Content can be written by almost anyone.
Creating content that both resonates with your audience and generates positive business results can be a challenging endeavor. However, there is a silver lining – you have the ability to craft compelling articles, emails, landing pages, and copy that not only fulfill your readers’ expectations but also successfully meet your business objectives.
1. Start with your goals
If you lack a clear set of objectives, regardless of your expertise as a content writer or creator, failure is inevitable. Initially, the absence of goals leaves you without a means to assess your accomplishments and also devoid of guidance.
To kickstart your content marketing plan, we suggest using SMART objectives. This means that your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. To verify their adherence to these criteria, respond to the following questions with your team:
- What do you need to achieve and by when?
- How will you measure your success?
- Can you do it with your current resources?
- Does it further your main business objectives?
2. Get to know your audience
At what point does a gathering of unfamiliar individuals transition into an audience? It occurs when they collectively become attentive and interested in the person addressing them. In order to capture people’s attention, it is crucial to understand their shared inquiries and worries, and additionally, to communicate directly with them. This implies both sifting through individuals and focusing on specific targets.
In order to successfully appeal to a wide range of people while also targeting specific individuals, it is important to create buyer personas. These detailed profiles help segment and describe your ideal audience in content marketing, which is usually larger than your potential client base.
When developing buyer personas, it is important to include various essential details. In content marketing, apart from the typical demographic and background information, your main emphasis will likely be on:
- Their goals and obstacles.
- How they see your product and your competitors’ products.
- The questions they have relating to their challenges and your solution.
- The content formats and channels they prefer.
- Broader topics and themes they are interested in.
To ensure that buyer personas accurately represent your readers, it is crucial to prioritize their authenticity. If these profiles are fabricated or contain incorrect information, they can lead to errors by your content marketing team. Explore the following potential data sources:
- Internal customer databases.
- Third-party analytics tools.
- User feedback.
- Onboarding or exit interviews.
- Sales or customer service knowledge.
Once you have a clear understanding of what each of your buyer personas entails, you will be able to refine your messaging and tailor your content to suit each customer segment.
3. Do your research, thoroughly
By choosing to make content available to the public, you position yourself as an expert in that particular topic. This emphasizes the significance of consistently ensuring the accuracy of your information, particularly when dealing with data. It is crucial to conduct extensive research on the subject matter and ensure that you share precise content accompanied by well-represented and substantiated opinions.
4. Craft an irresistible headline
The primary goal of a headline is to generate interest or curiosity in a reader, enticing them to continue reading your article until the very end. Craft an exceptional headline that captivates readers and encourages them to remain on your page, actively participating in your content. The most effective headlines employ numbers or pose inquiries.
5. Attention grabbing introduction
The success of a story is often determined by its introduction. Although a striking headline might initially engage a reader, it is the hook that keeps them interested. Therefore, it is crucial to captivate the reader within the first three lines of the introduction to ensure their attention is maintained.
6. Avoid plagiarism
Establishing your own voice and writing with uniqueness is essential. While ideas may always be the same as there is nothing new under the sun, expressions can never be duplicated. Each writer possesses their unique style to convey their points effectively. It is crucial to refrain from plagiarism and always remain authentic in your writing.
7. Optimize your digital content
To succeed in digital marketing, it’s not enough to just create great content. You also need to understand how to stay relevant and rank high, which involves mastering the art of SEO. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the necessary tools and skills so you can compete with your competitors and establish a strong presence in the digital realm.
8. Use lists
When writing for busy individuals, it is essential to capture their attention as they have numerous other responsibilities. To ensure your content is easily accessible, incorporate lists using bullets and numbers. Prior to reading a full article, many individuals prefer scanning the main points. Therefore, organizing numbered points into succinct paragraphs is preferable over lengthy, uninterrupted text.
9. Include a call to action
If content writing is utilized effectively, it can be a remarkable marketing tool that generates impressive sales. Therefore, it is crucial to conclude your content with a concise call to action, guiding your readers towards your desired destination. Whether you desire them to peruse another article, make sure to provide the link; if you want them to subscribe, explicitly state it; and if your goal is for them to purchase a book, remember to include the link.
10. Optimize your content for search engines
The goal in SEO is to ensure that your content is accessible to your readers and accomplishing the objectives outlined in your marketing plan.
Before writing
When rearranging the text below without altering its meaning, ensure to proceed in a systematic manner. Arrange your keywords in a coherent manner. Seek out primary keywords that have a low level of difficulty and a reasonably high search volume. However, do not solely focus on the numbers, as what your readers are searching for holds more significance than numerical data.
To better understand the search intent, enter your keywords into Google and see the results generated by Google’s algorithm, which makes an educated guess about why the user is searching.
- Are they looking for topic information?
- Do they want to find a website?
- Are they comparing products to buy?
- Or do they have their credit cards out ready to purchase right now?
By thinking step by step, you can rephrase the following text while retaining the same meaning: “The outcomes provided by Google will offer you a more distinct understanding of the kind of content that you ought to create for your specific keyword.”
When writing
Our research indicates that a majority of high-performing posts have a complex structure, with more than half of them incorporating H2, H3, and H4 title tags.
Boost your SEO and provide value to your audience by including links to other content on your site. Use keywords to describe the links and make sure to add alt text to any images for accessibility and SEO purposes.
After writing
Afterwards, it is necessary to create a meta title that incorporates your primary keyword. This title should be both optimized for search engines and enticing to actual users. Therefore, keep it brief and concise (less than 60 characters). Similarly, your URL should feature the primary keyword and eliminate unnecessary words such as “to,” “the,” “a,” and “in” in order to keep it succinct.
It is advisable to include regular content audits in your content marketing strategy as they assist in assessing the performance of your content and identifying areas that require updating.
11. Strike the right tone of voice
Our recent research indicates that 78% of texts that receive high scores and are well-optimized demonstrate consistency with their tone of voice. However, it is essential to understand the exact meaning of this consistency and why it holds significance.
Maintaining your tone of voice is about finding the appropriate way to communicate with different audiences. If you speak to your Grandma the same way you speak to your managing director, she may reprimand you (and vice versa). Our tone of voice varies depending on the situation, the audience, our own identities, and our objectives.
When it comes to our buyer personas, we must adjust our communication methods to engage with individuals. However, the challenge lies in maintaining a consistent brand voice. So how can we achieve this?
The tone of voice that your brand adopts is important in establishing its personality. Furthermore, the manner in which your brand communicates through its content affects the way others connect with you. While we may make slight adjustments when conversing with different individuals, ultimately we remain true to ourselves. Your brand should adopt a similar approach when creating content and establish a personality that is adaptable yet coherent.
By thinking step by step, rephrase the following text without adding or removing information while keeping the same meaning: Seek input from your team to collectively determine how you currently sound and how you aspire to sound in the future.
12. Edit your work
To keep readers engaged, it is important to avoid errors and typos in your writing. Editing is an essential part of the writing process that should not be neglected. Always remember to edit and proofread your work before sharing it.
