So you are going to write some content. You have put on your burgundy jumper and sat down in your wooden chair. I’m imagining you’re the fella in the image above by the way, who isn't me in case you were wondering. It does look a bit like Jim from the early episodes of the American version of The Office though, doesn’t it? Anyway, the important thing here is that you are in Fake Jim’s shoes, and you are settling down to write some content for your brand or business.
Before long, you are scratching your head, lost in a world of words, grammar and spelling. You keep checking your phone, or procrastinating in some other way. And then you start to realise an essential truth...
Writing is easy. You just write sentences. I went to the shops today. My dog is not blue. You don’t put toast in a toaster.
What is not easy is writing well.
Learning how to write strong content is something some brands never manage to do, and it costs them dearly. When it comes to how to write well, there are certain things that need to be understood. Some are grammatical, others are to do with your choice of words, and some are to do with how you present your work to your intended audience. Ultimately, content marketing for businesses is a tricky area to get right. But it’s far from impossible. If you are looking to avoid some common writing mistakes in your own work, then here are 10 things to factor in.
1 - your/you’re
Let’s start with a few grammatical pain points. ‘Your’ and ‘you’re’ sound the same, but are pretty different when push comes to shove. ‘Your’ refers to something you, the individual, is in ownership of. This might be your aforementioned dog that isn’t blue. It might be ‘your own free will’. ‘You’re’ on the other hand is two words mushed together with an apostrophe acting as the glue (more on those later). ‘You’re’ means ‘you are’, as in ‘you are doing something’, or ‘you are feeling something’. These two get mixed up a lot, but are important when writing in a way that addresses audiences, particularly when you are looking to engage with them on a individual, personal basis. Correct example sentences include: ‘Are you worried your social media isn’t firing?’
‘There are a few things you can do if you’re feeling nervous about a meeting.’
(There’s also yore, as in ‘days of yore’, but let’s not worry about that right now).
2 - that/which
If you start a sentence writing about a specific object, you may want to elaborate on this object later in the sentence. For example, ‘I bought a potato from the shop’ is a pretty rudimentary sentence. Any reader is going to be crying out for more information about your spud. The additional information you choose to include is what determines whether you use ‘that’ or ‘which’. If you want to tell your reader you are going to eat the potato for your dinner, you could write ‘I bought a potato from the shop, which I’m going to eat for my dinner’. (Not sure how this sentence fits in with content marketing exactly but each to their own). If you want to talk a bit more about the potato in all its glory however, you could write ‘I bought a potato from the shop that was big and lumpy.’ The key difference here is whether the additional information is to do with the subject itself, or the context around it.
3 - to/too/two
These are three words that sound the same but again mean different things. Let’s start with the easy bit. ‘Two’ is the number, as in 2, as in 2x2=4, as in Two Princes by Spin Doctors.
‘Too’ is all about addition. So if something is done in addition to something else, it’s done too. Or if you have more of something than you need, you have too much of it.
‘To’ is the other one. It’s the one Shakespeare used in ‘to be or not to be’. It’s a tricky word to define actually, so I’ll be cowardly and let Dictionary.com do that for me.
4 - less/fewer
This is a very common lexical mistake, as many people think less and fewer are interchangeable. In fact, fewer needs to be used whenever you are referring to a specific amount of something being lower in number than it was before, or there being ‘not as many’. So there may be fewer trains running during a strike for example. Or fewer items in the shop at the end of the day than in the morning. Less needs to be used if the thing that has diminished is not something you can numerically count. So it usually takes less time to drive somewhere than it does to walk, for example.
5 - Apostrophes
Apostrophes are a challenging grammatical entity, and cause plenty of headaches for writers. In general writing, they have two main uses. The first is as a means of contracting two words – you’re, couldn’t, shouldn’t, she’s, it’s. The other is around possession. So if Gary owns a tractor, it is Gary’s tractor. This gets tricky if Chris owns a tractor, with his name ending in the letter ‘s’. Fortunately, both ‘Chris’ tractor’ and ‘Chris’s tractor’ are fine to use. Bear in mind plural possessives as well, as these have apostrophes on the end. An example would be ‘horses’ hooves.’
6 - Repetition
When we repeat ourselves, it gets boring quickly. Doesn’t it? Like, really boring. When we repeat ourselves. Boring. Really. When writing though, it’s pretty easy to repeat a word or phrase more often than is necessary. If you’re guilty of this, the readability of your content will quickly go downhill. Repetition is not something you may be consciously doing. This means going through your work and reading it with repetition in mind is always a good idea. I will certainly be doing that before I post this blog to make sure I’ve not repeated myself too much. Boring.
7 - US/UK English
If you watched practically every episode of Friends and The Simpsons as I did when growing up, learning a few Americanisms is something of an inevitability. But when writing content, understanding the difference between US and UK English involves more than knowing your rubbish from your trash, and your pavement from your sidewalk.
US English involves some subtle spelling changes. Things to look out for include words ending with ‘-ze’, such as ‘optimize’ or ‘capitalize’. In UK English, these are ‘optimise’ and ‘capitalise’, but if your spellcheck is set to US English, it will not pick this up.
Another type of word to look out for are those that end in ‘-our’. Our American friends write words like ‘honor’ and ‘color’. But in UK English, this needs to be ‘honour’ and ‘colour’.
Of course, if you are writing for American or international audiences, then consciously writing in US English is fine. What you don’t want to do is be inconsistent, jumping between US and UK English.
8 - Unnecessary capitalisation
I think this comes from a basic idea around bigger being better. If we capitalise a word, that makes it seem somehow bigger and more important. And Some Writers will capitalise Words Seemingly at Random. But generally speaking, unless you are starting a sentence or using a proper noun, such as for a place or person, then steer clear of capital letters.
This includes for headers and subheaders, which is where they tend to be most often found.
9 - Checking work
This is one of the most important writing tips out there. If you are facing a tight deadline where every second counts, it can be tempting to post or send off your content as soon as the last full stop is added. But if you don’t review your work and try to eliminate any mistakes, the quality of what you produce is only likely to suffer.
I would argue that good writing is only about 40% of what you initially get down onto the page. I believe a good writer’s real skill is actually in their editing ability. This includes spotting any spelling or grammatical errors, their ability to ensure the highest levels of readability and removing repetition, while still meeting the intended aims and goals of the work.
Make checking your work an integral part of your writing process, and value it as highly as you value getting the words down in the first place.
10 - Failing to promote your work
If you have created content you are proud of and which aligns with your targets, then getting it out there is a really exciting step. In today’s digital world, promotion is everything for brand content. Be sure to put the time into getting your content in front of the right audiences to help spread the word about what you do. Social media is a fundamental promotional tool, but also email marketing campaigns and outreach marketing can prove beneficial here.
Whatever you do, do not put hours into creating perfect content and then fail to get it read! I hope you have enjoyed this blog on copywriting tips and content marketing. Be sure to follow Carduelis CHR on social media for all the latest content marketing tips.
If you require a freelance content writer to help you reach your business goals, be sure to get in touch. Email sean@carduelischr.com and let’s see what we can do to take your content marketing to a new level.
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