What Are The Top Three Content Mistakes Authors Make Regularly?
"Struggling to keep things interesting and entertaining for the readers."
This is obviously for each individual to decide and you'll most likely see different things as the three main mistakes. However, in my personal opinion, I would say that these are the top mistakes:
- Bad titles.
- Lack of images or videos.
- Huge grammar errors and bad formatting.
With that being said, I am not an expert and I am not native in English so I make mistakes too. Probably more often than I realize myself but I have experience and I have worked with many talented authors and bloggers over the years, so I still consider myself to have experience even though I am not an expert.
What one person love is the opposite of the feelings or thoughts your next reader will have or feel, so you need to always consider who you are writing to.
Are you trying to reach a wide audience or are you trying target niche specific readers?
- How you write will obviously have a huge impact on the results.
Example Of A BAD Title:
Fifteen Things I Wish I Knew About Internet Marketing When I First Started Out As a Blogger Five Years Ago On A LiveJournal
This title is way too long. A title should be about eight or ten words long. Usually under 100 characters. The biggest problem with a long title is that most fields that display a title have a limit to the characters it will display.
However, a long title can add impact, if you use a secondary subtitle or parenthetical addition.
A better solution to say the same thing.
15 Things I Wish I Knew about Internet Marketing.
"A long article/post without images/videos is like a car without tires. It doesn't work properly."
A car without tires will not work properly. You won't be able to go anywhere. The car will start if you turn the engine on, but you will not be able to ride anywhere.
- Even if you have a destination in mind!
Content without images/videos are usually not attractive in the eyes of the reader. It's hard to say an exact amount of images/videos you should include, but at least two or three images for an article of ~500 words seems to be the "normal" average. Including 10 images or videos for a rather short article makes the article boring and overfilled instead, so you should always think twice before adding your images.
- Images/videos makes the content more "fun." The content will be more interesting and it keeps your audience engaged!
"Easy To Read Content Is ALWAYS Better."
There are many difference examples and a bunch of sources to get inspiration from. Examples Of Text Formatting: The Bad And The Good is one of them.
Ugly Formatting:
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men — living and dead — who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and,that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth
Good Formatting:
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men — living and dead — who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us …
- That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion
- That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
- That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and,
- That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I Guess You'd Be More Likely To Read The Latter?
You have to tweak, edit, change and put in several hours of work to fine tune your writing skills. You have to "polish" your content and make it attractive.
- Easy to read is a perfect goal to strive for. With images/videos as the icing on the cake.