You’ve probably noticed this yourself when web searching – there’s a distinct difference between mediocre content and great content writing. Think about those online articles you’ve seen. There are those that lack personality and appear more like a pile of words on the screen. On the other hand, there’s a persuasive article that makes you want to sip a cup of coffee, put your feet up, and step into the world of this interesting topic.
Subpar content seems to evoke a similar feeling to standing in line at the post – at lunchtime when everyone in town is there and the people behind the counter are moving in slow motion. What a mundane waste of time!
And then there is the content that, once you start reading it, you can’t look away. You don’t want to miss the valuable insights promised in the intro or not find out how the story unfolds. It has something useful for you, the reader. How refreshing!
As a marketer, creating great content is important as it is what will help you build interest in your brand and establish your business as a thought leader in your industry. Optimised for search engines and riveting for searchers, it will boost your page rankings and generate more traffic. It’s what will get those social shares and follows – and motivate your audience to sign up for your newsletter or make a purchase.
Great content writing is the backbone of effective content marketing. Publishing ‘just content,’ on the other hand, is nothing but a waste of your time.
Poor content will drive searchers away and may even be penalised by Google, for example, if your site experiences a high bounce rate because visitors aren’t staying to read your content.
It will drain your time and resources and may create an overall sense of frustration with your business’s content marketing efforts, making you feel like you are not getting anywhere.
So, how do you go about writing brilliant content?
Put a Lot of Love into Your Headings
Your heading is everything. Think about it – how many people look at a heading and then determine whether they will click on the article and read what you have to say, based on those 4 to 12 words?
The heading is the bait. Use it to hook the reader in.
There are plenty of techniques you can use to craft strong headings that will make people want to click on your post.
- Using numbers in the heading.
- Posing your heading in the form of a question.
- Using power words.
- Writing your header as a call-to-action.
- ‘How to’ anything.
Also, try using heading formulas like these.
When you put a lot of conscious thought into the words you use and how you arrange them, you’ll see just how powerful the heading can be. Try different tips and formulas and then pay attention to which headings get the most traffic. You can even try changing the heading on some of your older blogs and see if your new title gains more attention.
Figure Out How to Improve the Lives of Your Ideal Customers
Of course, writing around relevant keywords is essential for driving traffic to your site, but first and foremost is your target audience. An important part of effective content writing is ensuring that you are writing for your buyers and solving their problems.
This means taking the time to research, develop and evolve your buyer personas. Use customer surveys with tools like Survey Monkey, your web data from Google Analytics, and your internal data that you’ve captured with Salesforce or your preferred CRM platform, to do your research. You can also use focus groups and one-on-one interviews with clients to learn more about the specific qualities, preferences and needs of your buyers.
When you write directly to your targeted audience, you are better able to correctly identify their specific pain points and offer solutions to their problems. A large-scale global analysis performed by Meaningful Brands on the effectiveness of content marketing uncovered an important truth – consumers expect more than most marketers realise.
For example, big breasted mothers find it difficult to find nursing bras for large breasts. So if you are a maternity clothing brand by answering all of their most common questions on the topic in a blog post you provide a valuable resource that attracts a tonne of highly qualified potential customers to your website.
Today, people want value added to their lives. There’s a 71% correlation between how effective content is and how much it improves the well-being and quality of life of your readers in some way. Of those surveyed in the study, the consensus is that 60% of content available on the Internet today is superfluous!
Use this to your advantage – produce the crème of the crop written content that is making a difference. Make sure every time you hit publish you are providing something of value for your ideal buyers:
- Answering a question
- Educating on product usage or service benefits
- Providing a solution to a problem
- Informing about industry related news
- Motivating or inspiring
- Entertaining
Entertaining content, in fact, gets the most social media engagement. Just make sure what you publish appeals to your audience and is relatable to your brand. While visual media is often used to entertain, you can still use this knowledge to improve your written content. Infuse a more entertaining and personal style into your writing to help build a stronger connection between brand and consumer.
Be a Formatting Guru
Think how your written content is presented doesn’t matter? Think again. How you format your content dictates how much work your reader will have to do to read your post. The easier it is to scan, the more likely your audience will take the time to read what you’ve written.
- It’s important to use subheadings to help organise your content. Sub headers act as a signal to let readers know what each section will cover.
- Don’t forget a heading for your conclusion to help clearly and succinctly close your post – and to create a tidy space for your call to action at the end.
- Bullet points are useful as they help to highlight key information, while also breaking up the text.
- Use short blocks of text, such as two or three sentences at most for each paragraph.
- Include media in your posts to illustrate what you are talking about and to make your content more visually appealing.
Media, such as pictures, infographics and video can also help you tell a better story with your content. Even if you aren’t in a visual industry, like food, fashion, or travel, you still can do a lot with visual media to make your posts more compelling.
Take a look at tech company Qualcomm’s written content. It’s loaded with excellent visual media to pair with the text. This approach allows you to tell a much more powerful brand story.
Back Up Your Statements to Create Authoritative Content
Think about how you perceive content on the web. A post that’s entertaining, well-organised, and somewhat opinionated, but lacks proof through resources, expert quotes, images and diagrams or others forms of support, tends to fail to drive home the point, no matter how well-written the content may be.
Say something well and people may listen, smile, and even comment. Say something and back it up with studies, stats and case studies, and you’ll get a stronger reaction in response to your stronger content.
People will start bookmarking your brand’s website, sharing your content to provide helpful info to their friends and signing up for your newsletter to get more.
Even search engines will favour your website more. The more trusted your content is, the more likely you are to get links from other sites. This will boost your Page Authority, one of the most crucial SEO metrics for your website’s ranking.
This is where content writing is its own unique form of writing. You’re not publishing articles to express an idea or opinion, you’re not crafting thought-provoking short stories, and you are not writing promotional copy.
You are producing content that provides a solution, specific to your target audience. So, you need to do the work verifying and supporting what you write so your audience can have confidence in what they’ve just read.
As a result, your brand becomes an authority and your audience will continue to use your content as a source of valuable information. Because it is.
Make Sure Your Page Design Is Clear and Responsive
Web users today are sophisticated and expect a clean, well-designed site if they are going to give up their time to see what you have to say. In order to attract the eye of your audience once you have worked so hard to get them to click on your page through your inbound marketing, you don’t want them to click away because your site is a mess. Your site needs to be responsive, have plenty of white space and the right fonts.
You should have a responsive design so it appears seamless and easy-to-read on all screen sizes. Responsiveness isn’t just important for mobile viewing and increasing customer reach; it can also help your search rankings. In search results, Google places a site that is mobile friendly above one that isn’t.
Having just the right amount of white space makes it much easier for readers to consume your written content – and much more likely that they’ll stay on your page. This means short paragraphs, as well as design best practices like enough space around the margins, padding around images and increased line height.
Apple has always been a great example of white space usage.
And finally, make sure your text is clear. Stick with traditional standard fonts like Ariel, Times New Roman and Futura for your web content to create a professional, easy-to-read look. If you want to use something different, here is a helpful guide on choosing a great web font.
Create Stand-Out Content
Using all of these tips for creating that amazing written content will help you to build brand awareness and transform your content marketing efforts into sales.
But, how do you come up with the topics that will keep people interested?
How can you create 3 to 5, or more, posts every week that your target audience will appreciate?
Stay inspired! Make sure you are reading other blogs, news articles, trade journals and industry-related books and you will have a rich idea bank to source from.
Listen to your customers or clients. You don’t necessarily need to come out and ask, “Hey, what would be a great topic for our next blog post?” but rather pay attention to what they are talking about in person, through customer feedback channels and on social media.
What are their concerns, what are they excited about?
When you are discussing your services with an existing or potential client, what questions are they asking, what do they want to learn more about?
Another helpful resource for ingenious content topics – your staff! Anyone who interacts with clients, as well as other stakeholders like suppliers and distributors are a wealth of information. They may have an interesting angle or be able to tip you off on some developing industry news that would interest your audience.
You can also pay attention to what your competitors are talking about and what’s trending on social media as well as industry forums. What topics are getting the most attention?
Promote Your Content
Wow – you’ve created some high-quality written content, having worked hard to provide useful, actionable, relevant content that persuades and adds value to the lives of your ideal buyers! Before you open that bottle of Champagne in celebration – you’ve got one more step in order to master content writing.
You have to promote it! Now it’s time to do the legwork and attract traffic to your site through your social media channels and inbound marketing techniques.
Social media is an excellent tool for content promotion. However, before you start publishing links to your blog posts on Twitter and Facebook, take the time to think about what social media promotion will work for your audience. This way you can optimise your time and effort, only promoting where you’ll reach your ideal buyers.
- B2C brands that target Millennials and younger audiences should focus on Instagram and Snapchat.
- Visual brands like real estate, travel and leisure, and beauty and the arts will benefit from promotion on Pinterest, along with Instagram.
- B2B companies will get the most traction on LinkedIn. As the social media site for professionals, this is where your clients will be looking for insight and expert knowledge.
- Facebook is an important social media platform across industries and is a powerful choice for promotion to a local audience.
- Twitter has recently gained a reputation for being the least important social media channel, but this doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from Tweeting about your posts. Twitter continues to be an excellent place to build the character of your brand, to provide customer service and business updates, and of course to share your content that your readers will find useful.
You can also promote your content through guest blogging. Guest blog posts are excellent for reaching a wider audience; building quality backlinks and driving traffic back to your site to view your stellar written content!
Powerful Written Content Will Help Your Brand Stand Out
It’s worth it to put in the effort to craft truly useful, researched, well-written content for your business. Why? Because it will give your brand an important competitive edge. Great content is what people are looking for. This is why content marketing can be such a powerful tool for marketing your brand. Doing it well, you’ll be able to see how much of a positive impact it will make on your business.