Happy New Year! Yay, New Year New Me! Hope, Light, and Positivity! Now is the time for change! Yaaaaaaaay!
Or not.
Let’s be honest: actual change doesn’t come without facing some tough home truths. Before you can become a ‘new you’, you need to take a long, hard, and analytical look at the ‘old you’. You have to do the kind of shadowy introspection that bubbly New Year blogs like to gloss over, but which is necessary for actual, positive change.
In 2025, we’d love for you to have your best content year ever. We want you to create content that you feel proud of, and that your audiences adore. We want you to take your reach higher than ever before and pull in a wealth of positive engagement from brand new customers and audiences.
But before that can happen, we need to give you our no-bullshit rundown of some common content creation mistakes. We want you to start your year of great content with your feet on firm foundations, not paddling on airy dreams like a Looney Tune.
So, without further ado, here’s
Sox Digital’s no-bullshit guide to common content creation mistakes
1. Unrealistic expectations
Let’s get the bluntest and most depressing bit over first: aiming for the stars is great, but you won’t even get off the ground if you can’t recognise your limitations.
This is particularly important when it comes to content. Right now, the internet is full of self-help and business blogs extolling the wondrous things you can achieve with this content strategy and that posting schedule. It’s very easy to get caught up in all the fabulous promises and lose sight of what’s actually achievable.
Content success doesn’t come at the click of the ‘post’ button. It takes hard work, and a lot of self-awareness. You have to understand who your customers/audience are, who you are, what your brand represents, what your brand voice sounds like, the skills and resources available to you, and what you can realistically achieve with all this.
With the best will in the world, demanding viral content from a shoestring content team when your reach is miniscule and your product isn’t social-media friendly will set everyone up for failure and frustration. Dreaming big is great! But without a healthy dose of realism, your dreams will never get close to reality. You need a good understanding of who and what you’re working with in order to produce content that gets traction.
For example, if you commit to a rigorous posting schedule without taking an honest look at how much time and energy you can give to content, you’re going to burn out very quickly. And not only that, you’re going to have to break the promises you made to your audience. Instead, settle for a posting schedule that’s both consistent and manageable, and a content style that’s easy to achieve and maintain.
You can have ambitious content goals, sure, but make sure that they’re actually attainable. Don’t set yourself up for failure. At Sox, we firmly believe in being realistic. What small business owner really has time to sit down for multiple days a month and just create content? Not many. So don’t make small business life harder than it already is, by biting off more than you can chew.
2. Inconsistency
Here’s why being inconsistent with content is a big mistake:
- It damages the trust between you and your audience
- It leaves people confused about who you are and what you stand for
- It makes you seem unreliable
- It kills your brand identity
- It slashes engagement
- It makes the algorithm hate you
All great reasons to have that consistent, achievable posting schedule we mentioned above!
But wait! There’s more to consistency than a posting schedule. In fact, we’d say that consistent posting is the least important aspect of content consistency. What’s more important is being consistent in your tone, your values, and your style.
On the surface level, consistency is important for brand recognition. It helps people to identify your brand’s content at a glance.
On a deeper level, being the same, recognisable ‘person’ (or persona) is vital for building a relationship with your audience.
Think of it in the same terms as building an in-person relationship. If someone you know appears totally different in their tone, style, opinions, values etc every single time you meet them, you’ll end up confused. The reason we like our friends is because we gel with their character traits, their conversational styles, and so on. If they’re a completely different person each time you meet up, there’s no solid foundation upon which to build a relationship.
It’s the same with brand/audience relationships. If you are not consistent with your content’s voice, values, and persona your audience won’t be able to get to know you. And if they can’t get a handle on who you are, they’re unlikely to engage with your content.
If you want some more help with this, then we’ve got articles on common branding mistakes, how to nail your ideal customer, and finding your brand voice – all of which you will probably find useful!
3. Using unsuitable tools
This article was nearly called ‘5 ways to piss off a content writer in 2025’, because a client pissed off our content writer over Christmas (FYI, if you don’t want to end up as a terrible example in an article, don’t piss off a writer. Consider that a bonus tip).
One of the best ways to annoy any content creator is to insist that they use a certain tool, and then to complain when that tool does exactly what it’s designed to do.
Take SEO content tools, for example. There are some fantastic SEO tools out there which can help you to bump your SEO score way up. But they do require you or your writer to work in a fairly specific way, and you have to understand that in order to use them properly.
Tools like SurferSEO work by determining the top keywords, article length, format etc of top-ranking pages for a given topic. They then ‘score’ content based on how many of those factors it hits. It’s a really simple and effective way for helping pages to hit the top of a search index.
By definition, tools like Surfer require writers to work within a predesigned structure with certain keywords and key phrases. Most writers are happy to do this, so long as you understand what you’re asking for.
If you ask for a completely unique 1500 word article that’s unlike any other high-ranking article on the topic, it’s naturally going to have a low SurferSEO score. Conversely, if you want a 1500 word article with a high SurferSEO score, it’s not going to be particularly original. With a 1500 word limit (about standard for most corporate blogs) there’s only so much a writer can do to make an article unique, as Surfer will require much of that word count to be taken up with SEO keywords.
There is a wealth of great content creation tools out there. But make sure that you understand how they are likely to influence output before you use them. If you want completely original written content, don’t use an SEO tool. If you want absolute, verifiable accuracy, don’t use genAI. If you want hand-drawn graphics, don’t use Canva. And so on.
4. Trend-hopping
OK, we don’t want to be total killjoys. There’s a lot to be said for keeping your finger on the pulse and using trends that suit your style. But for the love of all that is original, don’t mindlessly trend-hop.
Were you on the Internet at any point between August and November 2024? If so, you may have seen the ‘Gen Z marketing script’ trend. Some unfortunate people had the concept pop up on their timelines multiple times a day for months.
Frankly, if you got through that trend without putting your keyboard through your screen or hurling your phone into the deepest depths of the ocean, we salute your fortitude.
If you’re lucky enough to have missed it, the central concept of the Gen Z Marketing Script trend is simple: an older person appears on screen to advertise their business, but the script has been written by a Gen Z marketer.
The classic version of this trend was made by the Royal Armouries Museum. In the advert, an older, posh-sounding gent walks around the museum intoning phrases like “The Royal Armouries is the most sigma day out in Leeds, no cap” and telling a suit of armour to “Pop off, queen”.
It’s a good concept. No, we’ll go further: it’s a GREAT concept. When done well, these adverts were a delight in the early days. People loved them.
And, like everything that people love, the internet just had to ruin it.
The trend itself was not the problem. Jumping on the trend was the problem. Everyone’s metrics told them that Gen Z Marketing Script content was getting a lot of attention right now, so everyone produced their own version of the Gen Z Marketing Script. Within days what had been a funny, clever, even charming ad format became the most overused and irritating thing on social media.
“But what if I can do the trend well?” we hear you cry. Here’s the thing: there were LOADS of brands that did amazing things with that trend. Probably. But the second a phrase like “great rizz” fell out of some older person’s solemn mouth onscreen everyone rolled their eyes and clicked away. Unless a brand could make their take on the concept unique and engaging within the first millisecond, nobody was going to stick around.
Trend-hopping isn’t just annoying. It also indicates that you’re unoriginal, inclined to clout-chase, and are more interested in what algorithms are telling you than in what your audience actually wants.
Which brings us neatly to our final mistake to avoid in 2025…
5. Ignoring your audience
A lot of the content creation mistakes we’ve talked about above simply won’t be a problem if you truly understand your audience.
- It’s harder to develop unrealistic expectations when you know who your audience are, what they want, and how likely they are to engage with your content.
- If you understand your audience, you’ll be better able to talk to them on a human, relational level. It’s actually quite difficult to be inconsistent in tone or topic when you know who you’re talking to and what they expect from you.
- Getting to know your audience involves exploring what is and is not working in content terms. Deeper insight into what your audience likes, what they can access, and what they ignore helps you to make informed choices when picking content tools.
- Once you understand who your audience is, you’ll automatically get a feel for the kinds of trends that they’ll appreciate. Rather than blindly hopping onto trends because everyone else is doing it, you’ll be able to use trends in an intelligent way that piques the interest of your audience.
If we could give you just one piece of content advice for 2025, it would be this: don’t ignore your audience. Listen to what they’re telling you. Even if they’re not ‘saying’ anything.
Look at the average number of reactions and views your posts get. Go into your analytics and study your audience data. Who are the people viewing your content? Who are the people reacting to it? How are they reacting? If they reacted negatively – why? What feedback are they leaving? What do they like, what do they dislike, and what do they engage with?
If you don’t have an audience yet but would like to build one, think about your ideal audience. What people do you want to reach? What platforms do they hang out on? What are they interested in? What tone would most resonate with them?
The more you know about your audience (or desired audience) the better able you will be to give them well-crafted content that engages and resonates with them. And with good content comes a great conversion rate.
If this has all seemed a bit negative to you, don’t worry. For our next in this series, we’ll be giving you practical tips to dodge these pitfalls and create great content.
In the meantime, if you need free advice on anything digital, get in touch – we don’t bite, and we don’t charge for advice!
Finally, yes, the featured image IS a bull hosting a podcast. Because why not?