Sleazy sales pitches, excessive self-promotion, and annoying calls to action are obvious mistakes that turn readers off—yet so many companies make them.
Then there’s the more subtle stuff, like a complete lack of understanding of your audience, jargon that you need a PhD to understand, or just generally being dull as dishwater.
Most of the time, you can recognize bad content when you see it. But sometimes when creating content for your business, you’re too close to be objective.
The challenge we all face as marketers and business owners is figuring out where our content stands on the awful to excellent spectrum, and how we can move our content upstream.
In this article, we’re looking at the three biggest content crimes – and sharing some tips for how to do it SO MUCH better.
Content crime #1: It’s not you, it’s me, me, me
Content marketing is a delicate balance between promoting your business and providing value for your audience.
The best content does both – it’s interesting and useful, while also giving the reader a sense of who you are as a company and signposting them towards your products and services.
The problem is, most companies get this balance wrong.
They either write selly-sell content that’s all about them and reads like a glorified pitch deck, or they shoot for neutrality and end up being bland and forgettable…and trust us, soulless content will not get you the leads and follows you’re looking for.
How often have you seen these acts of blatant self-sabotage?
Weirdly abstract product descriptions
This is when you try to show off the whizzy benefits and features of your offering without directly referring to it.
For instance, “Choose software with artificial intelligence that will take your business to the next level!” Um, okay… but what is it and why do I care about it? How’s that going to make my day easier?
And hold up, isn’t that what your company sells? You might think that readers will be hooked by this mystery product that apparently will change everything. Spoiler alert: they won’t.
Repetitive calls to action
We’ve all seen articles that have a CTA in the header, a different CTA at the end of every paragraph, another in the author bio, another as a pop-up when you try to leave the page… this is overwhelming for the reader and it makes you seem desperate.
Have you heard about the jam study where people presented with a choice between six flavors of jam made a purchase 30% of the time, whereas people presented with 24 flavors made a purchase only 3% of the time?
Less is more, people.
The best CTAs are unobtrusive and relevant to the content – if you’ve written a great article, your readers will want to know more.
The product sales pitch
This is when a company slots a product sales pitch at a random point in the article.
It’s often done through a standalone call-out box that interrupts the flow of the story and jars with the rest of the article.
If it looks like an advert and reads like an advert, it’s an advert … and no one likes being advertised to.
How to do it better: Solve, don’t sell
In the 1960s, Bruce Henderson of Boston Consulting Group fame was just beginning to attract clients to his brand-new company.
The problem? He had none of the contacts, credibility or relationships that his competitors took for granted.
So, how did he grow BCG into the consulting colossus it is today?
Quite simply, Henderson sold the one asset he owned – his strategic ideas.
Specifically, he made the bold decision to write short, provocative essays that explained his big ideas.
And he delivered them to executives as a user-friendly brochure that was small enough to fit in a coat pocket.
The stories he wrote (and the way he presented them) showed these companies he was aware of their challenges and ambitions, and that he had the solutions they needed.
Bruce’s solve-don’t-sell strategy was a winning formula.
Why?
Because pure self-promotion is hollow, uninspiring, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. We live in an age of cynicism and customers are reluctant to trust you.
Publishing valuable, relevant, and practical content is the only way to gain your audience’s trust.
Content crime #2: Fluff and filler instead of substance
When you’re staring at a blank screen, it can be tempting to fill the space with words, words, and more words. Quantity over quality.
Because surely something is better than nothing, right?
Wrong.
B2B readers are sophisticated. They can spot filler content a mile away and they’ll be turned off by it.
And a writer who has a way with words but no technical experience is not going to write with enough depth and credibility to persuade industry experts and key decision-makers.
How do you spot a fluff piece? It usually contains some or all of the following:
Jargon
We get it: you want to show off how knowledgeable you are and that you “speak the same language” as your audience.
But in the real world, people don’t clutter their conversations with buzzwords (unless they’re poking fun at them).
No one ideates; they think. It’s not a core competency; it’s what you’re really good at.
Of course, some jargon is fine if you’re writing for an audience who share a specialized vocabulary.
But in most cases, it’s better to use layman’s terms so more people can understand.
Evasive phrases
If the language seems a bit flowery and non-specific, there’s a good chance the writer is covering a topic they lack deep knowledge about.
Watch out for phrases like “most people think,” “it’s generally accepted that,” and “studies show.”
These are often used to make a claim sound more authoritative than it actually is.
Data without context
Data is an important piece of the content puzzle, but it can work against you if you cherry-pick information instead of building out your argument.
Readers get scared away by outdated statistics that are too good to be true, or when the data doesn’t seem to match up with what you’re saying.
Use data to support arguments, not arguments to support data.
How to do it better: Know your audience, and write as they speak
You have to know what you’re talking about and who you’re talking to, to communicate complex ideas with clarity.
So, think about the conversations you have with your clients and customers. What do these tell you about the questions your audience is asking, and the language they’re using?
That’s what you should be aiming for.
Stick to clear, direct terms that are easy to understand and practical takeaways that they can implement immediately.
Content crime #3: Writing for Google instead of your customers
Anyone can write a blog post. And almost anyone can write a well-ranking blog post.
You simply head over to Google, type a keyword into the search bar, and paraphrase what you find on the first page of results.
But what are you really giving your audience? A surface-level understanding of a complex topic, delivered with zero originality. All creativity left behind.
This is why so many posts that rank highly for a particular keyword sound the same.
Their writers have simply read and regurgitated each other’s work.
Fun fact: we recently tracked “The Stat” – the well-quoted notion that franchises have a success rate of 95% – across 26 different articles and still could not find a proven data source.
All of these blog posts simply referenced each other in a big, depressing game of telephone.
Here’s the point: even if these blog posts manage to rank for their target keyword, they’ll never achieve the only thing that really matters: convincing readers that real experts wrote them.
How to do it better: Write from interviews with your subject matter experts
The best way to create genuine, original, credible content is to conduct interviews with experts in your business.
For example, if you’re a tech company you could speak to the CTO about this year’s biggest challenges and next year’s red-hot trends.
In a 30-minute brain squeeze, you’ll uncover truly original – and perhaps some provocative – insights based on years of experience on the ground.
And instead of creating copycat content, you’ll have the building blocks for something infinitely more valuable: expert-led content with stories that resonate, educate and engage.
Great content starts and ends with your audience
Creating standout content doesn’t have to be hard. It all starts with understanding your audience’s wants and needs and writing content that meets them.
Combine this with original insights from your subject matter experts and a simple, conversational writing style, and you’ll soon be creating content that educates, engages and – most importantly – doesn’t make the readers’ eyes glaze over.
And if you manage to do all three of those things? Well, then you’re well on your way to content marketing greatness.
Happy writing!