Today’s business blogging is full of pitfalls more horrible than vampires and zombies. Obviously, we don’t want to turn into mindless monsters that will mess up human brains. But we can never fight an enemy if we don’t truly understand what it’s capable of. As it creeps around, looking for its next victim, we don’t want to fall victim to its horrible content, freaky grammar, and ineffective strategies. Bad business blogging is really like fangs ready to suck into our necks and drain us up to the last bit.
However, we should consider Lord Petyr Baelish (aka Littlefinger) from the TV Series Game of Thrones’ words, “What we don’t know is what usually gets us killed,” and take efforts to know what bad business blogging is all about and how to avoid it.
So, what else do you expect? It’s about blogging mistakes that can ruin the business. Here are 5 unlucky charms we believe to be effective in content marketing, but really fatal to the strategy:
1. Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality
In anyway, you can sacrifice the quantity but never the quality of the product, right? It’s better to produce less than to produce more but useless. Your content gives your site more worth. You are dealing with hungry readers who want useful, informative, and humorous content. So, there’s no room for any “quantity over quality” strategy to optimize keywords. Your aim should be to encourage people to share your content and engage them into something that will keep them interested for long time. Let them forget about glancing and just moving on to the next post.
How to avoid this: Do not post recycled content because interested readers remember well! It’s not worthy to use the same information just to fill the site with lots of content.
2. Using Inconsistent Tone or Voice
Forgetting about the quality of the content makes you anonymous to your readers. You can’t be some mystery guy who will change personalities every now and then. Write like you’re really talking to them in person. Write something that will brand the company and make people remember it for that specific idea. But first, establish what relationship you want to have with your readers, are you good to be a storyteller, an entertainer, or a voice of authority who demands something? The tone itself will tell what the site or business is all about.
How to avoid this: Brand the company, product or service that you have. Make it easier for readers to remember your website with specific terms that uniquely describes you.
3. Afraid to Interact with Readers
If you’re afraid to reveal too much, then I guess you’re not for the business. Content marketing is all about interacting with your readers. Do not limit them from knowing even a little about you, the people you work with or what’s happening behind the scenes. A little sharing won’t cost you much time. Give them something they can fully relate to.
How to avoid this: Be open to share even LITTLE information about you. Let your readers somehow relate to your activities.
4. No Follow-ups
Expect that when you post content, you need to be ready to interact with your readers or followers. This is actually good because it means someone has read your post and bothers to comment. Follow up on their comments and talk to them on their level. They are not writers like you who would be familiar with certain terms. Do not leave these comments unanswered because they won’t bother to follow up too next time. Again, content marketing is all about building relationship with your readers. Know about their opinions and give them insights. You might as well get ideas from their comments and inquiries.
How to avoid this: NEVER ignore any comment, especially inquiries. Always check emails that notify you about people who left comments on your posts.
5. It’s All About You
Obviously, it’s your content, but if you brag about your product too much, you’ll lose your readers in no time. Promoting your site or business sometimes is fine, especially when you launch a new product or have great announcements for them, but don’t put yourself on the spotlight because no one really cares if you’re selling this or that. Unless they get interested with your product, they will not bother to check on it. Offer your readers with something more engaging and interesting. Just remember to make your content useful and your readers will do all the marketing for you!
How to avoid this: Limit yourself from writing about yourself. Sometimes is fine, but let your readers do all the talking for you.
As we try new things, we tend to get into troubles of figuring out how the thing works in the first place. It’s the same with content marketing. We try it for the first time and encounter problems because we’ve done it in a wrong way. But we don’t need to break bad to avoid things to go wrong, because learning from mistakes can keep us from ruining the business.
Do you know any other rookie blogging mistakes of small businesses? Share them in the comment section.
