Have you ever been on Google, seen a link that looked interesting, clicked it—and then immediately hit the “back” button, repulsed by what you saw on the page? It happens sometimes, and the culprit is usually bad content, plain and simple. As a consumer, you tend to know bad content when you see it—but do you ever stop to evaluate your own content, checking it for the telltale signs of awfulness?
When it comes to your own blog content—blog content you’ve slaved over, devoted your precious time to—noting awfulness can be a bit trickier. We’re here to help. Painful though this may be, we’re going to offer up seven of the surest signs that your content is whack, and encourage you to evaluate what you’ve created on your company blog, being honest with yourself about whether it might be, well, bad, and in need of repair.
Sign #1: Your content is badly formatted.
When you open a blog entry on your company blog, do you see bullet points, subheadings, images, and white space? Do you, at the very least, see brief paragraphs with wiggle room left between them? Or do you just see one huge mountain of text, daunting and all but impossible to read without developing a migraine or having your eyes glaze over? Remember that good content isn’t just about the words, but how they’re presented. Formatting matters! Readability matters!
Sign #2: Your content is jammed with keywords.
Nobody ever said that some strategic keywords were bad or inappropriate—but if the blog entries for your Charlotte dental practice all contain the phrases “Charlotte dentist” and “best Charlotte dental practice” ten times apiece—well, it’s pretty obvious what you’re trying to do, and, again, readability is significantly compromised. Nobody wants to read your keyword litanies. Nobody.
Sign #3: Your content is jammed with links.
Including some relevant links to related articles or online resources: Recommended! Jamming your 500-word post with 30 different lines, of varying levels of relevance? Not so much! If you click on a post and just see a wall of blue, hyperlinked text, it’s a major red flag.
Sign #4: You’re being too promotional.
Content marketing is all about educating and informing—selling without being too hammy, salesy, and promotional. If you’ve already talked about how great your brand is three or four times within the first two paragraphs of your post, well, your priorities may be askew.
Sign #5: You’re not being promotional enough.
With that said, you do need to make it easy for interested parties to get ahold of you to ask questions or ask for your help. A post without a good call-to-action at the end isn’t going to prove very effective!
Sign #6: Your content is full of spelling and grammar mistakes.
Need we go on?
Sign #7: The post just scrolls on forever.
There’s much to be said in favor of long-form blog content, to a reasonable extent—but nobody has time to read a 3,000 word opus about your company, its products and services, or even the industry at large. Restraint is a key skill for bloggers, and an overly long post is, as often as not, a bad one, or at least an ineffective one.
So tell us: How do your blogs measure up? If you need assistance with them, please contact the Grammar Chic, Inc. team today at 803-831-7444, or www.grammarchic.net.
Amanda E. Clark founded Grammar Chic in 2008. She is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University and holds degrees in Journalism, Political Science, and English. She launched Grammar Chic after freelancing for several years while simultaneously leading marketing and advertising initiatives for several Fortune 500 companies.