How Easy Content Writing Is? A Detailed Guide – IIM Skills
Digital expansion and technological progress have ensured that digital marketing with all its elements enjoys the utmost importance in the marketing scenario today.
Content is one of the foremost elements of a Digital Marketing strategy that helps in the success of a business and the promotion of its product and services.
What is content writing? It is the method of creating useful, innovative, and creative content for websites and blogs. It involves a complex process of ideation, research, and then zeroing in on a topic. Next comes writing, proofreading, editing, and then publishing the content on various digital marketing platforms for better reach and visibility.
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So, is content writing easy? We are often posed with this question because a lot of people feel that content writing is simple. It only involves writing articles on several generic topics. But the reality is diametrically opposite to that belief. It is much more complex than rehashing earlier written stuff.
Content Writing involves exhaustive writing on specific topics relevant to your specific market. It takes many forms namely
- Press Releases
- White Papers
- Case Studies
- Portfolios
- Speeches
- Social Media Content
- Email Newsletters
- Audio Transcriptions
- Video Scripts
- Landing Pages Optimized Writing
- Youtube Videos Scripting
- Podcasting
- Blogs
- Creative Writing
- Manuals
- Technical Writing, and Many Others.
With technological proliferation, the dynamics in the marketing scenario have also changed. The traditional forms of marketing are no longer enough and have given way to digital marketing concepts.
Most of our consumers are found online surfing the net for all their queries. Whether it is a review for a book, feedback of a restaurant for information on a specific niche product consumers go to online mediums to garner information.
You can imagine how industries and businesses have realized the importance of disseminating useful content for their online consumers for their brand awareness and reputation.
You need ample dedication to start your career in content writing. Though it becomes a very lucrative career you do need a certain creative acumen, research skills, and great vocabulary to stand out and make a mark for yourself in the content writing industry. Developing these qualities can help you build a very prosperous career in this dynamic field of content writing and marketing.
Content writing can be intriguing entertaining inspiring and interesting if you have an in-depth understanding of what a career in content writing entails.
It isn’t an easy career to opt for but it definitely can be very rewarding for people who are diligent and willing to go the extra mile to make efforts of becoming prolific content writers.
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Let’s look at the features that make for great content writing.
Engaging
The primary requirement of creating great content is to be able to draw the reader in within the first 10 seconds of them opening the page to read the article. It has to be impactful, should be able to provide fodder for thought.
Great content does not mean overtly ornamental language that is difficult for people to understand. Remember your reader will not take the time to consult a thesaurus every time they sit to read an article.
The content should be concise but should have all the relevant information, presented in an organized well-written structure. Brevity is the key. Also, typos and grammatical mistakes should be avoided as much as possible.
Should communicate the voice and positioning of the brand clearly
Content writing for websites requires you to have an incisive understanding of the topic your writing on. Most of the time it is disseminating and distributing information on the brand, its products, and the way it can be beneficial to your target customers.
Remember, the utility of every brand is different. Therefore brand positioning should also be dependent on the core mission, vision, and values of your brand. Your content write-up should reflect the message of the business in the most thorough way possible.
Keyword for SEO
Keyword research is one of the fundamental facets of great content writing. Keywords are those specific groups of words or words that online users search for in search engines like Google Bing Yahoo etc.
These searches and words are related to your business and its products and services. Google decides the rankings of content prioritizing users’ intent, preferences, and needs. Therefore, you have to create content thinking from the perspective of an online user.
For effective content writing, a writer has to involve a lot of keywords and phrases, research and incorporate them into the content for greater rankings on search engines.
It should be seamless and shouldn’t feel like you are forcing the keywords in content just to get ranking. That would mean creating bland content for your readers. Rather it should smoothly be included in your content copy coordinating with your brand values and mission.
4.Facts and figures
Your article should be replete with facts, statistics, figures, data whenever necessary. Content writing involves giving in-depth knowledge about your business and its unique features.
The content should always answer the what, why, how, which, and where part of the business. Also including important facts and figures that help establish your domain authority and thought leadership is very much encouraged.
However, the data provided should be authentic and should reflect the true performance and qualities of your brand and its products. You can see how you need intensive research for content writing in this area.
Shareable
Another aspect of content writing is being able to create content that is shareable to several digital media channels and social media platforms.
Remember, your content format for one medium might not be enough or adequate for all online platforms. Therefore, you have to modify, include changes in your writing keeping in mind the channel on which your content is going to be published.
For example
You can write as much as you want in a blog post. You can give as much information based on your study and analysis. But, when you are writing for a platform like Twitter you have to keep in mind that this social media channel allows only up to 140 characters in one single tweet.
Therefore your content should include the most important and distinctive features of your business in those 140 characters not compromising on the writing part.
It should firmly be able to give you positive brand goodwill and instill faith in your product for your consumers, existing and potential. So, After writing the content adjust improve, reshape it to suit the needs of the unique channels on which they are going to be published.
Great storytelling with compelling examples
A reader always likes a good story. It helps to remember certain aspects of the article better. Therefore you can successfully leverage the benefits of storytelling and incorporate examples that resonate with your readers to create an everlasting impact.
Stories weaved into your content helps in getting the desired attention from your readers and helps to connect with your customers on a deeper level.
Why do you think content writing needs stories in them? Why do people love stories in your content?
Stories tend to inspire people to take certain actions and help them to connect better with your brand. Your content doesn’t necessarily have to include all the triumphs that you have achieved.
The challenges you faced, the roadblocks you encountered can make for very compelling content because it is a very human experience. Therefore, writing content includes interesting facts about your business, the unique distinctive features of your brand, the brand mission. It also involves the challenges that you are willing to address and how your business can help the consumers in the long run.
Remember to include information that is honest, and authentic. Refrain from recreating duplicate content or duplicate scenarios from other businesses and brands.
Your story should be your experience and not a plagiarised version of the achievements and failures of other businesses. You should add value to the lives of consumers in the sense that it should serve a certain purpose for your consumer
Scannable and easy to retain
Content writing should be scannable. That means anything you write should be able to impact search engine rankings. Google should be able to find important points easily. That will help your content to rank much better on search engines. Scannable content is informative, communicative, and compact.
The secret to creating scannable content is to identify the core points that are important and emphasizing them. This can be done by using headings, subheadings, paragraphs, short sentences, easy language, bold, italics, quotes where needed. etc.
A content writer should be well versed in creating scannable content for search engines because content primarily deals with the organic dissemination of information.
Since monetary incentives are not included your content ranking is solely based on the credibility of your writing. You have to create content that is more visible, scannable, and bite-sized.
This type of content not only ranks high in search engines but your readers are also delighted to read paragraphs that help to retain information better. Long paragraphs, long-winded complicated sentences can be detrimental to the value you aim to provide.
The target Audience should always get priority
You should always prioritize your target audience and focus groups while creating content. You have to understand that content writing does not always involve a strict serious tone of writing.
It can very well be conversational, relaxed, more like a group of people having a conversation on a subject of interest. With research on you can create more influence with writing that is entertaining conversational and colloquial.
Your focus group will always want to read something that interests and entertains them. Content writers should revise their content and see that it isn’t getting long and uninteresting.
Imagine talking to your readers. How would you like to inform them about a product? Give examples that will strike a chord with them. It will positively affect them. Great content writing requires understanding the pulse of your audience and formulating content around their interest.
Should not come across as a sales initiative
Content writing is different from copywriting. While copywriting intends to influence the consumer through a sales page format with the sole purpose of making sales, content writing provides information on the qualities of the product without making a sales pitch.
Content writing helps businesses to consolidate and strengthen their position in the online domain. In this ever-increasing scenario of businesses rife with competition, content writing can give a fresh perspective to your business value.
They work on unique angles of the distinctive features of your product and provide inspirational and actionable content for the audience. The result is that it accelerates the sales funnel by serving the customers with pertinent information. Content writing also helps consumers approach your company and put forth their difficulties with an expectation to get definite results.
Relevant CTAs in the content copy
A content copy has to incorporate CTAs which is a vital marketing technique. It is generally a bright button, a simple highlighted text hyperlinked that wants your readers to take the next desirable action for the business.
It might be anything from going to another part of the website, taking a demo class in case of an educational institution, filling in a contact form for conversations, or going through the company portfolio in a more detailed manner.
Content writing is a complex process when you have to be effective for your readers to take action on the CTAs on your content copy. Your call to action should be written in such a way that it provides absolute clarity to the advantages your readers will experience when they act upon it.
If done correctly it increases your conversion rate and provides immense value to your readers. If any of these two points are missing in your CTA, then simply it isn’t good enough.
Content writers should deliberate and brainstorm on a call to action strategy. It should be incorporated in your copy judiciously to achieve your objectives.
Examples of CTAs are discounts, free eBooks, free trials, upgrades, free demo links to a video or an in-depth understanding of a certain element, inquiry for email addresses, among many others
Link Building
Link building is an inbound marketing technique that helps in establishing you as an authority figure in your specific market. It involves other influential blogs, and websites linking your web page and/or website as a credible and important source for that specific information.
It gives you a much wider base of traffic since you get visitors from other websites as well, increases your visibility and views. Link building establishes you to be a credible source of information and improves your search engine rankings overall.
It also helps you build a relationship with complementary businesses and your customers. It also goes a long way in establishing your Goodwill in your market.
The only way to build a credible link is to create high-quality compelling content material. Share them on several platforms and get your content to be reviewed by people who already have a good reputation in the online domain.
That will not only establish good relationships but also identify your challenges and weaknesses which might escape your notice in the rigorous busy work in the marketing world.
Proofreading
Last but not least your content writing is only high- grade if you proofread, edit, revise, and review it at least three times before submitting it to go live.
You can always use the help of your friends, coworkers, and the establishment to go through your content. The reason why you need a fresh set of eyes is that we tend to get accustomed to typos and mistakes over time.
Another person might successfully find out these little silly mistakes and typos that might escape you. This is the most integral part of content writing which is why it has been kept in the last to emphasize the point. Do proofread your work religiously.
Conclusion
Content writing is an extremely fulfilling job. You create something out of nothing. It is creative and extremely rewarding if you can follow the principles of good content writing and work on them.
Your content should reflect your work ethics and should center around your business giving it the required boost in the form of organic distribution of knowledge regarding its features.
The above steps can help you overcome the difficulties that you can face when you enter the field of content writing. A lot of elements come together to create content that inspires and helps people.
Concentrate on creating quality content rather than placing importance on the number of articles you churn out. Quality triumphs over quantity all the time. It is that distinguishing element in your digital marketing strategy that will differentiate you from your competition and make you a remarkable brand in itself.
