The Five No-Nos of Content
You probably already know what you are supposed to be doing with your content, but how about what you are not supposed to be doing?
We all seem to spend a lot of time talking about what our content and copy should be, so today I thought it would be more interesting to talk about what, in this copywriter's opinion, content should NOT be because believe it or not, this is a thing.
To make the best impression with your written content and make your copy sing, consider the following a basic guideline of what content should not be:
- FULL OF JARGONS. Using jargons is fine...sometimes. But it shouldn't be your only means of communicating, particularly if you are writing with jargons that very few of your readers will know, or relying on jargons to serve as the bulk of your content. IMHO, jargons should only be used every now and again...and more again than now.
- TOO SHORT. I know...I KNOW. It's a generally held belief that readers have the most limited of attention spans, and will only give copy the most cursory of glances. I am not one of those people. Of course, I don't think your copy should be an epic tome, but I do believe that if you have something to say that requires more words...that's OK. Just make sure each of those words count.
- TOO TECHNICAL. Unless yours is a highly-technical field, and your readers highly technical readers, it's a good rule of thumb that your content shouldn't be hard to read and understand. A few well-explained technical terms is great, but an entire website full of them is likely not going to captivate the average reader.
- GRAMMATICALLY CHALLENGED. Please, please, please. Do not overlook grammar. Even in our age of IKR and OMG communications, taking the time to edit and proofread your content still makes the best impression and I believe, should be the rule and not the exception.
- TOO DENSE. By this I mean, don't try and force every single detail about your brand or your story or your invention into every bit of copy you write. Instead, parse through all of the elements that you want to talk about, and decide where they are going to live, and how you are going to share them. Certain elements will be in all of your messaging, but others might be better saved for content like blog posts, social media updates, and etc. In this way, you paint a comprehensive, whole portrait of your brand across all platforms, creating layers of depth and interest that will keep consumers coming back for more.
Want to know more? Check out my other blog posts or better yet, let's connect!