5 Hidden Risks of Creating Boring Content

Is there anything worse than bad TV? You know, the kind of show that sounds just good enough to watch, but once you tune in you can’t get off the couch fast enough? Like Fuller House?!?!  It could have been bad in a number of ways (the most obvious being a bad story line), but for whatever reason, if the show was a product and you were a customer — you weren’t buying it. Worse yet, if a network has too many shows like that, it could ruin the ratings for all of them.

The same thing happens when you have bad or boring content. Good content is abundant and easy to access. These days, people don’t have the time or attention span to read boring content. If your writing is not intriguing, people will stop reading it and you can then kiss goodbye any hope of front page real estate on Google. Beyond that, if they feel like too many of your articles are wasting their time, they’ll stop clicking on your content altogether.

Here are the 5 hidden risks of creating boring content.

1. People Stop Reading  

There is SO much content available online, and honestly, a lot of it is really bad — boring or useless pieces that make you feel foolish just for clicking on them.

If you are creating boring content on your site, this shows that you don’t know how to market your business. If you can’t create exciting content within your industry, how can you possibly think you will appeal to your desired crowd? Intriguing content is your opportunity to stand away from the crowd — and competitors.

Remember when you are creating content that you should not answer the question “what SHOULD my audience care about,” but “what does my audience care about?” You, unfortunately, don’t get to make the decision about what they find interesting and worthwhile. More often than not, they already know what they are looking for.

2. Creating A Bad First Impression

We sometimes forget to write for our audience. You only have one chance to make a good first impression on new visitors. When creating content, your priority should be your audience. Every piece of content you put out into the ether-world should go through a filter of whether or not your audience would find this information valuable.

Yes, it is important to find good keywords and rank in search results, but that keyword has to correlate to your business and your customer and fulfill the expectation that it is accurate information to the keyword provided. Our job is not to create more content, it is to create the RIGHT content.

3. Wasting Your Time

If no one is reading your blog, it’s a waste of your time. If your blog isn’t answering the questions your audience is looking for, you are wasting their time. It’s about understanding your audience and creating value for them that didn’t exist or wasn’t written well before you put it out there!

According to Todd Henry, in his book The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice, “Anyone can improve his ability to generate good ideas consistently if willing to be a little purposeful in how to approach the creative process.”

I encourage you to get your creative juices flowing because every sentence you put online is a reflection of your company. Have a little fun with it too.

4. Failing to Answer Real Questions

If you aren’t giving the answers to what people are looking for, you will also lose your credibility. Remember the information provided on your site should always be useful to your audience.

I spent a number of years working in marketing for a cleaning distribution company. In the most basic of language, we sold cleaning products to help you clean your toilet. That is an absolute stretch but the point I am making is that there is nothing intriguing or glamorous about selling cleaning products. I was able to create weekly blogs because I found solutions for our audience’s problems. I talked about big picture issues that mattered most to them. Our knowledge and solutions were what kept people coming back to our site, not our hefty supply of bowl swabs and mops.

5. Your Audience Never Converts

In addition to providing intriguing content on your site, you also need to have a strategy to back it up. You must have clarity and insight about your audience and create a logical progression for them to take on your website. If someone is reading a certain blog, what is the next step they can take on your site? Keep directing them down the funnel to more great content. Give them a reason to convert.