Sarah Shade is a Content Specialist at Express Writers.
Regardless of niche, vision, profit margins and aspirations, you and all business owners have one thing in common.
You give your best on different fronts to stand out from the crowd.
Quite often, you might engage your efforts in a battle with competitors, and also with your own limitations. During this process, you might rely on premium content to highlight your uniqueness, make your products more desirable and form solid communities around your brands.
However, achieving consistency in content creation is more difficult than you may think, especially when you are faced with multiple work-related challenges on a daily basis.
Truth be told, every once in a while, we all get distracted.
Sometimes, we are overwhelmed by all the tasks that require our full attention and prompt intervention.
We run out of fresh, creative ideas and we lose our motivation for a second or two.
Nonetheless, we shouldn’t let these temporary impediments stand in the way of our success.
Why Does Your Business Require a Steady Content Flow?
Nowadays, content is still a powerful game-changer that could represent the perfect liaison between businesses and their clients.
Robust, consistent, unique content is an invaluable asset that can separate you from your main competitors, boost your revenues, maximize your online visibility, tighten your bond with prospects and existing customers and give you hope for the future.
According to Brad Friedman from Social Media Today, by posting content regularly and keeping your website updated you could improve your search engine rankings and implement more effective link building strategies. After all, it’s always easier to find and use links that are relevant to your pages when you’re running a blog that counts hundreds of quality posts reflecting your grand vision, mission and purpose in business.
8 Ways to Stay Consistent with Your Web Content at All Times
A steady content flow can help you make a name for yourself in any field of activity, while managing to impress both human visitors and search engines with your commitment and consistency.
But churning out dozens of first-hand articles and blog posts is no easy task, especially when you’re writing with your audience in mind. A stream of unforgettable content requires a mix of inspiration, creativity, talent, motivation and hours of research.
If you want to be able to take pride in a flawless, uninterrupted content flow in the long term, here are a few key steps that you should follow to achieve your goal.
1. Stick to an Editorial Calendar That Makes Sense to You
We will let you in on a well-kept secret: even the most experienced bloggers, journalists and business owners count on an editorial calendar to control content publication across a great variety of channels, such as newspapers, blogs, social media platforms and email newsletters. An article published by CrazyEgg reveals that a good editorial calendar adapted to your goals can improve your current content strategy. Using this handy little helper you can manage and schedule social media posts, gather new ideas for inspiring articles and posts, track events that could become your most generous sources of inspiration, and schedule your own blog posts, as well as the ones signed by guest authors. Now you can make the most of three great editor calendar plugins for WordPress (CoSchedule, Editorial Calendar and EditFlow) to plan your every move in advance and make sure that deadlines will no longer catch you by surprise.
2. Explore Key Themes That Could Never Get Boring
Instead of creating dull, perishable content that essentially puts your products and services into the spotlight and praises the uniqueness of your brand, opt for a different approach. Tackle the real-world problems and concerns expressed by your audience. Humanize and personalize your brand. Be helpful. Be engaging. For once, put your skills, expert insight and experience to good use to explore a series of interesting themes and convey information-rich messages that will raise the interest of your audience.
3. Create, Publish and Distribute Evergreen Content
No matter how active you are in your field of activity, you may get hit by a serious case of writer’s block at some point. Does this mean that you should lay down your weapons, while praying for the return of your inspiration? Of course not! Instead of opting for a passive approach towards content creation, you should explore a series of evergreen content ideas that are long-lasting and sustainable and can continue to stay relevant long after their materialization. How-to tutorials, videos, list posts and product reviews match this description and can help you satisfy your readers’ hunger for premium content even when you don’t really have anything new and groundbreaking to write about. Choose high-interest evergreen topics (romance, pet care, weight loss, finance, parenting and so on) that are fully compatible with your business and find the most creative methods to add new meanings to old stories.
4. When Your Content Ideas Are Drying Up, Improvise!
At some point, you may get tired of crafting list posts and how-to articles. While these types of content will always return the desirable results as long as you keep your quality standards high, simply because they stress out the problems experienced by your readers and promise miraculously effective solutions to these issues, it is always recommended to play the diversity card to keep your readers engaged. By improvising every once in a while you could break the monotony and avoid dull topics that you may be tempted to use as a last resort. Here’s an idea worth exploring: talk to influent people in your industry and turn your dialogue into the essence of your new article or blog posts. Make a list of interview subjects and unleash your creativity. If everything goes according to plan, consider turning interviews into a prominent, regular feature of your content flow.
5. Unleash the Power of Multimedia Content
Your content shouldn’t be limited to chunks of text, especially today, when multimedia elements are more appreciated than ever. Podcasts, videos, infographics and quality images can enhance the appeal of your writing and stimulate other players in your industry to share your material and give you credit for it. Most importantly, you can use all these essentials as the food for thought that you may need to come up with new content ideas. For instance, you can build your new article or blog post around a clever, visually appealing infographic shared by a reputable source or a video that has gone viral on YouTube.
6. Make the Most of User-Generated Content
UGC (user-generated content) is a real gold mine for those who are desperately trying to avoid too generic, overdone topics that have no effect whatsoever on savvy readers. The opinions and suggestions that you could find on discussion forums can fuel your content creation efforts; and the same goes for blog comments, client testimonials and any other form of feedback provided by the members of your audience.
7. Hire Expert Writers
Sometimes, you may feel the need to upgrade your team by adding a few new talents who are familiar with your industry, brand and products. In this case, you need more than a good writer; you actually require the services of an experienced content creator who knows your niche, competitors and audience and has what it takes to tailor your messages based on these three key elements. You can use various types of user-generated content (such as photos posted by your satisfied customers on Instagram) to cultivate and provoke online conversations, build trust and credibility, reflect a sense of authenticity and ultimately, create and maintain an uninterrupted content flow with just a little bit of help from your prospects and existing clients.
8. Use Online Tools That Will Help You Stay Organized
Content creation can be a complex, laborious assignment. This is why you shouldn’t hesitate to simplify your workflow by counting on a generous selection of online tools designed to support your progress. For example, Google Hangouts and Skype can help you organize productive brainstorming sessions with clients and colleagues anytime, anywhere. Evernote enables you to track topics and pull out new inspiring ideas from your personal archive, while Trello gives you the chance to create boards for your buyer personas, work closely with your staff members, attach documents, create and assign new tasks, add due dates to help your team meet deadlines and vote on various content ideas. Identify, select and use the free online tools that could perfect your content flow to stay on top of your game without having to work extra to reach your target.
Maintaining a Balanced Flow of New Content Doesn’t Have to Be a Challenge
As a dedicated business owner, you know your products and your prospects better than anyone else; and still you’re having a hard time expressing your most creative content ideas.
Or maybe you’re just too busy juggling different work-related responsibilities on a daily basis and can’t find the time and energy to research new topics, identify and analyze new market trends or build a deeper bond with your audience.
In this case, rest assured knowing that a team of professional writers can help you maintain a high quality content flow.
Rely on quality web content writing services to stay relevant on your niche, impress readers and search engines and improve brand awareness, and let a team of creative minds pave the way for your success.
You know that there is no business like show business, right? But who is to say exactly what is meant by “show business”? When you create content, you do so in an attempt to show readers that you know what you are talking about and that they should go to you if they want to learn more or use your service/product.
So when it comes to the show business of content creation, how can you make sure your writing is a box office smash? (Or at least a cult hit or award favorite)?
7 Methods To Shout From the Rooftops (Or Get Your Content A Lot of Viewers)
There are actually a lot of things you can do to make sure your content is seen by a whole lot of viewers, but here are seven good places to start.
1. The Preview Looked Good: Use Social Media to Attract Readers. Have you ever determined whether you would see a movie based off of its preview? There is a good chance that you have. Here are some things that my friends and I have been known to say after a preview:
“I didn’t think I would want to see that, but the preview looked good.”
“The preview looked funny, but they probably put all the funny parts in it. So it’s probably not going to be that good.”
“I’m disappointed. I thought I was going to like it, but not if the preview is anything to go by.”
You have probably said something similar at some point too. So what does that mean for content production?
It’s not just the writing itself that counts, it is all the small, social media content you do along the way to advertise for your content. What you say in the Tweet, Facebook post, or summary can be just as important as the actual content.
Because it is what viewers are most likely to see first, it is the main component in deciding whether they are going to read on. So you have to grab their attention there if you want to have any chance at grabbing their attention in the long-form post.
Moral of this point: If you can’t catch them in the previews, then you are not likely to catch them at all.
2. Be the Headliner: Create Good Headlines. Just like it is the star headliner that is going to draw a lot of the crowd, it is your catchy headline that is going to get people interested in reading your content. So you know that you need to work hard on crafting a great title.
Knowing you need a good headline and actually being able to come up with one, though, are two very different things. Not only do you have to get your creative juices flowing in order to write a good title, you also have stop trying so hard because people can always tell when you are trying too hard.
Luckily for all of us, there are all sorts of tools to help us create amazing titles.
Advanced Marketing Institute. The AMI has a headline tool that allows you to enter your headline and have its Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) ranked. It then walks you through how many EMV words a good headline should have and what type of EMV words you are using (e.g., intellectual EMV).
Crazyegg Blog. This post walks you through several ways almost guaranteed to convert readers and tells you why they are successful.
The Future of Ink. This post basically gives you some fill in the blank headlines that you can use with your own content.
Moral of this point: If the headliner isn’t drawing in crowds, then everything else had better be a hundred times better to make up for it.
3. Open Strong: Create Catchy Intros. After the opening night of a movie or play, reviews are going to come in. That opening could just make or break the show because if it gets all bad reviews, people aren’t likely to come back for the rest of the performances.
Think of your opening paragraph as the one that is going to get you the initial reviews. People are going to read it, and then they are going to determine whether they want to read more. If your intro paragraph is getting bad reviews, then no matter how good the rest of the content is, people likely aren’t going to be reading it.
On the other hand, if you capture the attention of your readers from your opening lines, then you have a better chance of making it to the end of your run (i.e., getting people to read the entire article.) So don’t ignore that opening paragraph or rush through it to get to the meat of what you are trying to say.
Moral of this point: If you want a long run, make sure you get good reviews from the opening.
4. You’re Gonna Be in the Pictures: Use Images. I’m making a long, drawn out analogy here comparing writing to show business, so you can see why images are going to be an important component to what I am saying. If you want to be a success in show business, then you need to actually show something.
People like pictures. It’s just a fact of life. That’s why they say a picture is worth a thousand words. A good image will draw the eye so that the potential reader can see that great headline you created, which will cause them to read that opening line that is going to get you great reviews, which will make them read whatever it is you have to say. And all because you caught their eyes with a good image.
Images could even help your SEO ranking because Google loves images as much as us mortals. You can find free images on places such as Wikimedia Commons or by searching Flickr’s creative commons images. You can also set up accounts on platforms such as iStock in order to find pictures.
Moral of this point: People love going to the pictures, so give them a picture worth seeing.
5. Take 5: Use Breaks Wisely. Looking at a giant block of text is bound to give you a headache. It doesn’t matter what it says, it just looks intimidating. Think about going to a play. You are going to have notable act breaks and likely an intermission. Even movies, which very rarely have intermissions unless they are three plus hours long, have Act and Scene breaks. Imagine watching a movie that was done all in one shot. Sounds dull to me.
When you are writing any type of long-form content, you need those “Act” and “Scene” breaks not only to help guide the flow of the piece, but to keep from scaring off potential readers.
In order to do this, use subheadings (and give them the same consideration you give the title), bullets, numbers, charts, images, etc. Just whatever you do, don’t create a giant body of text and expect people to want to read it.
Moral of this point: Give people short breaks so that they can digest all of the great performances they have been watching (or reading as the case may be.)
6. Lights, Camera, Action: Don’t Just Use a Bunch of Words, Say Something Important. Everybody wants to see it because of the previews, the headliner is drawing lots of attention, the images are stunning, and the actual movie is … blah. This could be a big flop on Rotten Tomatoes. What went wrong?
You can do everything else exactly right, but it does not mean anything if the actual content is bad. People want action. They want plot. They want to be able to trust the piece they are reading. Don’t just say words to fill in space. Make every word count, and back up your claims with proof.
If you give people interesting content and prove that you aren’t just making things up, people are going to enjoy what you have to say and believe that you are an expert. That is the way you will become a success.
Moral of this point: Without a believable plot, no one is going to like the story.
7. They’ll Remember the Closing Act: Leave Them Wanting More. Now that you have done everything right, end strong. People like endings. Just recently, one of my friends was discussing a book with me, and he said that the book was good, but then it just kind of ended. He wouldn’t recommend it because he hated when books did that. What does this tell you? Wrap things up if you want to leave people satisfied.
When they are finished reading, people should have all their questions answered. What was the point of what they just read? Why were you the right person to tell them about it? And, perhaps most importantly, what should they do next?
In order to close strong, wrap up all your points. Did you ask why carrots are orange in the beginning, but you never finished with the answer? Then you aren’t finished yet. Did you write a great post, but never explained why the post was written? Then you aren’t finished yet.
The ending is where you can place your call to action if you have one – such as donate to a cause or fill out a form. It is also where you make sure all of your points are wrapped up.
Moral of the point: When they leave, the ending is what they’ll remember most: make sure they remember something great.
Successful Content Is Like A Well-Oiled Machine
Just like a movie is not just a preview or a scene or an actor, a good piece of writing is not just one thing. In order to be successful, you have to make sure everything is working together to be the exact thing your reader needs. Only then will it be successful.
A constant content flow that has the power to keep you and your brand in the public eye is an invaluable asset. Nonetheless, the process of creating fresh, reader-oriented, 100% original content for different platforms demands a lot of time and money.
Successful content and social media marketing require the highest level of commitment and consistency, whereas you, as a budget-conscious small business owner, have the responsibility to manage your resources wisely and limit your spending without making any quality compromises.
This is where content curation comes into play, allowing you to increase your online visibility without breaking the bank.
What Is Content Curation and How Could It Help Me Grow My Business?
Content curation represents the act of identifying, collecting, organizing and displaying content that is relevant to a certain area of interest and a particular audience. According to an article published by Search Engine Journal, this concept refers to the process of discovering and using quality content pieces with a real substance, elaborated and published by high-authority sources.
You may be wondering: how could this strategy benefit my business? Truth be told, there are several benefits associated with content curation. First of all, this technique enables you to save time, money and energy that you would otherwise have to invest in content creation. Secondly, the almost overwhelming abundance of premium content launched by reputable sources allows you to select the best pieces based on the interests and expectations of your audience, and also according to your own mission, vision and goals. Thirdly, content curation is a social act by definition; therefore, it could represent a viable and extremely effective method to establish new partnerships with prominent players operating in your industry, make new contacts and rely on the type of writing that can give you the chance to reach a larger segment of public.
An example of curation is what we’ve been doing. The Great Content Roundup accrued over 200 shares in just a few days.
Content Creation vs. Content Curation: Which Tactic Works Best for Your Business?
An article published by Social Media Today reveals that content curation and content creation are two excellent methods that any company can use to fill its content pipeline. Both processes have their pros and cons and should be seen as the two halves of the same whole; not as two disparate strategies implemented to achieve a steady content flow.
4 Benefits of Content Curation
Cost-Efficiency. When you have sharable, world-class content at your fingertips, you can choose to curate your favorite pieces instead of crafting new ones from scratch.
Time-Efficiency. When you don’t have much time to create your own content, you can promote the most brilliant ideas introduced by reputable industry experts to give your readers the food for thought that they’re expecting to see on your blog/website/social media account.
The Chance to Build and Maintain New Connections. By consuming other people’s web content, you encourage the development of new potentially fruitful partnerships that could support your boldest marketing goals in the future.
The Opportunity to Help Your Readers Explore Various Perspectives on a Certain Topic. Content curation lets you introduce newsworthy facts from multiple perspectives, enabling your readers to form an educated opinion on a particular subject.
On the other hand, content creation also has its fair share of benefits, including the following ones.
4 Benefits of Content Creation
The Opportunity to Make Your Voice Heard Through Original Content. Your tone of voice, the originality of your ideas and the way in which you bond with your readers and encourage their feedback are the main elements that reflect your uniqueness. Through content creation you can celebrate your individuality and make sure that you’re not at risk of drowning in a sea of copycats.
The Ability to Demonstrate Your Skills and Knowledge, While Consolidating Your Position on Your Niche. Unique, highly researched content helps you talk like an expert and be identified as one by your audience.
The Chance to Craft, Publish and Promote Quality Content That Is Exclusively Yours. Words. By creating quality content you can boost your level of exposure. First of all, world-class writing encourages visitors to land on your page over and over again; secondly, the superior quality of your content pieces may stimulate other curators to showcase your masterpieces, implicitly spreading the word about your business.
A Deeper Connection with More Loyal Readers. Last but not least, generally speaking a constant content flow based on original pieces could improve your relationship with your readers and boost their loyalty, who will see you as an inspired creator, as opposed to a mere curator with no voice of his own.
[Tweet “Creation without #Curation is like Cake without Icing. #Content”]
5 Tips on How to Simplify and Optimize Your Content Curation Ritual
Both curation and creation can support your everyday marketing goals, allowing you to support the growth of your small business. The key is to maintain a solid balance between the percentage of curated content and original content that you publish on your website. In our article published on SiteProNews, we have listed the main steps that one should take to guide a healthy content curation strategy in the right direction. Here are five tips that you should apply to curate content like a pro.
Discover the Particularities of Your Audience (Including Its Area of Interest). What kind of subjects would make your readers tick? What type of content pieces should you actually curate to stay on the same page with your readers?
Make Sure Content Creation Is Just a Piece of Your Content Marketing Puzzle. These days, in order to maintain your competitiveness in any industry, you have to be more than an enthusiastic curator. Perfect your content crafting skills and let the whole world hear your unique story.
Add Value to Each Content Piece That You Curate. Make sure every single content piece that lands on your website/social media channel bares your creative imprint. Instead of copy pasting info coming from different high-authority sources, choose to filter the facts that you present through your own perspective.
Do Your Research. Find the best sources that could offer you the most relevant and engaging type of writing for your content curation strategy.
Use the Right Tools to Take Your Content Curation to the Next Level. Now you can make the most of an ample series of free and almost free curation tools, such as Curata, Scoop.it, Bundle Post and Storify, designed to discover, organize and share relevant, engaging content coming from trustworthy sources.
Creation and Curation: Getting the Best of Both Worlds
You are the content pieces that you distribute through different channels, so what does your writing actually say about you and your business? Moreover, what kind of favors should you expect from the content that you choose to publish on your website, blog and/or social media platforms? According to an article by Convince&Convert, you can measure the effectiveness of original content and curated content by taking a closer look at conversion rates and click rates.
According to the data provided by this source, posts linked to one or more third-party websites ensure up to 33% more clicks than the ones linking to owned websites. In other words, curation leaves content creation behind when it comes to counting clicks. Nonetheless, content creation appears to be the optimal strategy that you should employ if your goal is to drive conversions. Convince&Convert reveals that posts linking to your website can click-to-conversion rate up to 54% higher than the one displayed by posts that are linked to third-party websites. If you take a minute to think about it, this actually makes sense: your prospects need at least one good reason to become your clients. In this case, your original content is the main motive that stimulates them to make a purchase and interact with your brand in different other ways (subscribe to your newsletter, provide feedback, share your content on social networking websites and so on).
All in all, why choose between content curation and content creation when you can have both? Learn to see curated content as a breath of fresh air; turn it into your valuable source of inspiration and use it as a solid foundation for your upcoming content crafting efforts. Convince&Convert sheds some light on the secret recipe for success based on curation and creation: people who link their posts to their website anywhere from 25% to 50% of the time get the best results. However, this range may not always serve your best interest. A trial-and-error process is the best way to establish the optimal ratio between curated and original content. Measure your very own curation/creation efforts regularly and find out what type of content actually encourages your readers to respond to your calls to action in the most desirable manner.
Looking to jumpstart your content curation? Learn more here!
As you well know, 50 Shades of Grey was recently released in theaters amid a bunch of excitement and scandal. It made $93 million in just four days, and its sequels have already been approved.
Whether you’re a fan of this (I admit, risqué) story or not, you have to admit it does have some amazing content marketing power.
Taking some inspiration from the famous book title that has now premiered in worldwide theaters, I’m taking an original, descriptive look at 50 Shades of Content. Do you actually know just how many shades content has? From bold to macabre to natural, there are so many shades out there among the millions of web pages that exist.
Use these content shades to help you identify and create awesome blogs, product descriptions, and more.
A Descriptive List: 50 Shades of Content
Authentic content. When writing content, you always want to make sure it is authentic. This will help make your content powerful, and help engage your reader base. Just write from your heart and what you know, and you will be creating excellent, authentic content. All your content should have a shade of authenticity. Exceptions could be sales targeted/landing pages, where you are trying to sell rather than simply offer authentic advice or wording.
Bold content. Bold content is a great way to catch people’s attention. You can be bold by writing opinion pieces on things within your industry or the latest trends. This is a good content type for emails, home pages, and other busy, targeted areas of text.
Creative content. When you write your content, you need to make sure you are being creative. A great way to gain creative inspiration is to write on the latest trends. For example, I took the opportunity to use 50 Shades of Grey as inspiration for a post that helps you learn about the different aspects of content. Use whatever you want and you can have some incredible, creative content. Blogs are a great outlet for content creativity.
Direct content. If you are telling your readers something important, you always need to make sure you are being as direct as possible. This will help show people that confident, know what you’re talking about, and also help convert them from simple readers to clients. Email content is one of the best “direct” content shade examples.
Engaging content. Engaging content is something that everyone needs. It helps to get your readers and clients involved, which really helps your business be successful. All your content should have a shade of engaging.
Fun content. You want to provide your readers with something of value, but you don’t always have to be super professional. When you write your content, you should always make sure you include something fun to add more life to your blogs. This could be something trendy, like how many businesses brought up “The Dress” on their social media sites. Social media should always have a shade of fun to avoid being boring.
Good content. This is a given when it comes to content – it always needs to be good, or what we refer to as high-quality. Focus on crafting great content pieces all the time. It might seem like it takes too much time to focus on good content, but when you do, you get some great results. Let’s be honest: all your content should be this shade.
Horrible content. Now, this is a shade you absolutely want to avoid. Horrible content is a surefire way to make sure your content fails, losing you many clients and revenue. You need to stay away from horrible content at whatever cost. You don’t want to face the terrible consequences of it. Unfortunately, a lot of it exists on the web. NO content of yours should be this shade.
Inquiring content. This is great when it comes to creating engaging content, especially for social media. Ask your clients and readers questions, and have them provide their answers. You can give silly polls or ask serious questions that can help you tweak your content to be more powerful for your readers. Emails and blogs are good outlets for this content shade.
Joyful content. When you write your content, you should always make sure you have a happy tone to it. It doesn’t always have to be puppy and rainbows, but make things more upbeat for your readers. We get enough negativity with the latest news reports, so give your readers some great, positive content. It can be pretty powerful being one of the bright spots on the Internet. Seasonal blogs and emails are a good way to present this shade.
Knowledgeable Content. You can write content on almost anything, especially with the Internet at your fingertips. However, this can sometimes lead to you writing content that isn’t very knowledgeable. When you write your content, make sure it is on a topic you know or one that you have done a lot of research on.
Lackluster Content. This is yet another form of content you want to avoid. Lackluster content is boring, and many times, unreadable. Make sure you craft fun, engaging content all the time to get the best results from it.
Macabre Content. Now, this could be good or bad, depending on your macabre sense of humor, and your industry. You can write macabre content, just always make sure to stay tasteful, and keep it on the lighter end of macabre humor (Tim Burton is a good example).
Natural Content. Natural content is a great way to rank on the SERP and also helps keep people on your site, reading. You can write natural content by not focusing on keywords and writing about something you have a passion for.
Original Content. Your content not only needs to be knowledgeable, natural, and good, it also needs to be original. Write your own content, on your own ideas and you will easily have great, original content. Of course, you can always gain inspiration from others, just always make sure that when you write it, it is original – completely your own.
Passionate Content. Passionate content is great because it can help you improve your content marketing skills and get your content out to a wider audience. When you write passionately about your industry, you set yourself apart from your competitors and you become a knowledgeable source in your industry.
Quirky Content. This is great for when your industry is one that is incredibly niche, and you have a very specific audience. This form of content could be industry related jokes, or anything that is unique to your industry. Quirky can be great for many businesses, no matter how professional you are.
Risqué Content. Now, this isn’t content that Express Writers writes for clients. However, if you are in a risqué industry, risqué content could be great for you. When you write it, always make sure you comply with Internet rules on any and all warnings you need to give people before they access your site.
Smart Content. Smart content is the best way to ensure you have great, high-quality content for your readers. You should always make sure it is readable, but smart content can help set you up as an industry leader.
Thrilling Content. Thrilling content can be a variety of different types depending on your industry. You can write on things from horror stories to anything else that would be considered thrilling.
Understandable Content. You always need to make sure that when you write content it is easy to understand. Remember that the average reading level in the USA is 7th grade, and many of your readers aren’t going to understand a lot of industry jargon unless you are specifically writing for those in your industry.
Veracious Content. Veracious means speaking or showing the truth so when it comes to content, this means that you need to have truthful content. Always make sure you back up your claims (like I did in point 21) and that you’re representing your company well. If you don’t, you will be found out, and you’ll lose your client base pretty quickly.
Witty Content. This is a great way to create fun content for your clients. You can use humor and be clever with various things, creating something your clients will enjoy. When writing witty content, always make sure you use discretion; you don’t want to offend people with your humor.
Xerotic Content. This isn’t a common word to use, but I wanted to find an “x” word! Xerotic refers to something dry and let me tell you, that isn’t the type of content you want. By following several of the tips I’ve already laid out, you will be able to avoid dry content easily.
Yappy Content. We all know those yappy people who never seem to stop talking; it can get annoying, can’t it? Because of this, you need to make sure that you avoid writing content that doesn’t continually ramble on. Avoid this shade at all costs.
Zesty Content. Zest is great when it comes to food, and it is also great when it comes to content. Add various things to make your content zesty to help yourself standout from others.
Appropriate Content. You might be writing some great content, but you need to make sure that it is not only good, but also appropriate. It needs to fit your industry and business. If it doesn’t, it won’t come across as sincere.
Bookish Content. A great way to get awesome content is to gain inspiration from books. This can be from fantasy, sci-fi, or non-fiction; whichever books you use, you will be able to get some great inspiration, and be relevant all at the same time. This is one of my favorite content shades, since I am a little addicted to reading awesome books.
Captivating Content. Content needs to have a captivating element to it in order to get and keep readers on your site. You can do this by writing news content, telling a story, or just doing something different than you usually do. Captivating content will make sure you are able to retain your readers and turn them into great customers!
Decisive Content. This type of content is great when you want to show that your products or services can get the job done. You can tell people why you stand out from your competitors and why you’re the best choice.
Evergreen Content. You always want content that is trendy and relevant, but you also need to make sure you are producing evergreen content. This will help you continue to get views and clicks on your blogs, even years in the future.
Fishy Content. Again, this is another content shade you want to stay away from. When I refer to “fishy content” I am talking about content that uses keywords to get the SERP bots on the page, or any other black hat SEO tactics that could be detrimental to your site.
Generic Content. When you’re creating content, you need to make sure you stay away from content that is too generic. You always need to add something new to different topics, and make them your own. This makes for original content, that is still useful to people.
Helpful Content. A great way to create amazing content is to use this particular shade of content. People love finding blogs that help them with problems, and by answering their questions, you are showing that you are a source to be trusted and used.
Interesting Content. No matter what your topic is, you need to make sure you write interesting content constantly. It is possible, and you’ll find that interesting content is more likely to be shared and engaged with.
Jolly Content. What do I mean by jolly content? Well, holiday content, of course! When it comes time to do holiday marketing, you should always make sure you have holiday content at the ready. This can be for any holiday, too, not just Christmas.
Kind Content. When you write any content, but especially content on touchy subjects, you should always make sure your content is kind. You don’t have to agree with someone or something, but write about whatever or whoever it is in a kind fashion.
Lifestyle Content. This is a great idea for many niche companies. Sometimes, it can be hard to come up with topics for your industry, but a great idea is to feature lifestyle content that features industry related things. Are you a photographer? Write about lifestyle photography.
Mainstream Content. Each industry, no matter how niche, can always write on something that is mainstream. There will be something that happens that everyone knows about (such as “The Dress,” which I mentioned earlier) that can easily be implemented into a blog post for your client base.
Newsy Content. Writing news content is a great way to come up with great topics, writing on relevant items, and engaging your reader base. Consider writing on news within your industry or how world news relates – this will be a great addition to any blogging campaign.
Observant Content. Another great way to make sure that you create great content is to make sure it is observant. You can do this by answering questions, or making connections between news and your products.
Photograph Content. Content doesn’t just have to be written, you can also create awesome content from different formats, including photos. This could be memes, stock photos, business photos, or infographics.
Repurposed Content. Did you know you can repurpose your content and get more out of it? This is a great way to get more views on great articles, as well as helping you create multiple content formats from one piece of content.
Strong Content. Your content should always be strong. If you follow the various content types I’ve already highlighted, you’ll be well on your way to creating some pretty strong content.
Trendy Content. Evergreen content is vital, but you do need to make sure you write on a few trends. Trendy content can bring in more views, get more social shares, and help convert customers.
Useful Content. Your content always needs to be useful. It can be made useful not only for your clients, but useful content can become a great help to those within your industry. In fact, useful content might be used as a resource by industry leaders, which will really help your business.
Video Content. When you create content, make sure you aren’t just doing written content. Create some great video content to share with your audience. Sharing content on different platforms is a great idea.
Accessible Content. No matter what type of content you are making, make sure it is accessible to your audience. This means that you will share it on social channels, email, and other marketing platforms, as well as writing it to where your audience can easily understand it.
Respectful Content. Whether you are writing serious or humorous content, you need to make sure that you are always writing respectful content. If you aren’t being respectful, this will hurt your reputation significantly. Just like I mentioned, be kind and make sure you are respectful.
Story Content. I briefly mentioned telling stories as a great way to write captivating content, but story content is really something you should consider doing. This will engage your audience and help bring more viewers in and keep them. Tell a story of your business, an event you went to, or anything else you’d like.
50 Shades of Content Creation: Be Inspired, Go Create Your Shade
These are all great content ideas to use, and, of course, there are some that you would like to stay away from. While following these might not make you as successful as the 50 Shades of Grey film, they sure will help you see the success your business deserves and needs! Which of these are you planning on using when you create your content?
But, the bright side of making mistakes is that we learn how to correct them and in doing so become slightly better at avoiding those mistakes in the future (usually).
In content creation, there are a lot of mistakes that inundate the Internet, unfortunately. My mind and soul cringes as I discover them. From the simplistic ones regarding spelling and grammar to the more complicated ones that impact our SEO validity, mistakes are a pain in the side of any content creator.
And it’s not just one person. Content creators the world over suffer from the same problems that you do regarding content creation.
10 of the Worst, Eye-Digging, Bad-Bad-Bad Content Mistakes
Let’s take a look at ten of the worst content mistakes I’ve ever come across. (Beware: it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.)
1: Duplicate Content. Ah, this evil beast. From an SEO perspective, this is a capital sin and one that many content creators and blog owners fall victim to all too often. Duplicate content hurts your search ranking and can lead to erroneous search results. Redirection tags and multiple hosted copies of a home page can lead to terrible problems when a search engine is trying to reference your actual home page. It can be something as simple as a double-posted blog entry that could lead to the dreaded duplicate content error in your site.
From a marketer’s point of view, you’re probably going to need to have a handful of home pages in order to gauge the effectiveness of any particular one. The problem arises when you forget to state these pages as non-indexed one to the search engine robots. The result is that you can have multiple copies of your home page being referenced and one may be a draft or incomplete one. Leaving the decision to the robots on the search engine means that they could be sending users to your unfinished landing page, leaving them with a horrible impression of your site. In the blogger’s case, multiple posts can easily be detected and removed, but only if you know your post was double-posted. Keeping an eye on your site helps you to avoid these issues.
2: Too Much & Bad Backlinking. Backlinks are very important in determining the usefulness of a site and how well it shows up on search engine rankings. The trustworthiness of a site comes down to how well it backlinks to other sites. Creating backlinks that incorporate spammy sites, link directories or ad-heavy sites drives a site down the search rankings. When you’re creating backlinks, you should really examine where your backlinks are coming from to ensure you don’t get flagged as an untrustworthy site.
Creating a backlink history that is on the up-and-up requires some research into where you’re linking to. Always try to keep authority sites at the top of your link data. For content that already exists, you should ensure that the links that exist in these content pieces are viable and do not link to any shady sites. Using utilities such as SEMRush aids in creating a backlink report that can help you to weed out these bad backlinks. It’s a time consuming process, but in order to keep your ranking intact, it’s a necessary one.
3: Over-Optimization of Keywords. This one makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. Seriously. There’s nothing much worse (except maybe my first two points).
Creating a page that has a plethora of good information does require you to use keywords to aid in finding the information when a search engine user requests it. But in the past, throwing together a handful of keywords and using them inside the text of the landing page was usually what you needed in order to place high up on the search rankings. Eventually, the focus moved away from keywords and into a combination of factors. This came about because of the abuse of keyword stuffing in the early days of search engine optimization. Over-optimization of keywords occurs when you have more than one page with the same targeted keyword. The search engine doesn’t know which one of your pages is the main site and so you are left with pot luck as to what the search engine decides is the more relevant site, which may not be the one you want to appear there.
Proper SEO practice requires you to use different targeted keywords for different pages in order to ensure a situation like this does not arise. Over-optimizing your site for your keywords can have a massively detrimental impact on your search engine results and your overall SEO strategy. As a technical content error it can be a lot harder to spot, requiring constant vigilance over your SEO results and targeted keyword seeding.
4: Too Many Links Off The Home Page. This might seem counter intuitive after having described how important backlinks are, but having too many links from your home page makes your page hard to navigate. Links serve as incoming traffic points and outgoing traffic locales. The more there are, the more areas that you send traffic out to. However, by limiting your links, you are able to direct a larger amount of traffic to the pertinent sites instead of trying to create a link storm that doesn’t really send significant traffic anywhere.
Building links is important, but too many links results in a page that is difficult for your reader to navigate and even harder for a search engine to rank. Link building, therefore, should be done in moderation and the locations to your links chosen carefully to align with your overall SEO strategy. You can easily determine if you’ve over-linked on your homepage by using the Moz Tool Diagnostics Summary. It will also inform you if you have too few links on the page. Maintaining a healthy balance of links on your home page is very important to making your page successful, so doing too much or too little does register as a bad content error.
5: Spammy Title Tags. Grrr. I hate this one too. And so does Google.
Title tags are supposed to be embedded descriptors that aid a search robot in indexing the titles on your page. When developing title tags you need to strike a balance. They must not be too wordy (over 60 characters) or you risk Google rewriting them and you losing the impact of your title. They should also be unique for each page that you have, since overlapping title tags have their own associated problems.
Duplicate title tags can lead to Google indexing multiple pages as the home page or the targeted keyword page. It can also lead to Google indexing the wrong page and this, in turn, leads to a lot of confused users that end up on one of your content pages instead of your home page. Create title tags that are concise and to the point for each one of your pages. Don’t overdo the titles since you shouldn’t really cross sixty characters in length. Anything longer than that is simply begging the search engine to truncate it. This leads to a loss in impact and a very unprofessional outlook when users see your page show up in search engine results.
6: Bad Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation. On the Internet it’s a commonplace situation to see social media blowing up over simple grammatical and spelling errors. When it comes to content production, proof reading goes a long way towards ensuring that the content you have is properly capitalized, grammatically sound and doesn’t contain any typos. We as writers knows how hard it is to write for hours without a typo. It’s nearly impossible to do so, but if you’re posting things to a blog, it’s your duty to ensure that the post is at least grammatically sound.
The reason why good grammar and spelling (and to a lesser extent punctuation) is important is the nature of our business: we create content that informs people. People are less likely to take you seriously if your content is riddled with spelling errors and subject-verb disagreements. In creating the content you are responsible for it being readable. Communication that is unreadable is worthless and your content is communication in its most basic form. All it takes to avoid this content error is a quick proof-reading of your work. If you have more time, you would be well advised to give it to an independent pair of eyes for scanning.
7: Low Quality Content or Just Plain Bad Content. Content creators build content from the ground up that is designed to give our readers value when they read it. To this end, if we create content that is no benefit to anyone, then what good is the content that we create? Good content should do one of three things. It should inform the user to a new situation developing, teach the user something they did not know before or give the user an opinion of a particular situation or product. If content does not do any one of these three things it immediately becomes bad content.
The quality of your content affects how inclined a visitor is to stay on your site. If your content is all of the “bad” variety then it’s unlikely you’ll have a visitor staying for any length of time since it doesn’t benefit them in any way. In creating good content you should focus on the user. What does the user get out of this content? Will it benefit him or her in the long run? Users are human first and we should create content that stirs them, that informs them and that gives value to their lives. Anything else just makes your site trashy and liable to be ignored by users. Avoiding this problem is as simple as asking yourself, “Who does this content benefit, and how?”
8: Long Page Load Times. Page load times might not seem like an issue with high speed Internet available almost all over, but you’d be wrong. Users have grown used to being able to access web pages quickly, and if your page takes longer than two seconds to show signs of life, users quickly discard the page and go back to their search results. The users that you lose the most through poor page load times are mobile users, but desktop users are just as bad. The fact that their Internet is many times faster than mobile users might lower that two-second window to just one.
Page load time problems are usually signs of poorly built web pages or pages that are hosted on servers that are sluggish to respond. However, it could also be due to internal coding within the webpage itself. Utilizing tools to determine why your page is loading slowly can aid you in isolating the problem which you can then go about fixing. Page code optimization can be done yourself, but if it’s a server-side problem, your only redress would be moving your hosting to a company that has a better response time on average.
9: Unreasonable Expectations from SEO. SEO is not a silver bullet. It’s not a quick cure nor a panacea that will fix all your traffic problems. SEO is a tool, and like any tool, you must be aware of its limitations. Using SEO is the first step in improving your page rank, but it is not the last step by a long shot. SEO allows your pages and sites to be more findable for the people who are looking for your particular set of skills. You can’t expect to implement SEO and within a month have ten times as much users: that is a pipe dream.
A realistic expectation of SEO is that it can boost traffic through search engines through your site in the long run. This means that you have to adopt the idea of continually updating and improving your SEO strategy. Gone are the days when you could use algorithm exploits to trick the search engine to display your site as one of the top ten in a particular keyword niche. Now if you want traffic from a search engine, you have to earn it, and it is not an easy road. SEO won’t fix your UI problems, your site design problems and it won’t make your content less boring. Before you implement SEO you need to fix those things first or else SEO won’t be able to help you at all. Avoiding this pitfall is as simple as being honest with yourself regarding what you can expect from a well-planned SEO strategy.
10: Evaluating Content Solely from an Analytics Standpoint. Really, people? Aren’t we past relying on robots when it comes to content? I also (really) hate this one.
Content is more than words on a page. It’s more than a collection of targeted keywords. This isn’t 1995 anymore, a page stuffed with only keywords is going to drop you to the very bottom of the search engine rankings for that keyword.
I will tell you this with a completely serious face: content is alive, it breathes, it grows and feeds off the energy of the backlinks that support it. When you’re evaluating your content, you have to look beyond the numbers and see the importance of its existence.
Numbers are important too. From an SEO perspective the numbers behind your keywords, the cost-per-click and the volume of the search results can give you a general idea of what works and what doesn’t. Analytics will tell you traffic signals of incoming and outgoing links as well as the veracity of your backlinks. But these are all sides to the main course, the content itself. Your content must provide value. It must be interesting and it must keep the reader engaged. Without that, your statistics will just tell you that your content is underperforming. It’s up to you as a content creator to understand why and to take appropriate measures to fix it.
Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Fix Your Mistakes With a Content Audit and Continue
Your best guarantee for as close to 100% error-free content, from your blog or website, is by investing in a content audit. Just be sure you aren’t hiring a machine. A real, SEO-knowledgeable person should be conducting the audit and giving you real recommendations, like replacing duplicate meta tags or writing a new page for that duplicate piece of content (and naming that specific page).
Content creation mistakes are not limited to any one portion of the content creation spectrum. We all make mistakes. Whether it’s a technical mistake, a content-based mistake or even a simply thing like spelling and punctuation, we all make them. We are only human and we must accept that sometimes we fall short of our own expectations. What we can do, however, is to keep an eye out of these mistakes that may lurk in the shadows, and stamp them out when we find them. With any luck we can manage to avoid having these horrible practices trip us up and lead us to a fall.
