Blogging is an important part of a B2B marketing strategy, but are you seeing the results you’re expecting? There are a number of content writing mistakes many writers are unaware they’re making. Make sure to avoid these simple mistakes, and you will improve the quality of your content:

 

Being Unfocused In Your Writing

 
Writing long, rambling blog articles is enjoyable for no one. Yes, it takes a lot of practice to articulate a message, and is much easier to throw every single thing you know about a generic topic into a blog. The thing is, people are reading your content to find answers or to learn something new, and muddled writing achieves none of this.
 
The key is to develop your blog around a specific question you want to address and with every sentence, ask yourself “Does this help to answer the question?”.
 

Ignoring Your Target Audience

 
In order to grow your blog visits, you need to capture your audience’s attention. But what your audience is interested in isn’t always what you assume. Conducting keyword research and understanding who they are, as content consumers, will help inform the type of blogs you should be writing, and what kind of content will resonate with them best.
 

Writing A Boring and Uninspiring Title

 
The title of your blog is the first thing that will capture a reader’s interest. Make sure it’s relevant to the content, but also have some fun with writing it! For example, instead of writing the title “B2B Marketing Tools”, write “The Best B2B Marketing Tools to Reinvigorate Your Social Media Strategy”.
 

Not Making Proper Use of Headings

 
Headings are useful to capture blog ‘skimmers’ (people who are going to quickly scan your blog to see if it’s worth reading). They help break up the text, and make it more easy for the reader to understand what the blog is about.
 
Google also uses headings to read through a webpage. They are used to discern the blog’s keyword relevancy and will impact its ranking score: don’t ignore this opportunity to help your pages improve their ranking.
 

Forgetting About the Image

 
Writing good content is also about how the webpage looks visually. If you only include long paragraphs of text, a visitor is more likely to click away immediately, since nothing is catching their eye. Make sure you spend a few minutes looking for an appropriate image that is relevant to the blog, and include it right at the top of your page, along with your title.
 
Bonus: Try to find images with people that look like your audience. For example, if you are writing for young startup founders, look for images in a casual business setting.
 

Not Including Links to Your References

 
You’ve probably done some research before you began writing your blog and have framed your ideas around other content on the internet. Make sure you give these blogs credit where it’s due! It will help in assisting your link building strategy, and will provide your readers with further reading material if they need it.
 

Ignoring the Most Important Part: Editing

 
Edit, edit, edit! Nothing is more unprofessional than including ‘there’ when it should be ‘their’.
 

Missing Lead Capture Opportunities

 
Many readers have landed on your webpage or blog because they are looking for help to solve a specific business problem – a problem that you are very capable of addressing! Consider each visitor a potential lead and take advantage of their attention by including popups and forms on any of your high-traffic, high-quality pages.
 

Being Inconsistent in Your Blogging Schedule

 
Depending on your resources, you may only be able to write a new blog every few weeks, or even once a month, which is totally fine! You’re a busy businessperson, and devoting what you can to blogging is a great first step.
 
If you’re inconsistent with your schedule, however, you’ll fall out of the habit and lose the extra website traffic earned from creating fresh blogs. Avoid this by creating a simple content calendar that will help you plan your content, and keep you on top of your schedule (and track your social media efforts too).
 
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