When writing content, it’s essential to ensure that it is high quality and provides value to your readers. This means avoiding fluff and unnecessary filler content. Instead, one should provide accurate information that people will find helpful. In this article, we’ll discuss how to write concise content and avoid the pitfalls of fluff.
One way to avoid writing fluff is to be aware of your audience. Who are you writing for? What do they want or need to know? When you’re clear about your target audience, it will be easier to focus your content and avoid adding anything that isn’t relevant.
It’s also critical to keep your sentences and paragraphs short. This can be challenging, especially if you’re used to writing in a more formal style. However, more succinct sentences are easier to read and understand, so your readers appreciate them. Writing more concisely will also help you avoid adding any unnecessary fluff.
When writing articles, always ask yourself if what you’re adding is truly necessary. If it isn’t, then get rid of it. This will help you create tight, focused, and valuable content for your readers. So the next time you sit down to write, keep these tips in mind and avoid the trap of adding fluff to your content. If you’re not sure how to do that you can also work with experts and make use of a research paper writing service.
Stay strong and resist the temptation
There is a particular temptation of just dropping sentences and filler words to pump up the word count. Search engines rank content with many words better than articles with less content. This is a problem in some ways because search engine optimization (SEO) is also relevant. No matter how good your content is, it’s not worth anything if nobody can find and use it.
Also interesting: 5 Tips to Write Better Emails
This is where a balance must be struck to write content for both people and search engines. Writing for people comes first. If the content is good, engaging, and valuable, it will probably be picked up by search engines. However, if you’re only writing for search engines, then the quality of your content will suffer, and people will be less likely to read it. Therefore, it’s crucial to find a balance between the two when writing your content.
I am hopeful that eventually, at some point in the future, the Internet will reward good quality and valid information over artificially blowing up content or, worse, using shock tactics or click baits to drive traffic and ad revenue. I hope that quality and fact will prevail over the black hat and unethical practices, but right now, while this might not yet be the case, we have to find a good middle ground.
How to avoid fluff?
The answer is to focus on delivering value. Every time you sit down to write, ask yourself what value your article will provide. Whether teaching your readers something new, sharing an interesting perspective, or simply entertaining them, make sure that your content delivers.
- Write with a clear purpose in mind
- Keep your target audience in mind
- Use strong, active verbs
- Avoid filler words and phrases
- Cut out any unnecessary details
- Tighten up your writing style
- Structurize your content
- Use writing assistants like Grammarly, Instoried, or similar apps
I hope this article was concise and fluff-free, and I hope it had some value for you. If I get feedback about it and readers share how I could improve the post, I’ll try to update it in the future. This is important as well to take notice of. You can constantly improve something you’ve been working on.
This is an excellent benefit of digital publishing in comparison to printing. Once printed, your words are out there, but we can keep the good content and improve it on the Internet, keeping everything up to date and valuable.
Closing
Writing good content is not difficult, but it does require some forethought to avoid making any of these common mistakes. Writing for people first and search engines second will help you balance quality and SEO when crafting your articles. Writing concisely also helps prevent unnecessary fluffs that may be distracting or, even worse – misleading to readers browsing the web.
If you’d like to dig more into the subject or if you want to prepare for IELTS or TOEFL certification, you can also watch the video presentation below with a talk by Adam Benn.
YouTube: IELTS TOEFL Writing – 9 Tools to Avoid Wordiness & Redundancy (Adam Benn)
Photo credit: The feature image has been done by Andreas Berheide.
