they want to discover something new and learn about a solution that you have to offer. Therefore, your content should go straight to the topic and tell your readers what they want to know.
Usage of unnecessary words will not make you more interesting. Too much fluff will make your readers go away as they won’t have too much time to lose reading your content without receiving any interesting information in exchange. Your piece of content might be perfect, but if it doesn’t address your readers’ pain points, then you worked for nothing. Furthermore, sloppy content will also affect your ROI. You will invest a lot of time in writing your content, but your readers’ numbers will drop as they don’t find anything interesting to read.
The solution? Practice makes it perfect. So, you can start by reading books and popular blogs. It doesn’t necessarily have to be on the same niche that you want to follow. What is even more important is to understand how others are building their content and how they introduce new information to their readers. Moreover, this will also help you nourish your vocabulary. Apart from these sources, reading the dictionary regularly will also help you discover new words and thus stay away from slang in your writing.
8. Failing to stick to a content calendar
One of the most common mistake writers make is not being constant in publishing content on their website. You may work on several pieces,in the beginning, publish them for a couple of weeks and then you don’t post another article for one or two months. This is a strategy that is not going to help you if you want to attract more readers and become more visible for search engines. If you publish constantly content on your website, then the search engines will favor you. What is more, your readers will also value your website more as they immediately understand your efforts in keeping them updated with the latest, valuable information in your market.
Therefore, if you want to not lose anything and keep your readers content, you should start by creating a content calendar. You have a lot on your head when you have your own website. So, a content calendar will help you stay organized and deliver the content exactly how your readers expect you to do. The minimum information your content calendar should contain are the dates and the topics you are going to address. Once you finished drafting it, the next step is to stick to it. This is why, when you make your content calendar, you should make it manageable and be realistic. You have a lot of things you need to focus on and this is why it is important to take all these factors into consideration when you decide the frequency on which you are going to publish your content. Furthermore, you should always keep a balance between quality and quantity. Thus, if you have to choose between publishing a short, mediocre article every week and a long, fully researched article every two weeks, then you should obviously go for the second option.
9. Don’t forget about SEO details
It is very important to focus on your readers when you write content, but you shouldn’t also forget about search engines. When you publish your content, search engines will try to figure out what your content is about and who is relevant for. If you want your content to be pulled up by search engines, you should start by using meta tags, subheadings, and alt text to accurately describe your content. Even if you use images, this doesn’t mean that you cannot use text behind them to make your content more interesting for search engines. You can use “alt text” to describe what your images are about and thus you will improve your search ranking.
Titles and sub-headings will also influence your search ranking. Before you start writing your content, you should also decide which are going to be the keywords you will use throughout the text. You can use various tools to determine which are the most popular keywords for your topic. Once you have determined the list of keywords you want to use, you should include them in your titles and sub-headings, and also in the text. Moreover, you can also bold text to emphasize the keywords you are using. Thus, it will become easier for search engines to scan and rank your content.
10. Don’t ignore your data
If your business is located in Chicago, and you see that most of your web traffic is coming from Florida, what does this mean for you? It might be that you have some problems in targeting your audience. But, how do you know if your content strategy is the right one and you are going on the right track? You can use Google Analytics and other tools to collect data for your website. You will get valuable insights into how your website is doing. For example, these tools will help you know how many visitors you have per day, where your visitors are coming from, how much time they spend on your page, which is their exit page, and much more.
Even though it might be difficult to understand and work with data,in the beginning, it will help you shape your future content and SEO strategy. Moreover, it might be that in the beginning, the results are not so spectacular. This doesn’t mean that you should get frustrated with slow results. Perseverance is the key to success. Keep checking and rechecking your strategy, keep an eye constantly on the analytics, refine your content, and you will see that your efforts will pay off.
Knowing how to avoid these most-common mistakes will have a positive impact on your content’s success. The solutions outlined above will help you improve your content strategy over time. Even though things won’t be perfect from the beginning, you should keep trying to improve and you will see that the results will come.
Bio: Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything related to SEO and blogging. She collaborates with IsAccurate and other websites where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their name in the online world.
