Content Writing has come a long way. From websites to social media you need content and writers who write organic content. It doesn’t matter what type of content you’re producing all that matters is the quality of the content.
As a professional writer, it is important to deliver high-quality plagiarism free content. There are many tools such as plagramme available in the market, which makes checking plagiarism easy. Creating such content is a daily job for content writers. Are you wondering why content plays such an important role? It plays a pivotal role in lead generation and marketing success of an organisation. If you’re still not convinced, studies show that more than 90% of B2B companies are relying on content for demand generation and brand building.
Leading brands are relying on content marketing, as it allows them to connect with their customers and leads. It is helping them to educate the customers so that they can make better purchasing decisions and lastly building a relationship of trust and loyalty with them.
What is content marketing? Why is it important?
Over the years the traditional marketing techniques are becoming less effective. Forward-thinking businesses are turning towards content-marketing. Instead of pitching their products, companies are providing their customers and prospects with useful and relevant content to resolve their issues. Many leading brands such as P&G, Cisco systems are using content marketing. But the question is why? The answer is simple, it is benefiting organisations to increase sales, helps you in building a relationship with your customers and cost-saving.
Simply put, content is here to stay, it is present and future of marketing. Any strategy of your business requires content to attract the attention of the existing customers or potential customers. Be it social media marketing, PR, PPC, content strategy or SEO.
If you’re a marketer who wants to improve your writing or a content writer or a professional writer looking for new tools and tips. Here are a few tips that will help you in improving your content writing skills.
Research
To produce great content, you must stay in research mode. You’re not a machine to constantly come up with great ideas, research keeps you going and helps you in generating good ideas. Don’t wait till its time to produce your content jot down your ideas as soon they enter your head. It becomes easy to produce your content if you perform research and develop your ideas. Remember there are hundreds of people who write content like you, what makes you different from your research.
The more time you spend on research the more unique content you will produce. Research always helps you in understanding statistics and creating info-graphics and establish credibility. As a writer, you must have in-depth knowledge of the informative speech topics you’re writing. And the only way to obtain that is research. Gather all the material you will require for your topic and use it as your reference material. When you browse the web for your research before you even know you will have the outline ready for writing.
Head-turning headline
A headline is one of the most important parts of your content. You need a head-turning headline to grab your audience’s attention. If your headline is dull, there are high chances of them skipping your content. Your headline should spark an interest or stir emotion in your audience to read further. It should make them curious about the topic.
An effective headline has the capacity to drive traffic to your website and higher the open-rate of an article. Don’t just come up with a single headline and use it. Come up with at least 10 headlines before choosing “The One”. It is always good to have options right. You can even take a second opinion before finalising your headline.
Focus on a single purpose
It is important to focus on one single point while writing your content. If you’re focusing on multiple things in your content then your audience will get distracted and ultimately lose interest in your content.
The easiest way to figure out the purpose is, before writing your content, sit down, take your time and then think about what your bottom-line is going to be. Once you figure it out, then it is an easy sail. Keep it in your mind and connect it back to your content. While editing your content check whether your writing is conveying the message you intended or not.
Unique voice & angle
It is important to have a unique voice while writing your topic. Many would have written it before you and many will write it after you. It is your unique voice and angle that makes yours special and unique from others. You must be covering the same topic as other marketers but try seeing it from different lens to make your content more interesting. Try to find a new angle and make it interesting and provide proofs that support your claims.
Remember the content you publish resembles or represents your company. So make sure your unique voice allows people to see your company’s personality and understand them better. Not to forget your tone should match your targeted audience preference to meet business goals and improve your brand’s persona.
Optimise your content
It is important to optimise your content to rank better in the search engine. Writing unique content alone will not bring your traffic. You must include the latest SEO strategies and best practices to optimise your digital content.
Use multiple keywords in your article. Including keywords relating to your industry or the particular topic can improve your ranking in the search and bring people searching for that particular keyword to your article. Simply put, it drives traffic to your website. And most importantly, it brings organic traffic to your website. Primary and secondary Keywords maximise your content’s potential.
You can perform research for keywords relating to your industry and make a sheet of it for future purposes. Place these key phrases strategically in your content at key areas such as title, meta description and meta tags.
Grammar & Readability
Readability has a great impact on user’s engagement metrics. As you know it is one of the most important areas that Google considers to rank your page. To improve your page’s readability you must make your content user-friendly. Use shorter sentences, avoid using passive voice, maintain short paragraphs. You must use transition words to give better direction to your users. Use subheadings and lots of whitespaces to make your content easily understandable and also check word count online.
There are many tools and plugins available in the market to improve the readability of your content. Grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors can be a major turn off to readers. Make sure you’re article is free of such errors. You can add extensions of tools that detect spelling and grammatical errors making your work easy. These little mistakes can limit you from conveying your ideas better.
Create an outline for your content
It is important to outline your content before you start writing. Why? You must be wondering. When you’re writing on a specific topic it is easy to get deviated from the topic. Having an outline will help you stay in the right direction and keep track of your work. Create an outline right when the ideas forms.
A good amount of research helps you in drawing a perfect outline. Imagine you’re writing without any outline, then it becomes hard to manage your ideas as you don’t have the outline you may end up adding unnecessary content and complicate it. It is important to draw a road map to reach your destination safely.
Include Images, stats and Infographics
Images always catch the attention of a reader. Reading long content can get boring to your audience adding images will keep your content fresh and offers a better understanding to your audience. Stats and infographics from authoritative websites or sources will support your claims that all the information provided in the article is accurate.
Besides citing others work will also open an opportunity to collaborate and improve your network. It even allows you to engage and build rapport with people in your industry. Infographics and stats make it easy for the audience to understand all the number involved in the article and they can even share with others.
Convert your leads
Every piece of content you write has a goal or purpose. It is to drive traffic to the website or improve your websites ranking in the search engine. That’s not the end, you write to attract customers and create brand awareness. Every customer or potential customer that visits your website is a lead, so you must write content to convert those leads and bring profit to your business. It strengthens the relationship with your clients, customers and influencers and educate them with your content and help them in solving their issues. And don’t forget to add CTA at the end of your article. It usually encourages the audience to take action.
Edit your work
Writing doesn’t end your job. Once you’re done with your draft, it is time to proofread it and make all the necessary changes required. There is always room for improvement and you can only achieve it by editing your work. Perform a minimum of two to three edits before submitting the final copy. You can ask your friends or colleagues to edit for you to get a fresh perspective.
The first draft is never the final copy, you can only understand how well your ideas are put into the topic. But there will still be some rough edges that need mending. So editing will make your content high quality and helps you get a better idea of your writing.