When done well, content marketing can be unbelievably successful. With the right promotion, great content can see your followers and traffic grow quickly, thus helping to develop your business or just drive more traffic to your website or blog. But, with about 1 billion blogs and websites online today, it’s never going to be as simple as writing content, promoting it and watching the traffic increase. Your content needs to be great.
The sad truth is that most of these blogs aren’t getting read. OR their monthly views are a lot less than they’d like. That’s often in large part down to the quality of the content they are putting out there. Here are six tips to help you write content that people will actually want to read.
Be Informative
People want to learn. Some of the top google searches are questions. So, make sure all of your content is informative in some way. You don’t need to be a brain box, but there does need to be something useful in there. If you are writing about workplace grievance, don’t just guess, head to www.elliswhittam.com to do some research, and add the link to offer more advice.
Be Entertaining
Don’t be boring. It can be easy to write a post full of great advice and information but still find that no-one stays for more than a skim because it’s boring. How you choose to entertain depends on your writing style and personal taste.
Break it Up
One way to ensure your content isn’t dull is breaking it up. If someone clicks on to your post and sees a huge block of text, they’re not going to read it. Break it up with pictures, subtitles, graphs and infographics. Make your information less intimidating.
Say Something New
With so many blogs out there, it can be hard to say something new. Most things have been said time and time again. But, you can still add your spin with your own honest opinion and advice. Think of a food blogger, writing a chocolate cake recipe. There are millions out there, but there’s can still be different.
Find Your Voice
One of the best ways to make your content stand out and keep your readers coming back is by finding your voice. There are millions of chocolate cake recipes out there, but only one written by our food blogger, in their voice. It’s easy to be too formal or try to write like others, and finding your voice can take practice.
Be Relevant
Think about what you are writing now. Going back to our food blogger, they don’t want to be writing Christmas recipes in January. Instead, they should focus on healthy meals and Valentines treats. Plan your content around what’s happening in the world, what time of year it is and what’s going on in your marketplace.
One issue with this can be scheduling. Scheduling posts is great; it can save you a lot of time and help you to organize your content. But, you need to be flexible with it. If you want to write about a current news issue, interrupt your schedule to get it out there asap, while it’s still relevant.
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