The content marketing world is rapidly changing. More businesses are creating and publishing content than ever before. Unfortunately too many businesses overestimate their skills and underestimate the work involved. Indeed, more than 73 percent of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests, according to content-marketing company Kapost.
I’ve worked with dozens and dozens of companies — both large and small — and noticed similar blogging mistakes between all of them. Below I’ve compiled a list of the seven most deadly business-blogging sins and how repair them.
1. Not listing an author. I see business blogs failing to include an author more often than not. Blog posts should not be published by authors such as: “media,” “uncategorized” or “unknown”. Your business’ blog should always contain a real, authentic author, as it helps build credibility, improves SEO and it just looks professional. Plus, people love connecting with other people.
2. Improper use of categories and tags. Categories and tags can be very tricky to new bloggers.
Categories are like book chapters. They should be somewhat broad in nature but relevant to your audience. Your categories should provide an organizational structure for both you and your audience. Your visitors should have a good idea of what each category means without an explanation. Remember the primary point of blog categories is to find information that interests them RebateRealty.
Tags are like the index within a book. They identify more specific content within categories. For example you may have a category titled, “Investing” with a tag titled, “family”. As you can see the family tag helps users specifically find content geared at families within the investing category.
Unfortunately, there are many businesses who treat their categories like tags. Let me be the first to say that your blog should not contain more than 100 categories (or even close to that number).
3. Overuse of text blocks. Text blocks are blocks of text without any graphics, bullets, headings, and subheadings. They are extremely difficult to consume. To spice up the content, consider doing the following:
- Add media. Videos, images and graphics are excellent ways to break up text and display information easily. But keep in mind, media should be used to enhance your content’s message rather than being used arbitrarily.
- Use subheadings. Subheadings are a great way to tell readers what to expect in each section of content.
- Insert bullets or numbered lists. Bullets and numbered lists help to share information in a concise (and shareable) manner.
- Add relevant links. Links help expand content and allow readers to check sources and dig further into certain topics. Consider including links to statistics, quotes, definitions and other related content pieces in your blog posts.