Tips For Content Writing
Tips For Content Writing
Looking for tips for writing creative content?
No matter what type of campaign you are creating, you need content to be successful.
The truth is that digital marketers depend on content, which means that we must produce valuable blog posts, videos, landing pages, and more, all of them well written and all of them with real value.
95% of digital marketers do not consider themselves writers.
The problem is that 95% of digital marketers don’t consider themselves writers. They start to sweat just thinking about writing content.
If you are one of those, I have a solution.
I’m going to give you my system for writing content that will provide you with accurate results.
Of course, they are not just content writing tips. The tips won’t help you put words on the page. What I’m going to give you is better: the simple 7-step content writing process that I use for every piece of content I write.
I get it, you’ve probably read a hundred posts offering tips for content writing that didn’t help at all, and a 7-step writing process may sound like a tall tale, but I invite you to keep reading.
There are only three stages of writing:
- Pre-writing, where you collect your ideas.
- Write where you put your thoughts into words.
- Post-writing, where you edit and optimize your content.
The seven steps that I will give you below are the tasks that fit into these three stages. And all successful writers use them (consciously or unconsciously).
These steps get easier the more you practice. The first few times you use this content writing system, you may feel like following seven different stages. But it won’t take long for them to become second nature. When this happens, you will not see them as separate steps but will blend seamlessly until these steps become a simple writing process.
The pre-writing stage
1 KNOW YOUR GOAL
“I have to publish three articles a week” is not the best reason to write a blog post. Any content you create should help you achieve a specific business goal, such as traffic, leads, or sales.
Because it is essential?
Because you will make a million creative decisions when creating your content, for example:
- Tone
- Writing style
- Text depth
- Whether it provides solutions or educates your readers on a problem.
If you know the objective of your project, you will make decisions that will help you achieve the final result you are looking for.
So start with your goal. What do you want this content to do for you?
2.CHOOSE YOUR THEME
Your theme is the general theme of your content. A good topic will help you achieve your goal, but it also has to be something your audience is interested in.
To find the best ideas, look in these three places:
Questions from your customers: If a customer asks you a question, you can bet others have the same question. Your answer can be a post on your blog.
Use this approach to create content at every stage. Short, simple questions are good for creating blog posts or FAQs. More complicated questions are suitable for longer pieces of content such as reports, advanced guides, and e-books.
Topic Trending: Sometimes, a discussion goes viral – everyone in your industry is talking about an idea. When that happens, you know that people are looking for more information. It might make sense to join in and create an article, video, or social media post with your perspective on the topic.
Trending content can be valuable in the short term, but it typically has a short shelf life. In most cases, long-form range won’t be built around trends. But if you always address trending topics on your blog, and if your ideas make people think, this can be a great way to drive traffic.
Keyword Research is an intelligent approach to creating content that helps rank search engines and attracts new organic traffic.
For this, you should search for long-tail keywords with decent search volume and a relatively low keyword difficulty score. In other words, you should target the keywords that people who are targeting few brands are looking for.
3.RESEARCH
Research helps you define your idea and find evidence to support the claims you make in your content.
At this point, you have already found the topic you are going to write about. Now you need to limit the scope:
- What would you like people to remember after reading your content?
- What are the main points?
- What is your angle on the subject?
- What are you saying that is new and unique?
In principle, you want to take a position on the issue; are you for or against the problem? Do you have a solution? But before finalizing your idea, you have to see what other brands say.
To find out, do a Google search on the idea you are considering. Read the first 5 – 10 articles to see what other blogs are saying.
Keep in mind that you are not researching to find information that you can copy into your content. Research is about finding the information gaps in other content so that yours will be more practical and complete than any other.
It’s also about finding evidence to support everything you’re going to say in your content, like stories, studies, quotes, and statistics. As you do your initial research, you will find some of these pieces of evidence. Make a note of them so that they are easy to find when you start writing.
4.CREATE YOUR FRAME
By now, you know the type of content you will write, the topic, and the information you want to include. So it’s time to organize your ideas into a rough outline.
If this sounds scary, don’t worry, you don’t need a formal outline, and there is no right or wrong way to organize your content. You need to structure your ideas so that your presentation is logical and easy to stay on topic.
I usually do this by writing down my main idea and then jotting down my subtitles. It can be done in a spreadsheet or a word document, although you can also do it on paper if it is more comfortable.
The writing stage
1.WRITE YOUR CONTENT
Believe it or not, this is the easy part.
You’ve already done the hard work of planning your content. All you have to do now is develop your ideas.
Don’t worry about starting with the title and writing everything at once. You can start writing one section, jump to another, and write the messy article.
A first draft is never your best work.
I generally write the body in order, starting with the first subtitle. As I write, if I find that my outline is not working, I move things around, remove some subtitles, or change them.
Then once I write the body, I write the conclusion and then the introduction, so I know my final point before writing my introduction.
Another thing to keep in mind is:
Your first draft can be (and usually is) wrong. Don’t try to write excellent; just put your ideas into words.
You will usually see me whispering to myself when I am writing. That’s because I’m dictating to myself, writing the words that I would tell you if we were chatting together over coffee.
2.REWRITE AND EDIT YOUR CONTENT
You have written your content; your ideas are concrete. Brilliant!
But you’re not done yet.
A first draft is never your best work. So read it over to make sure you said what you wanted to say. Fix any bugs. Then put it aside while you do other things, and the next day, reread your content with new eyes. You will be able to read it as your readers will, which means it will be easier for you to see any faulty logic, poor organization, or just plain dull reading.
In this stage, you will:
- Make sure your ideas are presented logically and clearly.
- Fix grammar and spelling mistakes.
- Smooth your writing so that you take your readers from the first word to the last.
Don’t be afraid to rewrite the sections thoroughly. Eliminate what doesn’t work. Add transitions and explanations. Move things around. It is during the rewriting stage that you become a “good” writer.
But be careful not to get stuck. There is no such thing as perfect writing, and I’ve never seen ideal content.
So relax. Enjoy the process. Polish your content and make it the best it can be in the time you have. Then call it done.
The post-writing stage
1.ADD MULTIMEDIA
At this point, your content is ready to go. It’s time to think about the graphics, gifs, and videos that you could use to add another layer of value.
Is there a section that is difficult to understand in words alone? Find a screenshot or video that explains it better. Is there a meme that could make your readers laugh? Include it.
2.OPTIMIZE
Everything is done, and in a perfect world, you would have finished. However, you must keep an eye on your content to help you achieve your goals.
Therefore, you should do a final review to ensure that your content is optimized for reading, SEO, and your business objective.
To optimize reading, you did it during the rewriting step and when adding photos or videos. To optimize SEO… you need to add internal links (backlinks to other pieces of your blog content) and optimize your primary keyword. For that:
- Make sure you are using the keyword naturally throughout the work.
- Put it in your headline
- Add it to your introduction
- Use it in the alt tag in your images
- Use it in your meta-title and meta-description
You don’t have to use all of these options and avoid keyword stuffing (using the keyword more often than you would in a natural conversation). But include your keyword and its variations in at least 3 of these places.
To optimize toward your business goal, make sure your content seamlessly fits into the customer value journey. It should flow logically from the previous stage and lead smoothly to the next.
Put this content writing system to work for you
This process can be time-consuming, but you will save hours writing content once comfortable with it.
Best of all, since you’re following the natural stages of content creation, you can plan your content. Try working on the pre-writing stage, then saving the post-writing and writing steps for later. Or assign responsibility for the pre-writing, writing, and post-writing settings to different team members.
This system is so flexible that you can quickly adapt it to your unique writing process.
As I told you initially, I am not giving the usual tips for content writing, but I am giving you something much better: a simple process to create all the high-quality content you need.
