What is Content Writing

Content writing is a process that starts with planning, writing, and editing, typically for digital marketing purposes. It can include writing articles and blog posts, content for specific platforms, such as text posts on Reddit or tweets on Twitter as well as scripts for videos and podcasts. No matter what your business is, your customers are there online. You need to stay connected with them through a different medium and by using various content formats.

1. Articles

Many marketers have stated that blog posts are the main type of content marketing they produced. There are few good reasons for that. Blogging, if done consistently and diligently, can be a great way of driving more traffic to your website and boost up brand authority.

The blog needs to reflect the brand’s identity. This applies to even complex topics but the content writer can successfully turn them into an engaging piece that will convert into leads.

To maximize the benefit derived from an article, you will want them to rank in the search engines, build long-term relationships and bring new potential customers. So, you will need to follow these tips mentioned below to create an SEO-friendly article:

• Optimized title- The title should be enticing and offer the audience information they will receive along with meeting the search engine requirements.
• Frequency of keywords- The keywords need to be used effectively in the text, meta title, H1 header, subheading, and meta description.
• Magnetic introduction- Get your audiences “hooked” in the introduction by addressing their pain point.
• Optimize the meta description- Describe the benefits of reading your article and keep it unique.
• Relevant on-site and off-site links resources- Link to reliable external and internal content to build trust around your copy, do use relevant ‘Anchor Text’.
• Easily readable- A good readable copy will have proper H2, H3, and H4 structure, good headlines that give information even without reading, informative and clear paragraphs, and use of bullet points and numbered lists.

2. Product descriptions

For an eCommerce business, well-written product descriptions are the key to telling the audiences that your product offers the real value that they are looking for. Here are some tips on how to write effective product descriptions that give your audiences the confidence to purchase along with a good rank in search engine results pages (SERP).

• Value to the customer- Blend the values and goals of your potential customer in the description instead of just describing the product’s features.
• Cater to buyer personas- Use market trends, data, similar information, and market trends to understand your potential customer, and use a suitable tone of voice, types of humour, and relatable references.
• Know basics of SEO- The keywords need to be used in the body, metadata and title naturally, avoid sentences longer than 20 words, and use interlinks.
• Have meaningful and technically proficient writing- Instead of using words like “very”, “really”, or “especially”, or “excellent quality” for your product consider using “great value”.

3. Website content

The website is at the core of content, as it includes all the important information about your business. The website copy consists of a range of content, including:

• Home page
• Contact us page
• About us page
• FAQ page
• Landing page

Here are some tips that can use to motivate audiences to take an action such as subscribing, making a purchase, or joining your mailing list:

• Help navigate- Help your audience by sharing relevant links to your brand and what you are offering.
• Talk in layman language- Replace professional jargon with simple alternatives and explain the offer in simple words.
• Talk to readers as a friend- Use direct addressing such as “I,” “you,” and “we” and instead of “Our services can be ordered” use the structured sentence “You can order our services” to be less formal.
• Demonstrate CTA is worth it- Back up any statements with testimonials, original research data, success stories, partnerships, or expert biography.

4. Email newsletters

Newsletters are important for maintaining engagement and retargeting customers within your audience base. It can provide various information including industry and company, sales incentives, or product information. Emails that are targeted have high-performance levels such as clickthrough rate (CTR) and open rate. Here are a few tips for writing an effective email:

• Write about the benefit of the product- Choose sentences like “you can get” instead of “we offer”, and think about how the audience will be benefited if they take the action.
• Hook the reader- Use a catchy subject line. It would be great if you can add a little humor but make sure to keep the headline clear.
• Be clear- This should apply to both visual design and text. The CTA should be the most attractive element on the page, and the text should speak the rest. Remember, you don’t have much time so be precise.

5. Press releases

While writing a press release the first step towards getting media attention is by writing a story about your product, event, or service. For the content to be effective, these are the questions that need to be answered clearly:

• What or who it is about?
• What has happened, and what is happening?
• Where did it happen or is happening?
• When happened and will it be happening again?
• Why it matters?

6. Ebooks

There are goals that you can achieve by writing an ebook, like establishing yourself as an expert in your industry, educating readers about your brand or product, move potential customers down the sales funnel.

The desired goal will define which sections need to be included; for eg: a table of content and graphs is more appropriate for a research paper than a company playbook. Here are some tactics you should know for writing an ebook:

• Select topic carefully- It is better to invest your time in researching about the topic rather than wasting time on writing content that no one will read.
• Use captivating title- Choose the title only after finishing the body so that it is relevant to what is promised. Make it credible, specific, and highlight the problem that your readers will be able to solve.
• Use a table of contents- Use a table of contents to present the structure of the ebook and allow the reader to quickly access a specific section.
• Back up what your state- Use linking and quote credible resources to increase your ebook’s credibility.

These content formats can reach potential customers at different stages of their buying journey, so the purpose is to take them towards the end goal that is about closing the deal or a sale in the case of returning customers.

Marketers use content to guide and nurture potential customers through different stages of the buying journey. Marketers leverage different content strategies for every stage of the journey, starting from brand awareness to purchase decisions.

Since several companies are fighting for the attention of the same chunk of audiences, there is a need for high-quality and targeted content to cut through the mass and reach only potential customers.

What is content writing in SEO?

Content writing basics

Even before choosing the topic to write, it is essential to do the preparation. This is where content writing begins.

1. Research

Your content should reflect research-based, factual information. Companies that spread misleading and false information are vulnerable to a backlash that can come from both consumers and search engines.

If a company generates fake content about its products and services, consumers would stop buying that brand immediately. Ultimately misleading content will lead to negative company, services, and product reviews. And once it occurs a reduction in sales is likely to happen.

Factual content helps in establishing business authority in its field. In-depth research will guide you through the content creation process, prevent you from wasting marketing dollars and also save from losing credibility. Here is what all you should research:

i. Business goals

Get your business goals in place that you want to accomplish, and then you plan to use this content to do this.
You should keep in mind:

• What format type of content does you need.
• What tone do you want your piece to carry?
• What are your goals are for each of them.

Eg: if you want to increase organic visits then likely will have to focus on high-volume keywords and if you want to convert the audience into potential leads, then might need to create more middle-funnel content.

ii. Buyer persona

A buyer persona is a depiction of your ideal customer. It is based on quantitative and qualitative data from competitors or market research and of existing customer profiles.

While data available online can help in establishing customer personas, there are other methods to know about the most common traits of your customer base. To find them, you can consider:

• Mining social media for persona-related information
• Conducting customer interviews on call
• Creating online customer surveys
• Use the form on your website to request customer information
• Taking feedback from sales staff about their customer impressions

Focusing on a specific person while creating content can guide you towards using the right language and style.

iii. Search intent

Users generally have different expectations when using search engines. Providing correct answers increases the chances of being rated as quality. Search intent can be divided into four types:

• Navigational- the visitor is looking for a specific site or web page.
• Informational- the visitor is looking for specific information about a topic.
• Transactional- the visitor wants to purchase something.
• Commercial- the visitor is considering a purchase and wants to investigate those options.

To understand your user search intent, you will need to look at the keywords that you are targeting in your content.

iv. Keyword research and SEO

In today’s digital era it’s important for a business to remember that content writing is aligned with search engine optimization (SEO). Google and other search engines play an important role in generating organic traffic, and they give importance to quality content.

To rank your business page on the Google search engine result page (SERP) you need to create content that is designed and optimize your business as relevant for keyword searches. You can even use Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) as one of strategy to shortlist your keywords.

SEO is vital not only for ranking but also for proper communication. Therefore, you need to select keywords and topics with both things in mind. So, content writing helps in SEO and businesses to communicate effectively with their potential customers to achieve the marketing objectives.

Thus, you will want to conduct thorough keyword research for each of the topics. Ideally, you should get a list of the most relevant and important keywords associated with each topic. Then prioritize based on high-value keywords by the search volume, average CPC, and keyword difficulty.

Then you can create a semantic core which means collecting all keywords related to the topic, cluster them, and then optimize all pages for collected keywords.

Use keywords that are realistic to achieve for your brand, based on the domain authority of your website compare to keyword difficulty.

v. Content strategy

A comprehensive content strategy plan is required to effectively engage with your audience and perform better than your competition. The plan refers to how you are going to manage your marketing content means where and when to publish. Your content strategy should have:

• The channels where you will publish it
• Your content formats
• How you will manage it means who will do the posting and manage engagements
• Who will analyze content performance
• Who will create the content construction

An outlined plan provides a framework without one, your campaign can become ineffective and disjointed.

vi. Topic research

Take your time and carry out topic research, so that you get a strong and strategic idea for your content that will match with your audience and will drive results. When conducting topic research, follow these for idea generation:

• Survey on social media- Ask followers what they love to read about.
• Find your audience pain points- To do this look at online reviews and “most asked questions,” on Google and Quora.
• Recreate competitor’s content- Look what is performing for others and find out how you can make your own similar content along with the winning resource.
• Run a content gap analysis- Looks at the keywords your competitors are ranking for, and those in which you are being outranked.
• Talk to other departments- Content creation is about teamwork, and collaborating with other relevant teams helps in ensuring that your content creates interest from your target audience.
• Use content idea tools- Get the potential and hottest trending topics that you can rank for.

2. Planning

Once you are clear about your objectives, topics, content formats, funnel stages, and channels, you can start working on your content calendar.

An editorial calendar is something that marketers, SEO gurus, and content specialists can’t work without, because it provides a clear view of their tasks:

• It promotes posting consistency.
• It enables a communication loop among staff in other departments.
• It allows creating quality content in advance of publication time.

We recommend you have your editorial calendar on an Excel sheet, with the following details across each post:

• Marketing channels
• The goals you have for the post
• The topic
• The content type
• Task owners or other team members involved
• Due date and publication dates

When creating a content calendar, consider the following questions based on the team’s needs:

• Do you publish multiple types of content?
• How often do you publish content?
• Which platform will you use for the content calendar?
• How many content stages do you go through before publishing?
• How many people need to access the calendar?

3. Writing

After you have finalized the writer whether it would be an individual or a group who will work on the content that is on point with your brand and marketing objectives. Professional writers working in the field know how to blend, be consistent with the tone of voice, and use goal-oriented language. Here are some tips to create content that wows your audience and convert them into leads:

• Exciting titles- Do draw your audience’s attention keep your titles sweet and short, but indicate the benefit.
• Make sure that content has a clear goal- Your content should start with what you want to accomplish and the target audience you want to reach to meet your goals.
• Make your copy scannable- Most people do skim read, so use subheadings, bullets and lists, and space between paragraphs to ensure it’s easily scannable.
• Hook your readers from start- Start your content with exciting data, a question, or a one-sentence story. Make people stick after reading the first line.
• Be consistent- A consistent set of values and brand voice across all your channels will help in building a relationship with audiences, and make your brand visible.
• Use visuals- Images, videos, charts, presentations, infographics, and social media stories are effective ways to communicate.
• Tell a story- Storytelling is can motivate, inspire, and encourage your audience to act.
• Select an interesting angle- Use a fresh perspective in the content that will keep the readers hooked and will make you the authority of that topic.
• Repurpose old content- When you repurpose content you can find excellent topic opportunities.
• Use some data- This is an important and easy way to add credibility to your content.
• Change the content type based on goals- Some content forms have the potential of better reach and conversion than others.
• Use calls to action- Add a short, action-oriented phrase that will convince your consumers to act in a particular way. This action must be easy to carry out, such as buying or subscribing.
• Avoid grammatical errors- Grammar and spelling are important for readability, creating trust, and developing great content.
• Keep an eye on the metrics- Make sure to monitor and track important metrics. It can be measured through organic traffic and sessions/page views. The next most popular metrics are leads and conversion rate.

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