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Are you making costly mistakes that are ruining your content? Your writing might look good but it needs more than aesthetic to perform well.

Although writing begins the content creation journey, it is more than just typing or writing.

In this post we will reveal 10 content creation mistakes to avoid. Whether you write blog posts, social media posts, video scripts or newsletters, this post will improve your writing.

10 Content Creation Mistakes to Avoid 

These are common content strategy mistakes that can affect your content growth.

1. Not Knowing Your Audience

First up is understanding your audience. While you are the creator of your content, your audience is the consumer. If you don’t know them, you’ll write amiss. 

Imagine explaining the beauty of mountain climbing to people who are afraid of heights.  Your content will lack relevance and won’t get engagement.

The solution to this is creating an audience persona. Who is your ideal audience, what’s their needs, desires, pains and what language or term do they use.

Learn more about analyzing your audience for better content.

2. Creating Content Without Clear Goals

It’s easy to fall into the trap of posting to keep your timeline busy or hopping from one trend to another.

As with every area of life, strategy is essential, creating content without a strategy will amount to wasted effort.

For example, sending out a newsletter to your subscribers isn’t a clear goal. Sending a weekly mail to old clients to inform them about specific updates with a targeted click through rate is.

Sending an email or publishing a video is not enough. A clear goal guides the purpose of your content and the impact you want to make on your audience.

For every piece of content, ask yourself if it has a purpose and tie it to a goal.

Find out how to set clear content goals.

3. Ignoring SEO Basics

This is one of the top content creation mistakes to avoid. If you think SEO only applies to blogs and articles you are wrong. It is at the heart of search intent and the keywords people use to make searches online.

Search engines like Google show results of diverse platforms, from blogs to X, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

Poor keyword research will negatively impact your visibility. Search for terms and phrases people use to find topics in your niche and add them to your content.

Another mistake to avoid is overstuffing keywords, not saving images and videos rightly and using no headings.

Find relevant keywords, add them naturally and ensure your content is well structured and easy to read.

Our post on SEO writing tips for beginners will interest you.

4. Content Without Hook

Your introduction is the gateway to your content. If the first line is not attractive your readers will move on, you don’t want that. 

Avoid weak intros by grabbing attention with bold statements, questions or stats. Entice your audience and let them have a reason to want to go through your content.

5. Poor Formatting  and Long Paragraphs

Away from intros, long sentences, walls of text and not properly captured thoughts are unattractive. In many cases, people like to skim through the content before they decide if it’s worth their time.

Improve the readability of your content and retention by using short paragraphs, and bullet points. Subheadings and bold and eligible text also makes content easier to read and follow.

Here’s how you can improve your content readability.

6. Choosing Quantity Over Quality

In the pursuit of consistency, it’s not uncommon to prioritize quantity over quality. Pumping out posts is a good idea but weak content without value can cause more harm than good.

Your audience will get weary of your messages and engagement will be low. Instead focus on creating valuable content that will be helpful and evergreen (as much as possible).

7. Overlooking Calls to Action (CTAs)

If your intro and content is on point and has gotten attention, what next? That’s where the calls to action come in. 

A good CTA tells your audience what you expect of them, and subtly leads them on.  Ignoring CTAs is one of the simple and overlooked content writing mistakes.

Make your CTA clear and simple, whether it’s to subscribe, comment, download, buy, sign up or click.

Learn how to write effective calls to action (CTAs)

8. Conflicting Brand Voice

Is your message consistent or are you confusing your audience? Define your brand voice.

What’s your preferred tone – knowledgeable, friendly, or playful? How you communicate matters and your brand voice is vital.

Use it consistently across different formats – emails, customer support, social media posts or web content. A consistent brand voice builds trust, makes your content recognizable and authentic

Related Post: Proven Steps to Build A Consistent Brand Voice Across Social Media

9. Not Repurposing Content

Your best performing content deserves clones, well not exactly but repurposing. Is any of your content drawing attention, views, engagement etc.?

Don’t move on from it, you are losing potential, repurpose it and give it fresh life.

Turn your blog posts or articles into social media posts, videos, newsletters, podcasts or infographics. It gives you more content variety and helps you reach a wider audience while improving retention.  

Find out how to repurpose content.

10. Not Tracking Your Content Performance

Relying on likes and shares as a measure of your content performance can be deceitful. The best way to know if your content strategy is going as planned is by tracking it. 

It gives you information on what you are doing well and what you can do better for your future content.

Use insights to track your content’s performance (shares, traffic, bounce rates, etc.). Google Analytics and Google Console for websites, social media insights for social media platforms and so on.

More on how to measure content success.

Conclusion

These are the top content creation mistakes to avoid if you want to make an impact and increase visibility.

Your best thoughts are not enough, you need much more to get your content seen and acted upon.

Content is powerful if crafted well, avoiding these errors will make your great content. Which of these mistakes are you currently making?