Your marketing efforts have the aim of making your company stand out from the rest of the crowd. There are several different ways of doing this, and one of which is your content. The words behind your brand. Creating content which drives engagement can be tricky to get right. It can be hard work getting your content to contain the perfect words which draw your audience in and evoke a positive reaction.
Think back to our blog on the 10 most overused words on LinkedIn which you should definitely think about removing from your profile to avoid sounding exactly the same as everyone else!
Well, we’ve got a similar list for your content marketing activities. Whether it be on your website, brochures, social media, press releases or blog. There are plenty of overused words which will not make us stand out from the crowd. Instead, they just make us blend in or maybe even have a negative effect.
There are so many best practice guides to help you to write good content with the right words on the internet, but what about words that are proven that you should avoid? We’ve put together our list of words you should think about removing from your content marketing activities at once.
15 words to avoid in your content marketing
1. Best
Of course, you think your business is the best of its kind and in your industry…you may be right, but you can’t really prove it.
At the end of the day, your competitors will all be saying the same thing; the only opinion that counts is your customers’. Focus on showing that you are the “best” instead of just saying it.
2. Ground-breaking
Scientific and medical discoveries are ground-breaking. Remember if you are using very strong adjectives your product must deliver these results. Whilst you may be excited about your new product release, you need to realistically consider the effect it will have.
3. Revolutionary
Unless your products or services are going to be the beginning of the next revolution (which may not even be a good thing or the desired effect) then this word should be avoided.
4. Innovative
This word has been used too often over recent years and has therefore lost its effectiveness. Choose words that will highlight each specific feature of what you have to offer, rather than one general word.
5. Advanced
Technology is continuously growing at a high rate, so there is always room for advancement. This word is overused and can be misleading.
6. Professional
Yes, you want your content to appear professional, but as a business, this should come across without the need to describe yourself as such. It should go without saying.
7. 110%
This is mathematically incorrect and unrealistic, you want your audience to believe what you have to say and trust you. If you are going to use a statistic, use a realistic one. Saying 78% is far better than giving a figure which is obviously made up.
8. Solution
We are all looking to have the answer to our audience’s problems with our products or services being the “solution”. Look deeper into the problem by looking at some of the major issues and showing how your products or services work.
9. New and improved
If it’s new, it should be improved. You wouldn’t release a new product or service which is worse than one you already offer after all?
10. Stuff
It’s vague, undescriptive and unhelpful. You don’t actually say anything by using ‘stuff’. If anything, it could make a worse impression, as it suggests you haven’t got anything better to say. Every time you go to add ‘stuff’ to your marketing, switch it out for a more compelling and evocative alternative.
11. Unique
Unless you have no competitors then it is incorrect to say that what you are selling is completely unique.
12. In my opinion
Realistically, your leads don’t care what you think about your own product. Tell them why they will love it. What’s so great about it? Why should they use you over a competitor? What makes your product different?
13. Just wanted to touch base
Give your audience something of substance to use. Just touching base immediately sounds like you have nothing to offer. These words combine to form a phrase which offers nothing. Be open and forward in why you are getting in contact.
14. FYI
It’s overly colloquial, it’s lazy and not everyone will understand. Plus, as a B2B business, it’s probably not sending out the message you want. Write out what you mean in its entirety or use an alternative which is plain to understand.
15. Exclusive
If you are marketing to the public or the B2B or B2C industry then your product is not exclusive. Be specific if you have an exclusive product or offer, ensure that it is to a specific audience.
Of course, words aren’t the only things that affect your content – especially in email. Find out more about the architecture of outstanding email design to complement your content marketing.
Use opinions in your content marketing
Previously, we caused a bit of a stir in our office. You see, we’d sent out an email campaign to new prospects. The focus of the week’s campaign was our blog on Donald Trump’s marketing. Why did we do this? Because he’s current, relevant and people have an opinion on him. People feel compelled to read about things they feel strongly about, particularly when it comes to politics. The reaction we got spurred us on to write this blog on why being an opinionated marketer is a good thing.
Opinions get people talking.
Opinions aren’t endorsements or promotions. That is a dangerous game when writing about a topic that your audience are passionate about.
Opinion pieces are designed to get people talking about your buzz topic. If you manage it, pat yourself on the back – you’ve succeeded. The job of a marketer is to make some noise around your chosen subject. Opinionated marketers do this very successfully. Hence why Donald Trump is in the media ALL the time.
Opinionated content gets results.
Of the 4,648 people that opened our email, we got 7 negative responses. Just seven. In comparison to those seven negative responses, we saw the largest amount of identified website visitors on our website EVER. Of these website visitors, 65% were brand new prospects. 75% of those prospects were what we would call “cold leads”, meaning they previously hadn’t engaged with us much until that blog send. Overall, the blog was the top page visited by prospects.
Which leads onto our content strategy…
Opinionated articles are the perfect clickbait
We all know that content can often just be used as clickbait to draw prospects to your website. As our example shows you in the results above, opinionated articles are great for this. But a successful content marketing strategy doesn’t just rely on clickbait. It’s only the first level.
Blogs are considered the ‘intrigue’ level of your content. They are designed to grab people’s attention, introduce your company to a new prospect and make them click! Opinion articles are great at doing this. This level is all about catching new individuals who might be interested in what you have to say, and your business. Attract and cookie as they say. Once you know who these individuals are, you can monitor their web behaviour and start providing them with the content they need to become productive and successful in their career.
So the next stage, ‘discovery’, is all about discovering what your prospects are interested in. This level is about making that connection to what your readers learned in the blog to how they can apply similar tactics and techniques and what they need in place (be that best practice or software) to achieve it. This is where you can start warming up your leads with softer, more informative content, such as your best practice whitepapers and guides.
From there, you can continue moving them through the different levels of content, sending them more hard-hitting content about you (case studies, features, and services work well here) as they continue to show more interest. You can even automate this whole process so that you don’t have to be constantly producing content…but more about that here.
You’re not going to please everyone – that’s just part of being a marketer.
So, now you know that opinionated pieces DO work, and can feed into your content marketing strategy. I bet the only thing that’s niggling at you is this question: “But what if you put prospects off by writing an opinionated piece they don’t agree with?” Honestly, we’ve had worse responses from normal articles.
People tend to get more annoyed when they’re sent the same boring blogs over and over that they never engage with than with an opinion piece that they can comment on, judge and dissect. Don’t be afraid to become an opinionated marketer. After all, we only remember the brands that stand for something (whether we agree with it or not), right Donald?