Check Out The Common Grammar And Style Mistakes Before Marketing Your Content
As HubSpot has observed and stated, Content Marketing is the new trend and one of the strongest pillars in the growth of the business, nowadays, especially when online business is talked about.
But What is it that is taking you a back?
Is it your content or the unknown Errors that hide behind your content and pull it down?
A content specialist team from HubSpot has listed a few common grammar and style mistakes that you must have a check on to slay your content marketing strategies.
1) Use Contractions
Contractions in written English are considered to be more on the informal side rather being at the formal side.
These are the combination of two words that are mostly preferred to use in the middle of a text where the intent of the author is to build the personal one-to-one connect.
For example, “It’s” is the contraction for “It is”, “you’re” is the contraction for “you are”, etc. A keynote here is to be very careful while choosing the contractions.
People often confuse “It’s” with “Its”, “you’re” with “your” and most often, “they’re”, ”there”, ”their” as they sound similar but mean different.
2) Write With Simple Language
Do you refer to the dictionary every time you are reading something new?
Mostly, people don’t do that.
They simply just skip that piece of content from that very position when they are not able to comprehend them.
Pretty clear, use language that is easy to comprehend and relate rather than showing off your expertise with heavy unpopular words.
Doing so will only take away your visitors and that’s a lot when you are targeting them with so much hard work & dedication.
3) Use The Active Voice
To head on with this point, it is important to know the difference between active and passive voice.
For example, if we say - “Ryan will do the task”, the sentence is directly pointing out to the task assigned to Ryan. This is the active voice when the author is speaking in a direct tone to the reader.
While “This task will be done by Ryan” is stated in the indirect format and hence is termed as passive voice. It is always preferable to use a direct voice rather than an indirect approach.
Direct tone or active voice influences the reader more into embracing the one-to-one connection and also the content length is briefer as compared to passive voice.
4) Be Clear And Concise
Simple, just present what your readers are here for to them. In today’s world, no one has that extra time to dive into the lengthy content for a single fact.
Hence, be very much clear to what you want to convey to your readers and be concise too, i.e., don’t stretch out your content that can be wrapped up in 50-60 words to 200 words or more by repeating the same content in different ways.
5) Use Short Sentences And Paragraphs
Formatting of your content also affects the number of readers on your page.
Yes! That’s true. Readability of your content is a major factor in concern. Try using shorter sentences that have 20 words maximum per sentence.
And, paragraphs used shouldn't be long. Wrap up your paragraph in 3-4 sentences maximum and switch to next paragraph for extra detailing.
6) Cut Fluffy Words From Your Writing
Fluffy words are the fillers that move into your content like very, really, even, just, that, etc.
While these words are common in spoken English, they hinder the reading experience when appearing in written forms.
Well, here I'm not saying to remove them all. But, the frequent appearances are to be trimmed down.
7) Adhere To A Style Guide
You must follow a specific template for specific formatting throughout all your content types like following a color scheme for all blog pages, product descriptions, emails, etc.
Adhering to a style guide is important to establish the connection for the users so that they can relate to whether a page is from a similar site or not.
This indirectly affects the readability of your content.
8) Use “You” And “Your”
Proper use of grammar is equally important with the tense and person form you are using in your writings.
Your reader will be more engaged in reading content that directly pitches the information to him.
Using the third person will not help him in relating the story as much as the second person form will do.
9) Avoid Jargon
Using unnecessary complicated terms or phrases in name of technicality or using too much of abbreviations leads your readers to the verge of saying bye to your writings.
10) Don’t Be Snarky
Most writers, authors have a direct approach in writing while few try to incorporate a pinch of humor.
But, adding humor and sarcasm can go wrong too. Be careful before you plan to add sarcasm and humor in your content as your readers might not appreciate it.
Alright! So these were all the points that can help you become an expert while writing a content. All these mentioned points are a bit too easy and known to you of course.
Yet, while in practice you tend to miss on them.
Also, if you are seeking professional help on how to improve your skills in generating a better piece of content, you can refer to the content-related courses available at the HubSpot Academy.