There are many factors that contribute to the success of your content marketing strategy. In this article, we’re going to focus on one of those factors – effective writing.
There is a 20-80 rule floating around which says that only 20% of your time should be devoted to making content and the other 80% should be spent promoting that content. That definitely doesn’t always hold true.
Think about it this way – if you’re promoting a poor-quality piece that you’ve spent little time on (20%), then the large amount of time spent on your marketing efforts (80%) will all have been in vain!
Content marketing should actually be reframed as ‘quality-content marketing’, and if you want your content marketing efforts to succeed, then you need to know how to write effectively and communicate directly with your audience.
Make your content useful
Writing content is so much more than just stringing together a bunch of words and sentences. It’s about cohesively bringing to life your ideas and your thoughts in such a way that your audience will find it extremely valuable and helpful. Each piece of content you write must have a purpose and a clear message.
Do keyword research
Doing keyword research is important. Knowing which keywords to target and knowing the search volume for each keyword will give you an idea of the topic’s overall demand. Of course, with search engines becoming increasingly smarter, keyword research is more of a guide than anything else. But it’s still powerful, especially if you uncover profitable keywords that not too many people are writing about!
Become a storyteller
To write effectively, you need to put your content’s message front and centre. The best way to go about this is by storytelling. People love stories. Your message will be easily understood if you wrap it in a story. Use your introduction as a hook to capture people’s interests and keep them scrolling down your page.
Break down your content
When writing for the web, it’s essential to break down your content into an easy-to-digest structure. With the plethora of content online, people have become masters at scanning content. They’ll scan through the subheadings until they find the section they’re interested in.
Make sure you keep sentences concise, employ subheads, and use paragraphing to break up large chunks of eye-wearying text.
Have search-engine friendly content
Lastly, don’t forget to follow SEO best practices. If you’re using WordPress, you can use a free plugin called Yoast SEO (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo) which helps you make sure your content is search-engine friendly. It won’t matter how effective and valuable your content is if search engines aren’t able to find it!
