They say beginnings are the hardest but so is consistency. Agreed? To talk about content writing you need the same.
First things first, let’s get into some basics.
What is Content Writing?
Content writing basically refers to creating content for a target audience. It is the process that involves planning, writing and editing web content, typically for digital marketing purposes.
What is Content Marketing?
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
In simple words it is a strategy used by brands to create web content that is delivered to their target audience through google. Content marketing is also practiced to keep up the SEO activity on search engines.
You see, whatever you read on the internet has multiple reasons behind it.
Why is Content Marketing Important?
It is used by many prominent organizations in the world, including P&G, Microsoft, etc. It’s also developed and executed by small businesses around the globe. Why? Because it works.
The importance of content marketing is witnessed in
- Increased sales
- Low budgeted
- Helps consumer make decisions
The great thing about content marketing is that you don’t actually have to market it. Consumer seeks you out. From there the story of trust builds.
Types of Content
There are various text forms that are consciously or unconsciously consumed by the brand’s target audience. Some of them are-
- Emails
- Website content
- Articles
- Press releases
- Newsletters
- Product description
- Ebooks
- Social Media posts
- Landing pages
- Keynote speeches
- Video scripts
Here’s the Guide to Better Writing
Content writing is something where people can get better with practice. Remember the first line about consistency? Writing content is not that easy and one needs a structure to write on.
Start Reading
Why reading first? Reading in the language that you want to write helps your brain to unconsciously revise the words that you would put in your writing. It improves your memory in terms of language and increases your knowledge in terms of topic.
According to science, reading everyday improves your writing skills as it expands your vocabulary. Exposing yourself to publishing creates a great impact in your own writing and you may yourself observe the fluidity and cadence invariably influencing your work.
Research
Research simply means having an extensive knowledge about the topic that you are planning to write about. Content writer not only curates content but keeps a deep understanding about the subjects.
Keep a notepad ready while researching and jot down the points that you want to include in your write-up. While researching, make content clusters to help you with the structure of the piece of content. For example, if I want to write about newly launched Windows 11, I’ll make the cluster like
- Introduction
- What’s new in Windows 11
- Brief about previous versions of Windows
- Win 11, 7 and 10 Comparison
- Windows 11 update guide
- Conclusion
Forming clusters help you to visualize and plan your content better and you end up giving a good amount of information to the reader.
Keyword Research
Let’s not forget that we are writing for an online platform. If that online platform doesn’t show up on the search engine, all the efforts will go in vain. In order to not let that happen, keyword research is important.
Keywords are the words or phrases that people type on search engines to find what they’re looking for. For example if you’d want to know about zumba classes, you’ll search by typing ‘zumba classes near me’. So, ‘zumba classes near me’ is a keyword.
Keyword research is the process of discovering the keywords used by potential customers to find your products. You can then pick the most relevant keywords within your reach that have a good search volume. Infact, you should create a list of the most important and relevant keywords associated with your chosen topic. Then, you should prioritize the highest-value keywords by the keyword’s search volume, keyword difficulty, and average CPC. Keyword research is basically done for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes which results in better ranking of the content write-up.
Thought Clarity
You need to know what you want to write about. The above step of keyword research will help a lot in clearing your mind. Pick a topic and write all about it as well as topics that revolve around it. Keep this in mind when writing that you must tie your content back to the main point as much as possible. It is better to stick to a point in every topic and make sure that you don’t mix different ideas in one content piece. It will break the user’s flow of reading.
Easy to read content grabs attention
Long texts can be difficult to read. Format your text such that it has 2-3 lines in each paragraph.
Online readers tend to scan through content to find points that they are interested in, rather than plowing through a long article. Use bolded subheadings to separate your content into topics or ideas, so readers can easily find the concepts that interest them.
Organizing your content this way also helps Google to index it so it gains a higher search position.
Fascinating Headlines
Headlines that turn heads are always a game changer. Your title’s primary purpose is to grab attention and summarize your idea. Apart from this, headlines should be valid to meet search guidelines to help Google assign a high search rank.
Let’s take an example, you are scrolling over facebook and come across an article named ‘how to take care of your skin at home’ and the other article named ‘10 awesome quarantine skin care tips’.
Both the articles may contain the same type of knowledge and content but the latter seems more interesting. Similarly, your users will decide whether they want to read the full content or not just by the headline.
Consistency is the key
Practice, Practice, Practice. First drafts are always a draft and need changes a lot of times. Point being, nobody writes perfectly at one go. Content writing is just like any other skill that needs time to develop.
Follow the suggestions to write better. You can also find free tools online that analyze your content and give you tips on how to improve content writing skills.
Let us know your strategy for content writing!