Say “Hasta la vista” to bad content!

For years now, we’ve been witnessing the content marketing explosion. One of its main effects is that, today, all organizations are now publishers. But many don’t understand the importance of having a brand voice. The explosion is still growing, with the content marketing industry estimated to be worth $412 billion by 2021.
Evelyn Wolf
Published
Length
2 min read
Brand voice - goodbye to bad content

However, marketing teams are often ill-equipped to be editors. In today’s fast-paced world of internet publishing, quantity is often prioritized over quality. And, as the amount of content on the internet grows, it becomes harder for your material to be found.

Only the very best content rises to the top. For many organizations, the lack of editors and in-house writing staff means that it’s harder to generate that top-tier content. Without proper editorial training, and a consistent brand voice, marketing teams fall into the same mistakes over and over again with their content, such as:

  • Overly long sentences
  • High levels of passive voice
  • Complex language
  • Use of jargon

Content is no longer king

To start with, we need to accept that content is no longer king. Quality is the new king! A study from Beckon showed that while content marketing increased by 300 percent from the previous year, engagement was only up 5 percent. So, focusing on improving the quality of your content is a far more effective use of time.

As Robert Rose, founder of The Content Advisory, put it: “..our job as marketers is not to create more content (…) it’s to create the minimum amount of content with the maximum amount of results.”

And a very easy way to maximize your results is to focus on the brand voice and the readability of your content. The average adult reading level in the US falls between a 7th and 8th grade level. This means if your content is too difficult for a 13-year-old to read it may be too difficult for some of your audience. And if your content is too difficult then you’re not going to engage as many customers as you should.

Tools like VisibleThread help you identify and fix these issues, resulting in cleaner and more comprehensive content. For under resourced marketing teams or those needing some editorial assistance, it’s a valuable tool for gauging content quality. It also prioritizes the necessary edits required to improve the content.

We have also just added support for non-English content. French & Spanish content creators can now also get scorecards and advice!

Brand Voice - bad content

This feature applies to any content type, be it text snippet, URL or document. It also is available to users of our corporate Readability Server.

×

Book a Demo