Content marketers have a responsibility to audiences, to provide valuable, entertaining and compelling content to others, encouraging them to take a specific action or to at least leave them thinking even after finishing reading your content.
The entire purpose of content marketing, like all other forms of marketing, is to make your business stand out from others online. These days it’s no longer enough to simply be visible online, you need to really need to be viewed as separate from the masses, as your own entity, something that can be achieved with next level content marketing.
With so much content out there, it’s not surprising to see marketers using the same tired cliches over and over. Not only are these cliches a lazy way of creating content, but they’re also unlikely to captivate your audience in the same way a fresh approach to content writing would, taking the focus away from the value and relying on buzzwords and style.
Want to start focusing on adding value to your content?
The first step to abolishing those cliches from your content is to actually be aware of what these cliches are, here’s a list of some of the most overused cliches in content marketing.
Low Hanging Fruit
Low hanging fruit is typically used by marketers to describe any content that is simple to create and share. An example of this being used in marketing is when people use long tail keywords in content, giving it much more likelihood of getting picked up by Google’s robots, ultimately helping you rank. This could be seen as an easy win if you’re using too many long tail keywords to gain rankings but they don’t convey your message it starts to become a problem.
This is a cliche that can make your content appear lazy and tired, showing that you’re not looking at gaining results in fresh, unique ways, instead opting to take the easy route to generate results.
Content Is King
One of the most overused phrases in content marketing, content is king refers to the focus many marketers have on getting links instead of focusing on creating natural, authentic content. Originating back to 2010, these days the phrase is used by everyone, to the point, it’s lost all meaning. What’s worse is the phrase isn’t even necessarily true, whilst content is an important part of marketing, it was originally coined by those who were benefiting the most from content looking to increase their profit.
The reality is “creative ideas and refreshing content is king” which is what you should be focusing on, instead of simply writing anything and assuming it’ll be enough to work as effective promotion.
SEO Is Dead
Everyone and their mother seem to have declared SEO to be dead in recent years, particularly those whose interest is to benefit from a service opposing SEO. Used commonly by bloggers and those not involved in search engine optimisation, the phase and ideology behind ‘SEO is dead’ is potentially one of the most annoying content cliches out there, for one reason: It’s a defeatist statement.
SEO isn’t dead, it may change and evolve over time but it’s not actually dead, using a statement such as this does nothing but make you look dismissive of the developments surrounding SEO, which doesn’t look great for your credibility.
Adding new value to content comes from getting rid of old cliches and creating something new, if you as a content marketer are constantly looking to create new value then you can head in a new direction, producing something amazing that your audience are likely to love.
