With content now more important than ever in digital marketing, more businesses are investing their time and resources in company blogs and social media posts.
Whether your content is outsourced to a digital marketing firm or created in-house, avoiding some of the following copywriting mistakes will help your business to maintain the credibility that it needs to thrive in its sector.
1. Lack of research
Strong research provides the foundations that you need to write compelling and useful copy, so you should spend time before writing to work out exactly what you want to say. Avoid relying on one particular source of information, and don’t stop researching until you understand the topic, your audience and every fact that you’re using in your content.
2. Spelling and grammatical errors
Never presume that your spell checker will pick up every spelling or grammatical mistake in your copy – proofread everything that you write multiple times, and pass it onto a colleague when possible to give it a second pair of eyes. Precision is essential when you are trying to build a professional brand, so don’t fall foul of basic and avoidable errors.
3. Overcomplicating your content
Even when writing copy for the most technical subjects, it is important to write for your audience. As a guide, don’t use words that you wouldn’t use when talking to a customer over the phone, and keep to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) at all times.
4. Overusing keywords
When writing copy for the web, it can be tempting to try to fit as many keywords as possible into your text to increase your chances of ranking well on Google. However, keyword stuffing is bad for the readability of your online content and can harm your site’s search engine rankings. Instead, write relevant, concise content that your audience will enjoy, and keywords will form naturally in your copy.
5. Stating opinions as facts
It is important to be clear about when content is an opinion and when it is fact, so you should be sure to strongly distinguish between the two types of content in your copy.
Make sure you have well-researched facts to back up your opinions whenever you make a strong statement in an article. Where possible, link back to the source of your information for clarity, and never state an opinion as a fact, or worse still, make up a fact to further an argument.
If you wish to improve your firm’s content marketing strategy, get in touch with our team here at Piranha Designs today. We offer search engine marketing packages designed to drive traffic and sales.
