Content writing is essential for building your brand, engaging with your customers, and reaching a wider audience. The type of content you post on your blog, social media pages, and elsewhere serves to inform people about your products and your overall purpose as a business. It's important to keep certain principles in mind.
1. KNOW YOUR PURPOSE
Each piece of content that appears on your website should have a specific purpose, which might be to educate, entertain, or persuade the reader of something. In some cases, your goal might be to elicit a certain action such as signing up for a mailing list, downloading an eBook or buying a product.
2. USE STRATEGIC KEYWORDS FOR SEO
Keywords are an essential aspect of SEO. People searching for information or a certain type of business will use certain words and terms. By writing topics around popular keywords, you ensure that your content is easily found by the search engines. On the other hand, today's content should always be written with the reader in mind. Keyword stuffing (using keywords over and over in an unnatural way) not only sounds unprofessional, it's penalised by Google.
3. ADDRESS YOUR BUYER PERSONAS
Before you can create engaging content, you have to know the needs and preferences of your readers. Researching the demographics of your customers and creating buyer personas help you create the kind of content your particular audience wants.
4. CREATE CONTENT IN MULTIPLE FORMATS
Some people prefer to read blog posts. Others like to watch videos. Still others respond better to visual content such as memes or infographics. The best content strategy is one that engages multiple platforms and channels. The more types of content you have out there, the wider your reach.
5. KEEP CONTENT READABLE
Most people seeking information online have short attention spans and don't want to read long walls of text. Summarise your main points using short paragraphs, bullet points, and numbered lists. Keep sentences fairly short and avoid run-on sentences. Whether you prefer to publish short or long-form content is a personal choice. Both can be advantageous. However, if you have a blog post that's getting very long, consider breaking it up into multiple posts.
6. UPDATE AND EDIT OLD CONTENT
As you accumulate more content on your site, it's important to go back and revisit it every so often. Some posts may be irrelevant or completely out of date. Others can be made relevant with some edits and perhaps updated news or statistics. In some cases, adding new and more relevant keywords can spruce up the SEO value of an old post.
7. CONSIDER YOUR READER'S STAGE IN THE BUYER'S JOURNEY
While this tip is related to knowing your audience, it's a little more specific. Do you want to reach people in the initial research stages of making a purchase or those who are ready to buy today? How educated is your audience on your chosen topic? What information will help them make an informed decision? These are questions that make your content more focused and effective.
8. KEEP RESEARCHING YOUR FIELD
When you publish content, you want to make sure you're bringing people the latest and most relevant news. It's essential to keep up with the trends and developments in your industry. When appropriate, share timely statistics to back your claims. Recommend the latest and best solutions. Otherwise, you risk falling behind your competitors and not addressing your readers' needs.
9. BE CONSISTENT
If you want to build a receptive audience, you need to create content on a regular schedule. If people only hear from you occasionally, you won't be fresh in their minds. You can experiment with different schedules to find out how to get the best response. The key, however, is to stay consistent. You can always improve and alter your approach but if you're not putting content out there in the first place, you have no chance to make an impact.
10. USE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL LINKS
Linking to authoritative sites can be useful though you don't want to overdo it. After all, your goal is to keep people on your website. However, make sure you link whenever you quote anyone or use proprietary information. Internal linking (linking to other content on your own website) is good for SEO and encourages people to spend more time on your site.
These are some of the leading tips to help make your content more effective. Each business, of course, has to tailor content to its own audience. You also have to pay close attention to your results so you can alter your approach as necessary. Over time, for example, you'll probably notice that your audience prefers certain topics and types of content over others. Find out more about inbound marketing.
