Five mistakes that end your engagement and how to avoid them
Content can bring visitors to my blog, but you know how to produce quality content, Through creative, attractive, and high-quality writing.
But to achieve this feat, it means that every part of the text you produce needs to solve a problem or fulfill a wish; the ideal is to do both.
When you can do this consistently, your audience will follow you closely, enjoy and share what you write and later buy your products and services.
Transparency and authenticity are also important aspects. Your audience searches for you as an intelligent friend who understands how things work.
They want someone to share experiences, tips and give practical examples. You need to take the position of a trusted person.
You must know how to demonstrate knowledge. However, this does not mean that your readers want an academic lecture from you. And this is just one of the five most common mistakes that beginning writers make when producing a text for the internet.
Some writers believe they know everything about the subject. Still, they continue to make the same mistakes, which consequently ends up delaying and making it difficult to achieve the results that excellent texts can generate.
Let's get to know the five most common mistakes and what to do to avoid them?
Mistake # 1: Drowning your audience with information
When our mind reaches its maximum limit, it only cannot record any new information.
Although this limit is individual, at some point, even the minds of the "toughest" end up getting tired. And so you start to lose focus and stop paying attention to the information you are receiving.
This limit is reached quickly or better for most people after internalizing about three big ideas or concepts.
Upon reaching this limit point, the mind crashes, almost like a short circuit.
Working to the limit of mental capacity can bring insecurity regarding understanding and apply.
You start to think that you are not smart enough to understand what is going on, and you end up giving up.
When our brain tries to process all the ideas it has just received, all at once, a blackout occurs, and the mind is unable to register information only between 50 and 150 milliseconds.
It may not seem like a big deal, but it means that your audience will not be able to take any action on your text, even something simple, like enjoying your publication.
If drowning your audience in a sea of ??information doesn't work, why do we keep doing it?
The most common reasons are:
? Genuine desire to generate value: when wanting to please the audience, you can imagine that giving all available information on the subject is the right decision.
? Believing that your text is not enough: it is often a reflection of the writer's insecurity, who believes that his knowledge of the subject is not enough and that he needs supplements such as graphics and statistics, filling the content with unnecessary information and that does not prove any point.
What to do to avoid excessive information?
1. Give practical tools and strategies
You have probably heard that to learn, and you need to reason and draw your conclusions on the subject.
As much as this information is true, do not make the mistake of giving too many things for your audience to think about.
Combine moments of reflection with practical steps of what to do about it to give your mind a break, so that, yes, it can think on its own and form an opinion.
2. Guess the emotional state of your audience and encourage them
When we are close to understanding or discovering something, our emotional state changes positively, and we feel more confident to continue consuming the content. After all, you understand what you read or watch. Unfortunately, the opposite situation is also true.
If you don't understand the content or consider it too complex, you simply lose interest, even because you think you can't absorb the information.
You want to prevent your visitor from going through this roller coaster of emotions, so remember that it is inevitable and that you have to find a way to mitigate your audience's ups and downs with your content.
3. Make sure your content is easy to consume
Use simple language and no fancy words. Also, try to be objective and use fewer words for that. When you are not clear about an issue, you tend to explain it in a confusing and non-objective way.
Show your audience the first thing they need to do to get results.
Make sure they are getting good at that first step. Give examples of how the knowledge you are passing on has worked in practice for you.
Despite good intentions, the excess of content amazes people. Work to keep your text short, accurate, and yet generating a lot of value.
Mistake # 2: Creating stories without structure
Close your eyes for a moment, and try to listen to your favorite music. Use your imagination.
Now, imagine that same song, with all the right notes, but in the wrong order, out of rhythm.
It would be impossible to hear something like that, wouldn't it?
Or, at the very least, our ears would not be able to handle the feeling of discomfort.
Songs obey mathematical and logical principles, so when the original structure is lost, the meaning is lost.
The structure works like a box where our brain places ideas and concepts and organizes them to make sense.
Without the structure, our mind is confused. It cannot even understand what is happening.
It is important to understand this concept, especially if you want to use stories in your content.
Despite the enormous power of storytelling, mainly to create a connection with your audience, the message will be lost if there is no structure to organize it.
A disorganized story will make your audience feel as if they have entered the cinema after the film has already started.
Mistake # 3: Thinking that persuasion and influence is not important
As writers, we need to be able to motivate the audience, whether to read the content, to share, or even to make a purchase.
Somehow, you need to get inside your customers' heads and encourage them to do something.
Persuading is doing good marketing. It has nothing to do with manipulating your audience.
While manipulating means inducing someone to do something that is only in our interest, persuading has more to do with inducing someone to do something that is in their interest.
How to use persuasion and influence in the best possible way
Yes, persuade, never manipulate. Here's how to optimize your text to take advantage of the benefits that marketing offers:
1. Know what is important to your audience.
2. To influence someone, you need to let go of your judgments. There is a difference between encouraging someone to reach their maximum potential and judging their ability to get there.
3. Make a call to action. The more choices we have, the more confusion and, consequently, the more paralysis.
4. Use social proof: when people see the results of others, especially if aligned with what they want, they pay attention.
5. Be trustworthy: keep your promises, be transparent, and always have the best intentions.
6. Listen: don't go out and tell others what to do before they hear your ideas. By creating and publishing content, we are always influencing others to create a connection with us.
Mistake # 4: Post amazing content on the wrong channels
In 2004, Blockbuster, which was still a giant in the movie rental market, received a proposal from the still newcomer Netflix, a company that also offered films to its audience, but used a different delivery channel: the post office and stores physical.
The story you already know, today, Netflix is ??a giant in the entertainment industry, while Blockbuster ceased to exist some time ago.
All of this is just because, despite offering the same product, it no longer makes sense for it to be sold on traditional channels at the time Blockbuster stores.
This is even truer in a scenario where technology is constantly changing.
Just using the content published on your blog and publishing it, in full, on your Instagram may not work so well.
Different media, different audiences, and different content consumption patterns.
While on the blog or in the email, your audience is more willing to invest a greater amount of time in reading, on Instagram, people prefer more objective texts.
It is often necessary to redo the content. Others, only minor adaptations, can resolve.
Since the medium influences the message, you need to adapt your content style accordingly.
Mistake # 5: Stop yelling at your cat
Yelling at a cat is just as effective as worrying about problems that are not within your reach.
The cat does not respond to your shouting, and no matter how much you show your irritation, it will just look at you indifferently.
You replicate this type of behavior every time you are upset with extremely negative comments from haters, when you curse your computer when it stops working or when you are extremely worried when the number of clicks on an email is far below than expected.
These are just a few examples. You have certainly found yourself in a situation that could not change and, even so, you did not fail to spend your energy getting indignant.
Spending energy on what you can't change is not the best strategy.
? The focus needs to be on the strategy.
? The focus needs to be on quality.
? The focus needs to be on the frequency.
? The focus must be on having innovative ideas.
It is very easy to find yourself stressing about things that are beyond our control.
But every time you do this, you are leaving out the important aspects that are part of a good text, and that is literally in your hands.
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