StockSnap / Pixabay
Face it, no one wants to spend time on your website or social media channels if there’s nothing in it for them. You might think that you have the most well designed and useful site on the web, but if you’re not providing valuable content to your visitors, you’re going to have a difficult time keeping their attention.
One of the biggest challenges that content marketers face is figuring out how to write what their audience wants to hear while still getting the intended message across. These five tips are sure to inspire you to write great content that will have your audience coming back week after week!
Be Consistent
You’ve heard it once and you’ll hear it again – consistency is key! It is important to have a consistent tone of voice across all your content so that your visitors know what to expect when they’re reading your blog posts or scrolling through your Facebook page.
That doesn’t mean that one person must write every piece of content that your company puts out. Sit down with your marketing team to determine what voice you want for your company. Are you trying to come off as lighthearted and fun? Serious and knowledgeable? Or something in between? Make that decision and stick with it!
Reliability is also important for your posting schedule. If a blog or podcast that you LOVE suddenly doesn’t go up for a week or two, you’d probably be upset. You might lose trust that the author is going to continue to post and stop checking back after a while. Get into the habit of working ahead and scheduling out your content in advance so that you don’t run into a tight deadline without anything to publish.
Be Clear
Just because YOU know what you’re talking about, doesn’t mean that your audience does! Content heavy on buzzwords, jargon, and clunky sentence structure will have your readers running in the other direction. You should ideally try to aim for an 8th-grade reading level in your writing.
Hemingwayapp.com is a great tool that will help you find possible weaknesses in your writing. It analyzes your writing for sentences that are too complex or contain unnecessary words. It even suggests alternatives so that you can continue to improve your skills.
Be Empathetic
It’s simple. Your readers are the ones that are going to be the ones consuming your content; not you. Make sure that your writing is on topics that they want to hear about! If you’re an Apple fan, it’s going to be easier for you to write about the latest iPhone than an upcoming Samsung release. But if your audience consists of mostly Android users, no one is going to care. It’s always a great idea to continuously dig into your visitors interests to make sure that you’re catering to their needs.
If your current customers have asked you questions in the past, there’s a good chance that your potential customers are wondering about the exact same things. Take one of those questions and write a blog post on it! Internet forums, comment sections on blogs and social media, and even your own FAQ page are all great places to start looking for topics.
Be Diverse
Posting the same thing repeatedly is boring for your visitors. (And it’s boring to write!) You’re going to start losing readers if you aren’t giving your customers something fresh. There are so many different types of content to post. Don’t hesitate to experiment a little to see what works best for you!
If you’ve been writing a lot of blog posts lately, try taking that same information and transforming it into an infographic. If you post a lot of images on social media, create a video or slideshow to add some visual interest. It might take a little more work or creativity, but developing a good bank of diverse content will benefit you in the long run.
Be Forward Thinking
Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it creating one-and-done content! Each piece of content that you create should lead to the creation of multiple tweets, Facebook posts, videos, etc. Here’s the formula that we use here at Keystone Click to get more than 50 uses out of a single piece of content!
Not every single podcast you record or case study that you write will lead to that amount of content, but it’s a good goal to aim for. You can start building up your content banks by first identifying your evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that is always relevant and of interest to readers. Think more “how to” articles rather than “social media trends of 2017.” The latter will quickly become irrelevant, while a “how to” guide will provide valuable information for years to come.
Source: B2C
No comments:
Post a Comment