It’s 11:00 on a Wednesday night. You’re sitting in a dark room, staring at a blank document. You’re watching as the cursor just…blinks. Like it’s daring you to write something. But despite the merciless taunting, you just can’t seem to magic the words into the right order.
It’s the dreaded ‘blinking cursor,’ or ‘blank page’ syndrome that all writers know so very, very well. But you’re not a writer. You’re a startup founder, CEO, CTO, and acting COO who really needs to get this blog post written and posted so you can reference it in a shareholder meeting first thing in the morning.
Did you just Google “how to sound smart but not pretentious” again? You did, didn’t you?
The struggle may be real, but it doesn’t have to hurt this much. Truth is, most founders who try to wear too many hats often end up with one that has a “writer” label tucked under the band like a modern-day “Press” badge.
Writing for a dedicated audience requires a skill set. Is it one you possess? I would hazard a guess and say no. Nestled there amongst your dozen or so deeply impressive skill sets is not a bag containing the tools you need to effectively reach your audience with the facts and figures you want them to know. So what’s a founder/CEO/CTO/COO/apparent Head of Content to do?
The good news is that these struggles follow predictable patterns, which means they have predictable solutions. Read on to see if any of these five common mistakes startups make when writing their own content sound familiar. Then see if you can implement the solution given and get ready for a revolution in your content production.
1. Lack of focus: Ensure your content has a clear purpose
The problem: I’m starting with the biggest, and sadly most common, error I see when a founder tries to create a content program from scratch—an utter lack of focus. The blog page reads like a monkey coming down off a three-day sugar bender wrote it, each piece bearing little to no resemblance to any other post…or even tangentially to the company’s industry or vertical.
Shotgunning content onto various platforms may get your name out there, but not for the right reasons. You’ll become know for your scattershot way of doing things, which will be interpreted as how you do business overall and kill potential leads. Without a clear goal for each piece, your audience will abandon the noise on your channel for one with more signal provided by one of your competitors.
The Solution: Before sitting down in front of that cursor, define what success looks like for each piece you intend to write. Is the goal to drive conversions? Nurture existing prospects? Show some love to your existing clients? Establish your industry chops? Each and every sentence you write going forward should be aiming your content directly at that goal. Get all this recorded somewhere. I recommend fields in your editorial calendar where you track target audience, calls-to-action, etc…
In other words, if you’re aiming for conversions, don’t write about industry news. If your target is brand awareness, don’t get bogged down in your latest production numbers. And if you want your customers to know how much you love them, for pity’s sake don’t write about how much your new product will disrupt all existing models…including your old one.
2. Overcomplicated language: Remember the KISS rule – Keep It Simple…Silly
The Problem: There’s a line between sounding smart and being helpful. Some founders walk that line successfully, making it clear with their writing that not only do they know their stuff, they’re humble enough to understand that not everybody will be at the same level of expertise with their topic. Others…well I’m sure you’ve read those pieces, the ones where you find yourself re-reading a paragraph multiple times trying to parse one particularly problematic sentence.
The “look how clever I am” approach backfires because most readers just want to read about a solution to the pressing problem they’re having. They don’t want a masterclass in industry jargon and techbro aphorisms. When you spend too much screen real estate conveying how mightly your vocabulary is, you risk those big words piling up into a wall between your expertise and the people who came to you for solutions.
The Solution: Write like you’re explaining it to your uncle over coffee. Or niece. Or someone else in your life who isn’t technical and doesn’t really care what you do all day. This approach will lead to cutting the jargon, shortening the sentences, and creating easily digestible chunks of information rather than the gristly mess you had initially.
By prioritizing clarity over cleverness, you’re cutting down on the complexity without lessening the impact your words can have on your audience. Plain language doesn’t have to be simple language, I’m not asking you to dumb down your writing—rather I’m asking you to use all the cleverness you can muster to explain a complex issue clearly and concisely. This is a task many find much harder than spewing a thesaurus-worth of tech-speak and jargon.
Bonus points if you send a draft to that uncle/niece/whoever for feedback before hitting publish.
3. Winging it: Tracking metrics can help improve content, too
The Problem: Content is not like spaghetti—throwing it at the wall won’t help you determine what will stick with your readers. It’s also not much like Costco, in that producing content in bulk won’t help if you don’t know what’s sticking. Without some amount of metrics tracking, you can publish as consistently as anyone, pumping out lengthy educational blogs and engaging topic explainers and still end up with zero conversions and lackluster click-through rates.
The key to this mistake is that people don’t always associate words, which they view as subjective, with metrics, which they see as more objective. And they’re not wrong. Where these folks are erring is in assuming you can’t track subjectivity.
The Solution: You have to select the metrics that matter, and that you have the ability to track. We’re not talking about ego metrics here, we’re looking for concrete, measurable metrics that line up with your business goals. For lead generation, you can track form completions or demo requests rather than simply page views, for example. I’m not going to get into the details here as there are as many metrics as there are poorly written blog articles about metrics.
What matters is that you select a small number of meaningful, and measurable metrics, track them carefully, and make adjustments accordingly. Even something as simple as a spreadsheet with which posts generated the most qualified leads last month will give you valuable insights into what content is landing and what’s missing the mark.
4. Trying to be everything to everyone while neglecting your target audience
The Problem: In an understandable attempt to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, too many founders publish articles that don’t address any one single pain point or piece of industry knowledge. Rather, in the rush to appease everybody who might click through, they end up with watered-down platitudes and unhelpful listicles.
Such generic advice reads as though it was churned out last minute in an attempt to grab views with clever SEO. If it can apply to everyone, it won’t land with anyone. Don’t be afraid to get specific, with content it’s not only OK to limit reach, it’s preferred if that limited reach encompasses your ideal customer profile (you do have an ICP, right?).
The Solution: Be ruthless with your content topics by narrowing down your audience for each piece individually. If your target audience has multiple ways to slice it, use that information to create pieces that are aimed at just one of those slices and hit them with recommendations and subjects that land. You know your readers’ specific challenges and goals, so write content that addresses these pain points and uses the same language they use to describe them. It’s better to have 100 fully-engaged readers than 10,000 casual browsers who will never convert.
5. Overthinking all the things: Thy name is Analysis Paralysis
The Problem: Even the smartest of startup founders can, and will, fall victim to analysis paralysis at some point. The problem here is that with content, you can’t afford the delays brought on by saying, “I can say that better,” or “Let me find one more citation for that point.” This only leads to endless cycles of research, revision, and second-guessing yourself.
This perfectionist mindset is great when it comes to developing your next product to launch—but it can instantly kill a successful content program by letting fear take over. Yes, fear. It’s a fear of not having all the answers. It’s a fear of being wrong. And it’s a fear of looking silly in front of your customers.
The Solution: Embrace the chaos of “good enough.” No, really. Content does NOT have to be perfect to work. In fact, letting a little bit of humanity show through in your unpolished take on a recent industry event can improve your standing with your audience in terms of domain authority. People trust people, and people make mistakes.
Content can be edited, revised, and updated. But only if you get it published in it’s current state first.
Parting thoughts
Content creation shouldn’t feel like solving advanced calculus while juggling flaming torches and balancing a chair on your nose. When you focus your attention on clarity over cleverness, the needs of your audience over your own ego, and consistency over perfection—you’ll find that writing will become less of a chore and more of a conversation with potential customers.
Here’s your homework, yes, I’m assigning homework, what are you going to do about it? Pick one piece of content you published recently and ask yourself this question:
“What specific problem does this solve for my readers?”
If you don’t have an answer, you just found your starting point for revamping your content program.
What’s the biggest challenge facing you when it comes to content? Leave me a comment below, I love hearing from founders who are figuring this stuff out on the fly, and I promise to answer with something concrete and constructive that you can implement immediately.