I am not going to reiterate how important content marketing is for your business, and how significant it is to have high quality content out there – because none of that matters if the “great content” you are creating is not being shared, or at least being read.
That’s right!
No amount of content writing is going to help if no one’s reading it.
‘How can I write something that people will actually read’ is a question a lot of businesses have asked themselves at some point. We have had businesses come to us for our blog writing and article writing services. And even they have the same question hovering at the back of their minds – how to get people to read and engage with the content?
So, let’s crack on!
1. Stop Calling It Content
You heard me right.
Forget for a moment that you are selling something. Imagine that the objective of your blog is not to sell something, but to address a need – the need of your target audience. You want people to read your blog because it will solve a certain problem for them. As soon as you tell yourself that, you will be more focused on storytelling. And that is what will engage your readers. As humans, we love stories. And we remember stories.
If you have nothing to say, don’t say anything.
The idea is to create interest and excitement with the story you are telling. Take a deeper dive into your product/service offering. Spend a moment to think how it can really help others and put it out as a consistent message. SEO Content writing is just a way to elevate the reader experience by reaching more people through your content and make your business known to more people. But it can not compensate for bad content. No sooner does the reader realises that there is nothing in it for them, they will stop listening to you – no matter how high on the SERP you rank.
2. Understand And Stick To Your Audience
Writing about a variety of subjects is great. But making sure that every piece of content is connected by a single thread, a consistent message, is what will gain you loyal readers. Hence, understanding who your audience is very critical. You can’t expect loyal readership if you keep changing your audience. Picking titles that will resonate with your prospective customers and provide them with some value should be the underlying objective of every piece of content that you put out there.
3. Optimize your SEO Content Writing
Incorporating your keywords, renaming images and including enough text to make your post SEO friendly is the essence of SEO Copywriting.
The challenge that most businesses face today is to strike a balance between content writing for growth and one that will appeal to the people – enough for them to share ahead.
The key is to get smarter with SEO Copywriting in order to build a loyal blog audience.
Creating content that solves a problem for your audience AND ranks well with Google is what SEO content writing is. Be it content writing for websites or article writing, optimizing the effectiveness of your content for search engines will help you rank higher.
In a nutshell, SEO copywriting is about creating relevant, valuable, useful, and authoritative content that targets specific keywords so that people are tempted to promote it online.
Few things to remember in SEO Copywriting:
- Site speed
- Headline
- The Content itself
- Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
- Keyword frequency
- Page Links
4. Leverage Performance Marketing
Performance content marketing is just that – marketing based on performance of the different paid and organic campaigns and efforts.
With Performance content marketing, businesses can make data-driven decisions and optimize their campaigns according to those results. The goals can be many and varied. It could be improving ROI, increasing CVR, expand site traffic, or in extreme cases gaining supremacy over the planet. Performance marketing typically focuses its efforts on consistent campaign optimizations aimed at more conversions. Hence, it entails constant testing and making data-driven decisions.
Now, to the more important question of why you should focus your resources to Performance content marketing:
- It’s measurable, trackable, and a more objective way of looking at things
- It expands your advertising reach
- Better results with same investment
5. Don’t Forget About Data
Too often than not, content creators and marketers rely solely on what they think their audiences want to read.
What I am getting at is, when you are spending your time, effort, and money to create content, it is worthwhile to know if that is what people really want to read. Instead of relying on your instincts, it may be wise to use analytics and data to find out what your audience is engaging with most, online.
If you have a blog or social media account, look at the clicks and shares on the posts you’ve published. Analyse what topics and content types and formats are working and what isn’t, and use that as a first step for your content strategy. We call it ‘Social Listening’, and at Lightblue we pay a lot of attention to online chatter -because people are always vocal about what they want. And as a business, that it where you should look to fill the gap with the help of effective content marketing efforts.
Here are some more not-so-difficult things to ensure readability of your content
- Readers want to see your expertise on the subject
- Think like a Journalist and aim to educate your audience
- Write longer articles to indicate quality and depth of understanding
- Keep your Introductions brief
- Ensure that each sentence leads to the next
- Use Images, audio, and video to simplify your content
- Use bullets, highlighted keywords, and meaningful subheading (also with keywords)
- Do your homework before you publish your next post
Successful content marketing is preceded by creating compelling and engaging content that will get the reader to read the next sentence, and the next one, and the next one after that.
What matters more than publishing a polished content is its ability to stir an emotion in your readers.
Does it make them think?
Is it relevant to their needs?
Is it good enough to drive a desired behaviour?
It could even be something that triggers a laugh. Humour is a powerful emotion too.
Or is just a content for the heck of content writing?
Those are the answers you need to know before putting your content out.