Why Your Content Marketing is Failing
There’s nothing more frustrating than landing on a company’s blog and discovering rather quickly that the content contains spelling errors, punctuation issues, and fails to clearly express an idea. While the obvious goal for any business is to encourage potential customers to stay on a particular page of a website for a prolonged period of time before taking a desired action, you certainly can’t keep a visitor engaged if your content is grammatically incorrect, dull and poorly organized. It may seem like a no-brainer, but content is the key to attracting new visitors to your website and maintaining a strong relationship with your existing customers. If you want to produce well-written content that will jumpstart your marketing efforts, follow the tips we’ve listed below.
Use a Free Grammar Check Tool
Even though you’re not a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, you can still learn to write correctly—or you can just use a free tool that corrects your spelling and grammar mistakes. Keep in mind, a free tool is no replacement for consistently honing your craft, but it can help in those cases where you’re not sure if an Oxford comma is necessary or not. Our company’s personal favorite grammar tool is Ginger Software—a free program that allows you to check a few phrases or scan entire documents for grammar errors, spelling mistakes, sentence phrasing, and readability. This program can improve your content ten-fold in a short amount of time.
Proofread all of Your Company’s Content
Free grammar tools are convenient, but they are no replacement for good old-fashioned proofreading. It’s true you probably hated proofreading peer documents when you attended grade school, but in the world of business its benefits are unparalleled. Before you even consider publishing a blog post, white paper, newsletter, or other piece of company literature, make sure at least three pairs of eyeballs get to see it. Though you may be a talented writer, even the most skilled individuals can make costly mistakes every now and again. When your co-workers look over the content, don’t be afraid to request feedback. You can be the one to ultimately decide what direction the content will go, but employees can offer a unique perspective and serve as a valuable asset.
Write Content That is SHAREable, Not Dull
When our marketing team browses the web in search of interesting, informative, and unique articles to generate ideas for our own content, we conduct a quick scan of each landing page to ensure the content meets our standard of quality. If an article we find on an external site isn’t exciting or written well enough to make it as a guest post on our site, there’s no way we’ll ever use it as a reference when creating a post of our own. The key to exceptional content marketing is learning how to create viral content that companies and individuals will want to link to on a consistent basis. If your employees are the only ones willing to wade through your blog posts (you probably force them), it’s likely time to make your content a bit more interesting. Try hooking potential readers with a question, or use words like “free”, “guarantee”, “essential”, and “easy” in your headline. No web user will actually click on your title if it doesn’t intrigue them in some way. Sharing content will also significantly improve the seo value of your website.
The Big Takeaway
To be a successful content marketer you need to use a grammar check tool, have employees proofread your content, and create content that will be shared by everyone. There is no substitute for well executed content. If you can overhaul your content marketing using the tips we’ve suggested your current and potential customers will take notice, and sales will follow.
For more information on content marketing, online reputation management and utah ppc management, contact Local 360 Media, a Utah marketing firm that specializes in creating print and digital advertising solutions for small and medium-sized businesses in Utah, Maryland, North Carolina, Delaware and Arizona. Our Utah marketing firm will give you a free consultation and take an in-depth look at the marketing opportunities you’re missing out on. Call us today!
