We live in an age where content is crucial to pretty much every component of our digital marketing experience. And when you are doing your utmost to craft unique content, no matter how hard you work at it, it doesn’t seem to take off in the way that you’d hoped. Sometimes our content doesn’t land but before we start to give up, we need to ask ourselves a handful of pertinent questions to understand where we are going wrong.
Is It Optimised For SEO?
There is so much SEO help available out there that this shouldn’t even be a question. But many businesses that are just starting out can find themselves struggling to hit the targets they want because they haven’t considered backlinks or optimised their content accordingly. It’s not a difficult thing to achieve now, especially as there are numerous SEO plugins available. The goal is about hitting the top of the search engine results pages, and while SEO isn’t a one-stop-shop solution, it can provide an adequate starting point.
Are You Saturating Your Content With The Product Name?
In order to make a piece of content strong, especially when it comes to blogs or articles, if there are more mentions of a product or a brand, this will slowly degrade that piece of content. It makes the piece of content look particularly spammy. As an audience, we are used to spotting the difference between natural and engaging content and fluff pieces that mention the product throughout the course of the article.
Is The Content Too Dry?
When we are trying to communicate a specific product, the tone of voice is crucial. If we don’t communicate any enthusiasm or emotion we won’t be able to get the readers excited. It’s a better approach to put some personality into the content and, most importantly, be human. The big problem that so many companies have with regards to their content is that the products can be a particularly dry subject matter, especially when it comes to contractors or services like plumbing. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of being generic with your content but this is when it’s time to think outside the box and create a voice but also do more for the sake of your content. Take a look at this YouTube clip of two physiotherapists. It’s very clear that their personality shines through and the cheesy theme tune automatically adds a huge dollop of personality. This, in conjunction with the fact that they are providing insightful information that people need, makes it a winning piece of content!
Is It Too Long?
While you can find many articles debating the merits of long and short posts you’ve got to remember that the goal is always about fulfilling its purpose. It doesn’t matter how long the content is but you have got to be careful when there is a lengthy video or lots of images on a blog. When we have a long piece of content it’s going to be difficult to engage the audience. We don’t have the opportunity to read an article that is 2,000 words long. Get to the point. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, especially when it comes to content like white papers or podcasts but when you are trying to engage an audience quickly do your best to make it short and sweet.
Is The Content Negative?
In screenwriting or drama, conflict is vital. But when you are trying to put the same sense of conflict into a piece of content, especially when you are attacking other service providers, this can feed into a very downbeat piece of content. When you are badmouthing everybody else it reeks of trying to get attention. We have to remember the competition is healthy and it’s a way for us to grow our market. But there is room for everybody out there. If you start to badmouth other people it never reflects badly on them, just on you.
Is Your Content Optimised For Mobile Devices?
Smaller businesses may have worked hard to get their website up and running but if the content is not optimised for mobile devices this will make it difficult to read or hard to access. If you publish a piece of content with massive blocks of text this isn’t attractive to the average punter.
There are many reasons that your content can go south. If you ask yourself these questions as a starting point you will be able to clean up your content but it could also provide you with the solution you’ve been needing all this time. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, especially as SEO changes all the time but it’s important to be aware where your content can go wrong.