When creating content for your products, services, and marketing materials online, it can be easy to become stale, boring, and lose touch with your audience, to the point where they can no longer engage with you.

By keeping your audience in mind first, then your goals, you can overcome these common problems.

Tell your story

Starting from your customer’s perspective, tell your story with them in mind. You can speak to them from the voice of a customer yourself. After all, why did you create the products or services that you did? Did you do it because you needed them yourself? How did you discover the need for your product or service? Because you? Stay in the customer’s perspective throughout the story and they’ll better relate to your offerings.

Don’t be pretentious

Instead of using jargon and “corporate” language, talk to your audience members as if they were your equals and you will become more human to them. It will also give you a chance to show them your personality. While you want to be a thought leader and a teacher, you don’t want to come off as a know-it-all and boring.

Seek to be relevant

Stay up-to-date on your industry so you can stay relevant. Don’t stick to the old ways of doing things long after they are no longer being done. Pay attention to what’s new and you will always be at the top of your niche and relevant to your audience.

Use simple language

Talk to your audience as if you were talking to a good friend. Write how you speak. You don’t need to use bigger words than you would normally use. If it helps, get speech-to-text software and talk about your blog posts and content. You can also try vlogging if it helps you avoid using language that is not natural to you.

Focus on your audience

No matter what you’re writing, blogging, vlogging, or doing, it’s always supposed to be about your audience. They need to know what’s in it for them and keep the focus on them more than yourself. Instead of looking to glamorize and put yourself on top of them, put them on a pedestal and make it all over them at all times.

Make every word count

Once you’re done writing content, edit it so your writing is concise and to the point. Try to write shorter sentences instead of long sentences. Also, don’t make paragraphs too long and keep each blog post in narrow focus.

Include appropriate images

With any content, you can get your point across more easily by using images. Sometimes a concept is easier to express with an image and other times the image just helps set the mood and tone of the entire post.