Content Writing Strategies and Best Practices
Content is KING. Regardless of what you think of content marketing, there’s no denying that there are some basic practices that guarantee a level of success. So, we will talk you through content writing, marketing strategies, techniques, and best practices.
Write about Topics – Something Specific
This is the most important part of content marketing for your website and worth addressing first and foremost. With the rise of the semantic search, just having keywords blasting throughout the website isn’t enough anymore. Its much more complicated now because you’ve got to be including those keywords with terms that are related and strong. This means that the content you produce can’t be keyword driven. The content must be a coherent and informative writing piece overall. Putting it in other words, the content must stand alone. Therefore, when writing content with a strong content marketing strategy, you must have a clear, coherent thesis sentence, and the marketing material itself must be structured from a readability perspective. Keep your actual readers interested all while maintaining good search engine optimization in mind, but without overdoing it in an obvious manner (keyword blasting).
Keep It Simple
The easier your writing piece is to read, the better it’ll do both in terms of engagement you receive from your audience as well as in search engine results. Keeping your work readable means sticking to direct language. Your work should be digestible and manageable to read. This means avoiding words with four or more syllables when shorter, simpler words will suffice. Don’t worry about sounding like a best selling author. Don’t try too hard, just write like you would talk.
Some simple tips to improve readability include:
- Stop using adverbs – Removing words that end in -ly may seem foolish; however, doing so gives your writing more impact and clarity.
- Be specific – English is a vast language, and find the right word to describe the exact sensation.
- Use commas sparingly – Default to shorter sentences. Commas are often over-used, and are best saved for just before a conjunction and in lists.
- Read your work out loud to yourself
Curate Content
There is so much content out there – every space seems to be inundated with it. If you read multiple news sources, pull out the best and/or most relevant pieces for your audience and share them. Moreover, if you choose to add commentary, that is all the better! You can create largely-original work by leveraging current content into new work. However, this is NOT a license to plagiarize. Google and other search engines see plagiarism VERY easily, and you WILL be penalized! Be careful and be original, but current.
Add the Interactive Edge
Utilize technology and be interactive. You could work in quizzes, polls, pictures, anything that keeps your readers interested. Interactive media means adding some kind of interactive component to your content. The key is to make the participation aspect as frictionless as possible – make sure the functionality and “the ask” is simple, and ensure that you’ve got a way to track performance.
The Most Important Rule: Be Relevant
Just as with local search engine optimization techniques, your listing has to be relevant to the type of business the user seeks…The same goes with your content marketing, it has to be intriguing and relevant at the same time. No amount of SEO crazy will make up for boring content. Even if it’s not as often as you would like, pushing out top quality content on a scheduled basis is a great strategy for long-term success. It’s actually the best strategy. So make that schedule, and do your best to stick to it. Even if you miss a few postings, something is better than nothing.
