Sometimes, we can have the best of intentions for a piece of content buuuut it still goes wrong.
It’s not always easy to identify why something didn’t quite work, so I’ve put together this guide to identify some of the common ways I’ve seen long-form content go wrong—and how you can avoid these problems the next time you create yours yours.
Not having a clear vision
Before you start writing, you need to have a clear vision of what you want your long-form content to help you achieve.
Something that’s purely thought leadership is going to look very different to something that’s sole purpose is selling your product.
Everyone involved needs to agree on what the goal is before you do anything else. Otherwise, it can lead to a haphazard, confusing process.
And frankly, a less effective and comfortable-to-read piece.
I’ve worked on white papers before where everyone had a different vision of what they wanted it to achieve, so it turned into Frankenstein’s monster.
It didn’t convert all that well, it didn’t look all that good, it didn’t really achieve any goals, and it wasn’t even written particularly well because everyone wanted a different writing style.
The more of these things you figure out in the planning stages, the more effective it’s going to be. And the more likely it’ll be to actually help you achieve the goal you started out with.
Not having a plan
When I first started writing my novels (under my pen name, Kristina Adams) I didn’t plan. I knew the characters and that was about it.
I tried winging it, but the bigger the cast became, the harder it was to keep track of everything I needed to know.
Over the course of the last 20 books, I’ve been refining my plotting, outlining, and planning systems.
I’ve found that the more I know before I sit down to write, the faster I can write something. And the happier I am with the end result.
It’s often when I don’t plan in enough depth that things go wrong and I end up spending much more time editing that book.
The same is true for other long forms of content, too.
When you have a plan—that includes having a vision as we talked about above—and a rough structure before you sit down to write, it’s going to be an easier process for the person responsible for writing it.
It’s also going to make it easier for anyone involved in providing feedback on those drafts, because they’ll have something to compare that initial draft to.
If there’s nothing for them to compare it to, everyone is going to notice different things. Some people may like something that someone else hates. Then it raises questions about who gets the final say over what stays and what goes. This is much less likely to happen if you’ve got a plan for everything to compare the content to.
Too many cooks
I’m sure you’re aware of the old phrase about too many cooks in the kitchen. Well, the same is true for any form of content.
When too many people are involved in any stage of the process, it can make it longer, more arduous, more stressful, and make your result a complete mess.
Quite often, some of the people involved in the process don’t need to be, or they could have a cursory glance at the penultimate version, rather than being involved in every single stage.
If you do want to include more people, rather than getting their feedback on every draft, instead, ask them what they’d like to see from your long-form content.
Get their opinion in those early planning stages before anything has been written down. This allows you to look for commonalities and put something together that achieves the target for as many people as possible.
Too much text
While it’s a piece of long-form content, so it’s inevitably going have a lot of words, if you put too many words on each page or make paragraphs too long, it’s going to make it a lot harder and more uncomfortable for someone to read.
At the end of the day, novels are written in a very different way, but more contemporary novels now lean towards shorter paragraphs and more accessible reading—because it allows people to skim which keeps them engaged for longer.
We also read differently on a screen compared to a book. Our eyes get tired faster when we’re looking at a screen.
When people read your long-form content it’s usually on a screen. So you really want to make sure that when they do read at what you’ve written, they can process it quickly and easily, and skim through it to get to the points that are relevant to them.
Big blocks of text are inaccessible. They subconsciously tell your audience that your brand is also inaccessible and difficult to understand, even if this isn’t the case.
With any long piece of content, what you really want to do is make the most of white space.
White space gives your text room to breathe.
It also gives your reader time to process the words before they move on to the next section.
(See how nice all that spacing is? Even if it isn’t 100% gramatically correct?)
It doesn’t fit into your strategy
If you’re spending a lot of time and money putting something together, it should tie into your business goals.
If you’re writing about something just because it’s a topic you enjoy, it’s not going to help you achieve your goals as much as something that’s tied into the rest of your marketing strategy.
If you don’t have a marketing strategy, get in touch and I can help.
Your marketing strategy should be specific to whatever aspect of your business you want to focus on selling during that period.
For example, I’m publishing content around writing long-form content right now, because I’ve got a new long-form content package.
Business priorities can change, as can what you’re selling.
You can always create long-form content to reflect each part of your business. You can then launch each one when you’re focusing on that area of your business so that it helps you push that product or service to the front of your audience’s minds.
You can then create a resources section full of all these different guides, white papers, or whatever you want to call them, to show your audience just how knowledgeable you really are.
Conclusion
A lot of the time, long-form content goes wrong because of poor communication or a lack of clarity.
Or it’s a combination of these two things, like when everyone has a different vision or idea for it.
It then becomes Frankenstein’s monster, not really helping to achieve any one thing, just kind of wandering around while being misinterpreted by your audience because it’s not specific enough.
Hopefully these tips will help you refine what you want to achieve with your long-form content so that you can avoid these long-form content mistakes the next time you put something together.
If you’d like to avoid the mistakes above, find out more about my long-form content writing packages today.