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The cornerstone of any content marketing strategy is to provide your audience with content that resonates with them. What does that mean? It means creating content that appeals to their interests, needs, and wants. It’s not about selling them a product or service; it’s about giving them valuable information that they can use in their everyday lives.
By providing value, you build trust and credibility with your audience, which is essential if you want them to do business with you in the future.
What can prevent you from achieving this goal? Here are six common content mistakes that could be losing your website traffic—and how to fix them.
1. You Are Creating Content for the Wrong Audience
When you know your audience, you can create content that appeals to them and meets their needs. You also become better equipped to communicate with them and build a relationship of trust. By knowing your audience inside and out, you can create content that connects with them on a deeper level, leading to better engagement and conversions.
If you don’t know who you’re writing for, you’re wasting your time. For example, if you’re an SEO agency, you might think you should create content about the latest algorithm update. But if your target audience is small business owners who don’t know anything about SEO, so you’re not going to get much traction. Your content will fall flat because you aren’t writing for the right audience.
Instead, you’ll attract other SEO specialists who don’t need your services. So before you start creating content, make sure you know who your target audience is and what they’re interested in. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels.
2. You Are Creating Content Your Readers Don’t Care About
Once you know who you’re writing for, it’s time to dig deeper and understand what makes your audience tick. That means discovering their desires, pain points and challenges.
For example, imagine you’re a website design agency targeting local businesses. Your target audience might fear they don't know what it takes to create a successful website or how much they must invest to build one.
Your content could answer these questions to help your audience better address them. Creating content that helps your readers solve their problems will lead to better engagement and conversions.
If you’re not sure what would appeal to your audience, consider conducting a survey or interviewing some of your customers. This will give you valuable insights into what they want and need from your business.
3. Your Writing Is Painful to Read
Once you know your audience and what they want, it’s time to start writing. But before you hit publish, take a step back and assess your content. Is it clear, confident and concise? If not, make some changes.
Your content must be easy to understand if you want it to resonate. That means using simple language and short sentences. It also means avoiding jargon and acronyms that your target audience might not understand.
By making your content easy to read, you’ll increase the chances of people actually taking the time to read it. And the more people who read your content, the greater the chance of it resonating with your audience and driving results.
4. You Are Throwing Walls of Text at Your Readers
Most people don’t take the time to read blog posts. At least, not at first. Instead, they scan them. Only if they find something that catches their interest will they go back and read the whole post.
If your article is one massive block of text, people will likely give up before they get to the end. That means you need to break up your text into smaller paragraphs and include subheadings. Add images, infographics and videos, too. This will make your content more scannable and, as a result, more readable.
When writing your subheads, think about what someone would search for if they were looking for information on the topic you’re writing about. Then, use those keywords in your subheads. This will help improve your article’s SEO and make it more likely to show up in the search results.
5. You Expect People to Take You at Your Word
If you haven’t yet established a relationship with your audience and they have no clue who you are, don’t expect them to take you at your word. Instead, back up your claims with data. After all, people are more likely to believe something if it’s supported by evidence.
So, if you make a claim in your article, find some data to support it. This could be from a study, research paper, or even just a survey you conducted. The more data you have to back up your claims, the more likely people believe what you say.
Including data in your content will make it more credible and trustworthy, two things that are essential if you want your content to resonate with your audience
6. You Are Constantly Giving Them the Same Thing
If you want your content to resonate, it’s essential to experiment with different content types. By testing various options, you can find the format that works best for your particular topic and target audience.
For example, if you’re writing about a complex topic, an infographic might be the best way to explain it. Or, if you’re trying to reach a new audience, a video might be the best way to introduce them to your brand.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with different formats. The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work out. But if it does, you could end up with content that helps you stand out from the competition and that your audience loves.
Create Content Your Audience Will Adore
Imagine what it would be like to have an audience that can’t wait to see your next blog post, video, or infographic. The moment you hit publish, your readers are there, eager to consume your content and share it with their friends.
And because you consistently provide value, they’re happy to do business with you. After all, if you give them so much for free, they can’t help but wonder how good your paid products must be. They certainly know they can trust you.
5 min read
