August 21, 2019

How to Avoid Content Writing Burnout

When a company embarks on a content marketing program, they often don’t realize just how hard creating great content is. Writing is a high-energy activity. It takes a lot of time, thought, and effort.

Research bears this out:

Orbit Media’s blogger survey has found the average blog post takes 3.5 hours to write.
Yet research into modern work habits has found the average knowledge worker is only productive 3 hours a day. The specific number of good writing hours you can get in a day will vary for different people, but there’s a hard limit for everybody (and I’d be genuinely shocked to meet someone who can do 8).
HubSpot research reveals a clear relationship between blogging frequency and getting results. More blog posts = more website traffic.

So, if you need to write a lot of blog posts, each post takes over 3 hours, and you only get around 3 good writing hours in a day for each content creator on your team—well, I’m a writer not a math person, so let’s just say it probably doesn’t add up well for most businesses.

Content Writing Burnout is a Serious Problem

Burnout isn’t just about feeling tired, it’s a genuine health issue. If you overwork yourself for too long, it can lead to an array of health problems in the long term. But if protecting your health isn’t enough incentive, burnout will also hurt your work product. Good writing requires creativity and energy. Someone trying to crank out words while exhausted doesn’t have much of either to work with.

Avoiding content writing burnout is important both your team’s general well being, and to continue creating valuable content that gets results.

How to Protect Yourself from Content Writing Burnout

There are no shortcuts in content marketing. To get results, you have to put in the work. So how can you do that without burning out? Mostly by working smarter, rather than harder.

1. Be strategic.

A strategy doesn’t just help you do better content marketing, it also helps you figure out your priorities. Someone who tries to do everything will burn out faster than someone who thinks carefully about which tactics and topics to tackle to get the best results.

Take time to learn who your audience is, what they care about, and how they learn about and consume content online. You’ll still want to do testing to see what works best, and be willing to change up the strategy you create based on the results you get. But being strategic will help you cut down on the total amount of work you do, since you’ll know where to focus your energies for the best results.

2. Keep your goals realistic.

A lot of people don’t realize how much work creating content is until they start trying to do it regularly. Setting goals that require more writing than your team is capable of is a sure recipe for disappointment and burnout.

If the most you can reasonably create is one blog post a week and an ebook every other month, then don’t aim for two posts a day and an ebook every week. Make sure you give yourself and your team the time you need to do quality work, it’s not good for anyone if you put out rushed, sloppy pieces.

Create a content marketing calendar that helps you plan out realistic timelines for all your content pieces, and keeps you consistent in getting great content out there.

3. Keep a swipe file.

Content marketing requires creating new, original content on an ongoing basis. At some point, you’re going to hit up against the challenge of figuring out what to write about. Having a strategy will help with that, since researching keywords, competitors, and your audience usually leads to healthy list of topic ideas.

But you don’t want to reach a day where you run through the list and get to the end. To avoid that fate, keep a swipe file. This is a folder or document where you save other good ideas you see around the web. Any time you’re doing research, browsing the web, shopping, or just going about your life and you see something you like, save it. Over time, you’ll have a file full of links, screen shots, and hastily scribbled notes you can turn to for inspiration.

When it’s time to fill in your content marketing calendar with new ideas, your swipe file will keep them flowing.

4. Create outlines before writing.

Staring at a blank page is a notoriously frustrating experience for writers.

You know what’s easier than starting to write from scratch? Creating an outline. Then you’re not faced with a blank page when writing time comes, you already have your structure and basic ideas in place.

Creating an outline not only makes content writing easier, it also makes the end result stronger. It forces you to do research and organize your thoughts before you start putting words on the page. Organization at the front end produces a piece that will be more intuitive and readable on the user end.

5. Figure out your best process.

Writing productivity isn’t one size fits all. Each content writer will have to figure out for themselves what process most efficiently leads to good work. Analyze your working style carefully and try out a few different ways of approaching the creative process to see what works best for you.

Some techniques worth trying are:

The Pomodoro Technique
Batching your blog posts or outlines (i.e. doing a bunch all at once)
Identifying your most productive time of day and scheduling all your writing work within that time
Creating mini-milestones to work toward to keep a big project moving

Track your time as you try out different techniques and see which ones lead to getting more writing done in less time.

6. Take breaks.

When you’re overwhelmed and looking at a to-do list for the day that’s still far too long, taking a break feels like the last thing you should do. But breaks aren’t something to feel guilty about. They’re a necessary part of the creative process. And more than that, they’re proven to improve productivity.

Taking more breaks can mean getting more writing done.

If you’re not intentional about breaks, your brain will probably force them on you. Ever find yourself scrolling Facebook when you’re stressed out and have a million other things you should be doing?

Instead, schedule breaks into your day intentionally, and find ways to use them that help energize you. For me, an exercise break inevitably translates into more productivity in the hours afterward. For you, a nap or a few minutes of meditation may do the same. This is one of those things to test out when figuring out your best process.

7. Outsource.

No matter what hacks you use to get more content out of the time and energy you have available, you’re human and can only accomplish so much on your own. The most important step to avoid content writing burnout is recognizing when your team is overwhelmed. At that point, you can either scale back (which will likely mean slowing down your results), or you can outsource.

An overworked, stressed out team is a good reason to hire a freelance content writer. Someone who specializes in content marketing writing will take some of the work off your to do list, and deliver work that helps you meet your goals.

Avoiding Burnout = Better Content

Don’t work your team to the point of exhaustion. You’re much better off expanding your team with a skilled, capable freelancer (or a few) who lighten the load.

If you’re ready to find the right freelancer for your needs, check out how I work and get in touch to see if we’re a fit.

April 2, 2018

How to Give Good Content Writing Feedback

Updated May 2022

We’ve all had the experience before. Someone delivers information in a way that makes clear they think you’ll know exactly what they mean, but you’re stumped. You are just not following what they’re saying to you at all.

This is one of the quirks of communication that everyone deals with at some point. Something can be so clear and obvious in your own head that you think expressing it to the person in front of you (or on the other side of that email) is easy, but what’s clear to you is confusing and muddy to them.

Freelance writers know the feeling of being on the other end of that email well. Most of us have had multiple experiences of hearing feedback from clients that doesn’t tell us what we need to hear in order to understand what the client means.

It’s tricky providing feedback well, but having a good relationship with any writer you hire depends on it. And giving good feedback early on in the relationship will help them learn what you’re looking for, so you won’t have to do as much work later on.

To help you effectively get what you’re wanting from a content writer’s work, here are some tips on how to give good content writing feedback.

1. Read the whole thing.

To start, you want to make sure your feedback is accurate and that means taking the time to read over the entire piece of content they’ve submitted. And really read here—don’t skim.

It’s embarrassing for you and awkward for the writer if they have to point out that you’ve asked them to add a section that actually already exists further down the page or with a heading you didn’t recognize. On top of being awkward, it wastes everyone’s time and you both have better things to do.

2. Get to it quickly.

I know you’re busy, but if you sit on a blog post or white paper for weeks, or worse, months before sending your feedback, that particular piece won’t be fresh in you content writer’s memory. It’s both harder and less efficient to make good updates if they barely remember the piece and the research they did for it anymore by that point. And some freelance content writers (this one included) put feedback deadlines in the contract, so you may miss your chance to get updates altogether if you wait too long.

So give yourself a deadline. Commit to reading over the piece and sending your feedback within a week or two of receiving it. And get it on your to-do list even sooner, if possible.

A note here: any reasonable person you work with will understand that life sometimes gets in the way. So if you your kid gets sick or you have a plumbing emergency that takes over your life for a few days, take the time you need! Your writer should understand. Just try not to make a habit out of slow response times.

3. Be specific.

While it’s obvious to you why the wording in that third paragraph just doesn’t sound right, or the overall tone of the piece doesn’t work—your content writer can’t see into your head. You have to explain it in terms that clearly communicate how to make the changes you want.

A few tips to help you do that:

Avoid general language.

Feedback like “this section doesn’t really work” or “this isn’t clicking” only tells someone that you don’t like what you’re looking at. It doesn’t tell them why. Sure, your writer could re-write that section to be all new wording. But if they don’t understand what you don’t like about it, there’s a good chance they’ll end up repeating whatever issue wasn’t working for you the first time.

Saying something instead like “the tone in this section is too formal” or “this sentence is too long, which makes it hard to follow” actually gives them something to work with when making changes.

Make notes and changes in the text itself.

Microsoft Word and Google Docs both provide features for tracking changes and adding comments within a document. This makes it possible for you to comment directly on specific wording or sections that demonstrate the issue you’re addressing. If you think some of the wording is muddy or confusing, point out specifically where you see that happening rather than expecting the writer to be able to figure it out. If you think there are claims in the piece that need to be better backed up with sources, point out which ones.

Matching your feedback to the particular pieces of the content it applies to will help the writer see clearly what you mean. They’ll learn both what sort of changes you’re looking for now, and how to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.

Provide examples of what you’re looking for.

Particularly when it comes to issues of tone and style, it can be hard to communicate exactly what you want using descriptive terms. If you can point to other blog posts or content pieces—whether on your own website or elsewhere—that illustrate what you’re looking for, it can help a writer figure out the right approach to take.

Pro tip: Even better, provide a style guide upfront that covers this territory. A good style guide increases the chances a writer will get things right on the first try, saving you both time in the editing process.

4. Be respectful.

Clarity is a big part of the good feedback equation, but respect is just as important. When you hire a professional content writer, treat them with professionalism.

What that means, in practice:

Negative feedback is ok, but tone matters.

That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to provide criticisms. Anyone working in a creative field should have enough of a thick skin to take (respectful) criticism of their work.

Hopefully, the line between constructive criticism and being insulting or mean is clear to you. If it’s not, let someone else in your company be in charge of providing feedback for now and maybe consider therapy or communication classes to learn the difference, because it’s a pretty important life skill to have. I don’t mean that in a snide way, but as genuine advice.

Saying “this writing is awful” or “don’t you know anything?” isn’t helpful, but saying “this piece could really use some more work, could you take some time to do a little more research and find some data or case studies to back up your points?” is perfectly reasonable.

Keep things professional.

This relates to tone, but is worth saying on its own. Don’t yell at a content writer because you don’t like their work. Don’t insult their intelligence or use vulgar language to describe what you think of it. For the love of all that matters in this world, do NOT use racist, sexist, or ableist slurs in your response.

Every content writer you hire, whether they’re a freelancer or employee, is someone with a career and their own professional contacts. Know that if you’re the client or boss from hell, it will hurt your reputation.

Remember: writing is subjective.

One of the really cool things about language is that there are a lot of right ways to say the same thing. Someone can have a writing style that doesn’t work for you, but is still perfectly good writing. Remember that your opinion on this subject is not the objectively correct opinion.

When you’re paying for someone to write for you, you’re allowed to have an opinion on the writing—of course you are. But don’t frame your feedback as though you know the right way to say things and your writer is clearly wrong for not choosing the wording you would have. If you do, you’ll come off as arrogant and patronizing.

Instead, approach your feedback as an exercise in helping your writer understand how to come around to your preferences for style and tone—or better yet, the preferences you believe your audience has for style and tone. After all, you may be the client, but they’re not actually writing for you.

Final Words

A good working relationship with a freelance content writer can be extremely beneficial to your company and your content marketing program. Good feedback is an important part of being able to keep the writers you hire for the long term and get them to a place where they know how to deliver the kind of content you’re looking for. It’s worth spending time, especially early in the relationship, providing specific and respectful feedback to any writer you work with.

August 8, 2017

10 Great Content Marketing Writing Examples

Updated August 2019

Anyone who works in content marketing is used to encountering bad examples. You get better at noticing the stuff that doesn’t work when it’s your job to make stuff that does. Because we’re so used to seeing bad examples, it feels really good to encounter examples of content marketing writing done right.

It can give us some inspiration in our work and, if we’re the target audience, be directly useful to us as well. To provide some of you with that feeling today, I’ve collected a few examples of great content marketing writing I’ve encountered. Enjoy.

Great Business Blogging Examples

For most companies that do content marketing, blogging is the biggest part of the job. Blogs give you the opportunity to provide fresh, useful content to your audience on a regular basis and they’re one of the best tools you’ve got for SEO.

But they’re also hungry beasts that demand a lot of work and never let you take a break. That’s caused far too many businesses to try to settle for lazy, cheap content on their blogs – or give up on them entirely within a few months of not seeing immediate results.

The brands that stick with it and provide consistently helpful and high-quality content are therefore in the minority.

HomeAdvisor

Homeowners tend to have a lot of ideas for projects they want to try and questions about how to handle everyday fixes. The Home Advisor blog HomeSource is packed full of answers and tips. The blog is a mix of practical tips like how to hire a good contractor or pack for a move, along with more fun topics like decorating your home and yard.

Probably the most common questions homeowners have are those about cost. Many people – especially new homeowners – simply don’t know what’s it’s normal to expect a home repair or update to cost.

In addition to the blog itself, HomeAdvisor therefore offers a True Cost guide to give you an idea of what your budget should be before you start a project, and help you rule out any contractors that charge outside of the norm. And since the company’s business model is based on matching homeowners with the people who do those sorts of projects, they of course offer a handy CTA on the same page to help you find relevant professionals in your area.

Rover

Rover’s got a bit of advantage over most businesses when it comes to their content. The company is all about pets (mostly dogs) – and we all know pet pictures are one of the most popular things on the internet. But in addition to taking advantage of the love people have for pictures of cute animals, the Rover blog The Dog People also provides a lot of useful information on topics important to pet owners, such as training and safety tips and answers to pressing questions like “do dogs recognize us on a phone screen?” (if you have a dog, you’ve probably wondered).

They’re one of the companies that can most successfully get me to click on a link in an email, because they do a great job of figuring out the things pet owners really do want to know.

Ehrlich

If you’re thinking “sure, their content’s good, but Rover has it so much easier than those of us doing marketing in areas less compelling than the cute dog industry,” here’s an example for you. The pest control company Ehrlich has a great blog, deBugged that provides lots of useful information about bugs and other creepy crawly-adjacent subjects.

Bugs aren’t a subject most of us go out of our way to do some reading on each day, but when you need to know how concerned you should really be about Zika virus or what to do about bed bugs, those posts will come in handy. And the rest of the time, you may find posts on topics like how long wasps live to be interesting as well. Like Home Advisor, they include CTAs at the end of their content where relevant so that person trying to figure out what to do about bed bugs knows who to call to help.

Great Examples of Longform Content

As content marketing is adopted by more and more businesses in all sorts of industries, finding a way to stand out is a challenge. One route many businesses are taking is creating content that goes really in depth. It takes more work, but if you can pack more of the information your prospects need into one longform piece rather than spreading it over a number of shorter pieces, many people will find that more helpful.

BigCommerce

The ecommerce industry has a low barrier to entry—starting an online business costs a lot less than building one with a storefront. But that doesn’t mean becoming an ecommerce entrepreneur is easy. New online business owners have a lot to learn if they’re going to get it right and stay afloat.

The BigCommerce blog includes its share of shorter pieces, but where it really stands out is with the long, comprehensive guides. A lot of websites publish blog posts claiming to be “The Complete Guide to” something, but BigCommerce backs those claims up with meaty posts that pack in a lot of useful advice, paired with examples of that advice in action.

One example of this, the Complete Guide to Ecommerce Personalization comes in at nearly 7,000 words. It covers the types of data you need to collect to make personalization possible, gets into detail (with examples) on the different types of personalization ecommerce businesses can use, and provides recommended tools for accomplishing each.

A business owner that starts out the post knowing nothing about personalization can walk away knowing exactly how to get started.

HouseLogic

HouseLogic, a content brand run by the National Association of Realtors has longform pieces available for download, including a a step-by-step guide to buying a home, as well as one for selling a home. The guides offer detailed information and advice, alongside cartoonish visuals that keep the content from feeling too serious.

In addition, they include spaces for the reader to fill in details specific to their own buying or selling process. That makes the guide that much more of a practical, useful tool for anyone using it.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks’ target audience for their accounting software is small businesses and freelancers. That’s a group of people that thinks a lot about pricing—figuring out how to charge for your services in a way that works for you and your customers is a fraught subject.

In order to provide their audience information so useful it could stand out in the marketing crowd, they put together an ebook that tackled the subject of how to switch from charging hourly to project-based pricing. The 70-page book is structured like a conversation between two relatable professionals and lays out the case for a different approach to pricing that can help service-based small business owners make more.

The book got reviewed around the web and collected positive testimonials from a number of key influencers. Not bad in our world of content saturation.

Moz

Speaking of content saturation, arguably the industry that has it the worst is marketing. Many of the earliest adopters of content marketing were marketing agencies and marketing software companies. Producing content about marketing that doesn’t repeat what’s been said before and manages to provide something truly useful is a huge challenge businesses face. But Moz is consistently good at it.

Any time I encounter someone looking to learn the basics of SEO, I send them The Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz. It’s thorough, but manageable. It’s written in a away that’s accessible to someone new to the concept, but organized to make it easy to focus in on specific sections when you just need a refresher on, say, keyword research.

The guide was produced several years ago, but is updated regularly to make sure the information stays accurate. It gains top rankings for relevant terms like “beginner’s SEO” and “SEO guide,” and drives traffic to the site.

Impressive Email Marketing Examples

For all the attention email marketing gets in marketing circles, it’s rare to see it done genuinely well. How many of the marketing emails that show up in your inbox do you consistently take the time to read?

The average office worker receives 121 emails every day. For a marketing email to stand out amidst all that noise, it has to be exceptional. Each of these brands has made it onto the shortlist of businesses whose emails I open and read every time.

Ellevest

An investment company focused on empowering women financially, Ellevest’s emails consistently combine a few things valuable to their audience: news and advice about investing, examples of women killing it in the business world, and coverage of feminist topics relevant to finance.

All of that is shared in a casual tone that feels fun and relatable. The writers at Ellevest know what their audience cares about, as well as how they (we, in this case, since I’m very much in their audience) write and talk. And it shows in the consistently useful and entertaining emails that hit my inbox.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the newsletter’s name is a pun (What the Elle, get it?). I’m a sucker for a good pun.

Ann Handley

Speaking of puns, Ann Handley’s weekly newsletter called—wait for it…Annarchy —gets brought up as a top example of great email marketing for good reason. Every week she includes a helpful lesson about marketing and/or writing, as well a collection of recommended links and tools her audience will find helpful. A number of her suggestions have made their way into my bookmarks bar.

Her tone is friendly and personal. And if you reply to an email with a comment or suggestion, she answers back. (Ask me how I know.) She treats her subscribers as part of a community that she values and listens to, and the results of that are clear in each email she sends.

Shudder

Shudder’s newsletter The Bite might not have a clever pun in its name (missed opportunity!), but every email has information horror fans will find interesting. They share stories about the history of horror, homages to some of the best horror creators out there, and links about horror-related news and analysis.

The Bite’s editors clearly know their audience and treat each email as a chance to provide them a mix of original content they’ll care about and curation of some of the most popular and relevant horror content around the web.

Create Your Own Great Content Marketing Writing Examples

Content marketing is hard to do well, but seeing how other brands are pulling it off can help you to revisit your own strategy to consider ways to do better.

Hopefully these examples will provide some inspiration for your own content. And if you could use some extra help with content marketing writing for your business, that’s what I do. Get in touch to see if we might be a good fit.

Want more examples of great content marketing writing to check out? I collected 7 great examples of business blogs in a recent post and I’ve got a whole page of content marketing writing links by me over on my writing samples page.

June 24, 2016

8 Ways to Lose a Link

Content marketing means creating content with a purpose. For every piece of content you create, you should have a specific goal (or usually, several) in mind that you want it to achieve.

If you care at all about SEO – and I’m not sure I’ve met a content marketer that doesn’t – then one important goal you should have for blog posts is earning links. While the factors Google uses to determine search rankings are complicated, backlinks (quality ones, in particular) are still arguably the most important factor.

And one of the biggest factors involved in earning links is appealing to writers. We’re the ones who do most of that linking.

Let me assure you that we’re not spending our days considering whether or not we’ll make or break brands in our decisions about what to link to in our articles. We’re just trying to write the best, most useful content for our clients and their readers.

We’re not thinking about you, but you can benefit from thinking about us and understanding what goes through our heads when we decide whether or not a piece of content we come across is worthy of that link.

Just like anyone, we have our standards and pet peeves – sins that will make us immediately click off a page and refuse to consider it a worthy authority for our readers. To help you avoid inadvertently losing out on a link, I surveyed a few colleagues to better understand what makes all of us tick and decide a link is not worthy of our love.

8 Sins to Avoid if You Care About Building Links

1. A bad website design

If your website looks like it was built in 1999 and hasn’t had an update since, it won’t look authoritative to me (or any of your other visitors). I’m not the only one who feels this way, Content Strategist and Author Leah Levy told me “I wouldn’t link to a piece if the site looks spammy — that is, it has an outdated design.”

“Spammy” is about the last word you want people to use to describe your website or content. The quality of the content itself won’t matter much if it lives on a website that looks so cheap and old that no one can get past the design.

As Linda Dessau, the founder of Content Mastery Guide, put it “Since a link is an endorsement, I steer clear of sites that look outdated or unprofessional. I want to be associated with people and businesses that have a polished and professional image.”

2. Sloppy writing

Part of our job is paying attention to things like spelling, word choice, and sentence structure. When we encounter something that’s sloppily written or riddled with typos, you can bet we notice.

Linking to something that clearly no one bothered to proofread would make me look bad. If you can’t be bothered to take the time to read over your blog posts (or hire someone to do so) to make sure they make sense and don’t include any embarrassing errors, then writers won’t bother to share or link to them.

And it’s not just about writers nitpicking, sloppy writing makes you look untrustworthy. Leah agrees, she told me, “I wouldn’t link to anything with clear spelling or grammatical errors (nor would I trust it).”

3. Bad UX

A good website design isn’t just about making sure you don’t look stuck in the 90’s, you also want to make sure people find your site easy to navigate and pleasant to be on.

Unfortunately, many businesses are callously sacrificing good UX in attempts to get more email sign ups and clicks. Pretty much anyone you talk to will have their opinions on what makes for bad UX (although not everyone would know to call it that).

For me it includes pop ups that block out the text and blog posts split needlessly between several pages when they could all be on one (slideshow posts are notorious offenders). I’ll put up with a certain amount of that on sites that are established enough or if the content is really useful. Normally though, I click away and find something else.

Freelance writer Susan Johnston Taylor has her own list of UX dislikes: ““If a site is littered with Google ads, broken links or typos, it doesn’t seem very credible.

As does writer and editor Christine Moline of Jane Doe Ink, who told me, “I wouldn’t link to a poorly organized post or any pages cluttered with ads.”

Linda added a couple more issues to the list: “I screen for overly aggressive or annoying pop-ups, sites that are slow to load or aren’t mobile-friendly.”

All told, different descriptions of bad user experience accounted for the most common answer I received from writers.

Just to reiterate, the final list of UX issues that will make writers click away comes to:

Annoying pop ups
Articles split into too many pages
Lots of ads
Broken links
Slow loading times
Sites that aren’t mobile friendly

If you’re prioritizing getting email sign ups or ad money over the experience visitors will have on your website, know that may be costing you links.

4. Overly promotional content

When you’re paying for content (or investing a lot of time in it), it’s hard to set aside the idea of promoting yourself. I get it. You want a direct payoff for what you put into it.

When you make your content all about you though, it makes it come off as less trustworthy.

I head from multiple writers that overly promotional content was a no-no in their linking choices, but writer and content maven Phaedra Hise had the most to say on the subject: “I don’t link to anything that’s too promotional. I’m really picky about that – if it’s too promotional I might even link to it as an example of what NOT to do, but usually I don’t even like to give that kind of publicity.”

I mean, links are nice, but you don’t want to get one by becoming a writer’s example of what not to do.

5. A statistic without a link or citation

None of the other writers mentioned it, but this is one of my personal rules. If your article mentions a statistic without telling me where it’s from, you will immediately lose my trust.

The thing is, many of us think we know statistics we don’t. I’ve come across the same statistic casually mentioned in article after article that I’ve never been able to track down to a source.

Sometimes the source is a research report that costs hundreds of dollars, so I understand if not every statistic can be easily linked to. But make sure you let me know which report that costs hundreds of dollars it’s from so I’m willing to at least take your word that it’s real.

I can only speak for myself on this one, but if you ever want a link from me, make sure you cite your sources.

6. Outdated information

A lot of industries move fast. If your blog post from three years ago says something that’s no longer true, then it’s losing value in the link economy.

Says Susan, “If a post is several years old or clearly references outdated information, I’d try to find a more recent post to make sure I’m linking to something that’s still current.”

That doesn’t mean your old posts are useless, just that you should make a project out of updating them now and then. In particular, any posts you have that are popular and bringing in traffic now should be revisited so you can see if there’s a good opportunity to update any of them for accuracy.

7. Lack of authenticity

This relates somewhat back to overly promotional content, if you come off like you’re trying too hard or acting like something you’re not, people will notice.

Barry Feldman, founder of Feldman Creative put it at the top of his list of things he won’t link to: “Posts lacking personality. I think you can offer a lot of knowledge, but I’d rather not align my brand with yours if it’s boring. And that represents 90% of content marketers, sorry to say.“

The good news is that if 90% of marketers are doing it wrong, then bringing some real personality to your writing is a good way to differentiate yourself.

On a related note, Carol Tice, author of the recent ebook Small Blog Big Income and the blog Make a Living Writing , cited one of her biggest dealbreakers as when “the blog author is pretending to be an authority when they really just started doing the thing they write about.”

There’s a definite value to positioning yourself as a thought leader or expert – but only if you have the knowledge and experience to back it up.

8. Moral reputation

Carol had another big sin that she mentioned: “I won’t link to posts on the Huffington Post due to its policy of not paying writers, since I am an advocate for fair writer pay.”

She’s the only one of the writers I talked to that mentioned this particular point, but I suspect we’ve all shied away from visiting or linking to a website if we know the brand represents something we disagree with.

Be careful what you stand for and how you treat your employees and contractors. If you gain a reputation for being about something that many writers don’t agree with, they’ll be quick to find another resource to go with instead.

Conclusion

To summarize, the eight deadly sins that will lose you links are:

An outdated website
Sloppy writing and typos
A bad user experience
Being overly promotional
Not citing your sources
Letting your content become outdated
Not being authentic
A bad brand reputation

Avoiding these things obviously doesn’t guarantee you links. We’re still going to seek out the resources that are most valuable to our readers and relevant to the subject we’re talking about. That may be your links; it may be those of another business or publication. But if you’re guilty of one of these eight sins, then even if your content is useful, there’s a good chance we’ll look for another resource to use instead.

If you want to appeal to the people doing the writing, then take heed. Producing valuable content is one part of the puzzle, avoiding the errors on this list is another.

February 9, 2016

Why Content Writing Requires Empathy

What are the most important skills a content writer needs? Some of the obvious answers that may first come to mind are:

Image via recitethis.com

Knack for language
Ability to research
Understanding of how to format content for the web
Ability to write easy-to-read content
Ability to create a content calendar and stick with deadlines

The two answers that came up the most often when I asked content strategists what skills the best content writers possessed were creativity and curiosity.

All of that matters. Good content writing requires a pretty significant skillset. But nothing on that list would be enough to create compelling content that people want to read without the skill that’s arguably most important of all: empathy. You probably won’t see it show up on a resume or the list of qualifications in a job ad, but without empathy, nothing a content writer produces will resonate with the target audience.

The Case for Empathy in Content Marketing

Marketers talk a lot about how important empathy is, but often in other terms. How many times have you heard your marketing colleagues use the phrase “know your audience.” It’s an easy thing to say, but empathy can actually be really challenging. It’s not something that’s taught in school. Most businesses don’t exactly cover it in their training. Trying to truly understand what someone else is thinking and feeling is difficult.

Our default mode is to view our own perception of the world as the most obvious, natural way to see things. It’s just how we’re wired. Getting outside of our own heads in order to figure out the differences in how others see things takes effort and practice.

No one’s arguing against empathy in marketing, but not many organizations are putting it front and center. Probably in large part because it is so much harder than it looks. It’s easy enough to think you know your audience, but much harder to actually go the extra mile to really understand them.

How Can Someone Get Better At Empathy?

That poses the question: what can we actually do about it? First and foremost, read.

If there’s one main way to flex our brain’s empathy muscle, it’s to get inside the heads of other people through books, short stories, and articles. Fiction and non-fiction are both good for this. Through reading, you can take a ride through the mindset and perceptions of the writer or character and learn about the experiences of others.

Devoting more time to reading is great advice for anyone who cares about becoming empathetic (or becoming a better writer in any format). But there’s a whole set of other steps you can take to become more empathetic to your particular audience.

Find them online. Then just hang out and listen.

Look for forums, social media groups, and blog comment sections where your audience hangs out. There are so many spaces online today where people share their thoughts and feelings, if you can figure out where those spaces are for your audience then you’ll have an easy glimpse into the kinds of questions and concerns they have.

Talk to your salespeople and customer service reps.

There are people within your company working directly with your customers and prospects every day. Your salespeople and customer service representatives hear first hand what your target audience is thinking about, the issues they’re facing, the questions they commonly have and the kinds of problems they regularly deal with. All of that information can help you understand your audience better and craft your content calendar based on the topics they actually care about.

Look to your data.

Marketers have more data today than they ever have in the history of the profession. You likely already have at your fingertips loads of information on what your prospects are searching for, the terms they use, and the types of content they’re most commonly seeking out. Data can seem dry and impersonal, but with the proper analysis, it can provide content writers with important insights into the minds of your prospects.

Revisit and refine your personas semi-regularly.

Personas shouldn’t be a project you tackle once and then leave alone. You’re constantly learning more about your audience – what issues they care about, what types of content they respond to, what topics they’re discussing online – your new insights should make their way into the personas you have. Commit to revisiting your personas at least once or twice a year to improve upon them based on new information.

Empathy is a crucial skill to have as a content writer, but more importantly, it helps people to become better human beings. When you make an effort to understand what other people go through and how they feel, becoming better at communicating and treating people with greater compassion are natural side effects. The same skill that will make your content more relatable and successful will pay off in your life far beyond the effects it has on your work.