Content marketing is all about developing a powerful way to communicate with your customers. Ideally, you want to compose imaginative, engaging content. If your goal is to create new leads, educate your current customers of new or enhanced products and services, or place your company as a leader in the industry, the roadmap to achieving those goals is to focus on improving your content writing skills and develop a content writing strategy. This can be done through utilising content calendars and content marketing strategy templates.

Engaging content will set you apart from your competition and if you strategise correctly and consider SEO best practices, it can also help boost your SEO ranking. Over the past decade, companies have discovered that good content is bringing visitors to their website, and if their customers like their content, they also trust them. Through providing valuable content your consumers can benefit from, you make informed decision-making easier for them. At Digital 24, we believe in the power of content marketing, so here are some of our top tips for content writing for your business…

 1. Start with Keyword Research

SEO keyword research shows you what topics Google (and your target audience) finds important. It illuminates the marketing strategy of your rivals, and highlights your own strengths and weaknesses. SEO also helps you refine individual articles so your overall content plan pulls in more traffic to your website, which you can then track using Google Search Console.

For SEO purposes, it may be worthwhile investing in a good SEO suite such as AWR Cloud, DeepCrawl, LinkResearchTools, Moz Pro or SpyFu. According to Spyfu, SEO can bring in about 15 times more clicks than PPC advertising. Therefore, it is an important investment for your business.

You can of course, conduct SEO keyword analysis using a Google Spreadsheet, but there can be an awful lot of data to analyse. Digging your way through all the keywords and data can make it easy to get lost in the analytics. However, if you are trying to build out a new blog strategy, audit your site or look at your competitors strategy, an SEO suite is an invaluable tool.

Important SEO practices include using your keywords or any related phrases throughout your blog posts and website. You should make sure you include the focus keyword in the url, H2 headers, alt tags in your images and in your meta description. If you use WordPress to host your website, Yoast is a helpful tool you can use to help nail your SEO.

Strong content writing skills are within the grasp of anyone with enough discipline. Making an outstanding copy of your website or blog posts is one of the best ways to catch new visitors ‘ attention. If you are a content writer or you write a range of content for your organisation, it also may be worth while improving your SEO skills by signing up for any free online training courses.

2. Think of an Engaging Headline

Think about what your readers want to read. Before you even start writing, you will need to know what your call to action will be – make the headline engaging so that readers can’t help but click. Many successful headlines use the concept of “how to” with some extra adornment. Starting all of your articles with “how to …” gets boring real quick, so think about innovative ways to present an interesting article about “how to…” for example ‘How To Use Social Media For Your Small Business’ or ‘4 Simple Reasons Why You Should Be On LinkedIn…’

3. Use Powerful Calls to Action

When writing calls to action, put yourself in the reader’s shoes. What would it take for a business that you’ve never heard of to ask you to do something? Even if it was a simple call to action such as sharing the article with a friend. You should then connect this with your goals – how can you craft a call to action to your organisations’ marketing goals?

In turn, this will bring more readers into your blog post and help with brand awareness. Some examples of calls to action include:

– Downloadable resources

– Subscribing to your newsletter

– Free demo

– Click here to get 30% off [this product]

4. Backlinks

When you reference the content of another website, be sure to hyperlink back to your website. It is good practice on the internet and you would like the same courtesy. Always cite your sources, even if you’re afraid your web traffic will be sent to another site – you can select the option for the link to open on another window if you’re concerned about keeping the user on your website. Read more on site links here.

5. Give your Reader a Reason to Care

It can be hard to write an introduction that makes the reader feel something right away. Skipping right to the point may also feel unnatural and you may want to provide some context as to why you are writing a piece of content.

If you don’t provide the reader with a reason to care about your article, they are going to source the information or solve their problem elsewhere. Finally, every piece of content should remind the readers why they should invest their time in hearing what you have to say – how are you helping them accomplish their goals and why should they care?

6. Paint a Picture

Imagery is a great way to capture the reader’s attention. You can look into visual infographics or images that can help the reader make a better connection to your content. Push yourself to add creativity to your website or blog post, as it can make it much more fun for the reader to read.

7. Tone of Voice

Tone of voice is your brand’s personality and it lets the audience know whether or not they can connect to you. You need to draw up a picture of your audience to understand what tone of voice is appropriate for your blog.

It is also important to think about your audience, is it B2B or B2C? Broadly speaking, you want to keep your writing more concise and straight to the point if you are writing for other businesses. When you do your job, people are less likely to read a long, amusing backstory.

You should also consider the demographics of your reader – what age group are your customers? Are the majority of them male or female? Think about the type of content your target demographic would like to read – for example, do they read content for education or entertainment? Do they engage better with informal blog content, or do they prefer a more professional approach?

8. Google is your Best Friend

Google’s main purpose is to search for text in publicly accessible documents provided by web servers. Many people use Google because of the search for quality results they are getting back from there. Google also finds the pages you are looking for by using Page-Rank – which counts the number and quality of links to a page, which helps determine how important and relevant the website is for the user.

Therefore, if you ever need help with content or you need better clarification of the topic you are writing about, don’t be afraid to use Google.

9. Keep Updating your Blogs With  Up to Date Links

Over time, good website and blog content gains interest. Content posted on social media accounts, linked to forums, and Google boosts its ranking as traffic enters. At the same time, content also ages – information can go out of date, users interests change and so does the market too.

You need to watch how it performs to get the most value out of your content, prioritise the blogs that do well, and readjust them to bring in new readers. Usually, you will get great results with a longer, more informative piece – but a shorter content may surprise you and go viral. Strengthen your blog posts with strong relevant keywords and you will be surprised at how quickly your page climbs in the search engine rankings!

10. Proof Read and Upload!

It is so important to get someone to look at your writing – just in case you have any typos, spelling or grammar mistakes. If it is only you, make sure to take a break from reading the content so that you can come back with a fresh head – that way, you can make any changes or notice any mistakes.

It may be worth while downloading the Grammarly browser extension to help you with any grammar issues or help you with any suggestions. Reading industry blogs and research studies may also help you write successful content.

Want to find out more on how to develop a 12 month content plan? Click here.