Content is King. How many times have you heard that trope? It bears repeating because it’s a long-standing truth. If you’re not creating high-quality content that adds value to your readers, you’re failing in your marketing strategy. It’s just that simple. However, there’s an internet full of content out there begging for someone to check it out. It’s challenging to break through all the noise, especially if SEO is your goal. It’s tempting to cut corners and produce copy for search engines, not people. Don’t do it! Content written for search engines is B-O-R-I-N-G. Instead, focus on using these 3 techniques to draw the reader in and achieve your content marketing goals. 1 - Tell a StoryOne of the most effective ways to keep your audience engaged is by telling a story. Whether it's a personal anecdote or a fictional tale, storytelling is a powerful tool that captures your reader's attention and keeps them invested in your content. When you weave a narrative into your writing, it adds an emotional element that can connect with your reader and make your content more memorable. Emotions = connections. It’s just that simple. Not sure how to craft a compelling story? Let’s discuss strategy. Show, Don't TellYou've probably heard this one a million times but it bears repeating. Combining vivid descriptions and dynamic characters in situations that evoke strong emotions is the key to strong storytelling. Copywriters often fail at this task when they tick off the reasons why a product or service solves a problem instead of providing actions that serve the same purpose. For instance, instead of, "These headphones block 99% of external sounds," say something like, "Wrap yourself in a protective cocoon that shields you from the chaos outside." The cocoon imagery helps me picture the benefits more clearly. If your target audience can imagine themselves in that scenario, they are more likely to emotionally connect with your product or service. Remember, emotional connection leads to conversion. Create Conflict and TensionConflict and tension create urgency. No one is going to call the fire company unless the house is burning down around them. The same is true for copy that converts. Say you're writing a social media snippet for a housecleaning company that wants to attract new clients. A common pain point for consumers who need these services is a lack of time to do the job themselves. A lot of copy addresses this common problem by suggesting something like, "Are the dust bunnies taking over the house again? Give us a call to send them packing." While cute, it hardly creates the kind of conflict that might prompt the person reading it to immediately pick up the phone and call to schedule cleaning services. Instead, you could try something like this, which creates more urgency: "Does the sound of your doorbell strike terror into your very soul? Fewer things cause the old heart to thump harder than unexpected guests when your place is drowning in a sea of clutter and dust bunnies. Stop turning out the lights and pretending you're not home. Give us a call instead. Just remember to answer the door when we stop by to tidy up." This copy is relatable. I mean, who hasn't flipped off the lights and nose-dived out of sight to avoid inviting guests into your untidy home? If you're tired of ducking for cover every time the doorbell rings, then you're going to call this company sooner rather than later. Use VisualsA picture is worth a thousand words. Yep, another trope that's used to illustrate a point (pun intended). Images, infographics, and videos break up text-heavy pieces and keep your readers engaged. Sometimes they’re helpful for driving home complex ideas or adding an extra layer of appeal to your content. Don’t just toss any graphic into the mix. To get the best results:
2 - Keep it ConversationalMost people dislike content that sounds like a textbook (unless, of course, you're reading a textbook, then it's OK). Writing overly-analytical content can bore your audience to tears. The last thing you want is for someone to use your content to help them cure a bout with insomnia. Keep your writing conversational to improve engagement. Your readers want to feel like you’re talking to them, not at them. After all, if they wanted to read content that sounded robotic, they'd plug a prompt into ChatGPT and wait for it to spit out an answer. Some effective tips for creating conversation include:
3 - Experiment with FormatsDon't be afraid to experiment with different formats. After all, variety is the spice of life. Your readers are less likely to get bored if they experience your content in a variety of ways. Some types of content to consider include:
By mixing up your formats, you can keep your content fresh and exciting for your readers. Experimenting with formats can also help you determine what resonates best with your audience and adjust your content strategy accordingly. Bore-Proof Your Content with The Write ReflectionCreating engaging content isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s certainly not for people in a hurry. A strong content marketing strategy requires effort and creativity (and a lot of patience). Storytelling, creating conflict and urgency, and experimenting with content types bore-proofs your content and keeps readers coming back for more. If you’re struggling to provide content of value to your target audience, reach out to The Write Reflection today to schedule a no-obligation consultation. AuthorShari Berg has known she wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil in her hand. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and it’s her job to discover it. Shari owns The Write Reflection, a Pittsburgh-based copywriting and content writing company that empowers small business owners to wield the power of words.
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A brand without a blog is like an Oreo cookie without its creamy center. I know what you must be thinking. What about social media? Podcasts? Email newsletters? All these communication tools have their place in your marketing plan. Still, none have the power to build your business the way a well-written blog can. Blogging remains one of the most effective ways to boost brand awareness and reach target audiences. A business blog gets twice as much traffic from content than email campaigns. Authoring content relevant to consumer searches guides consumers to your products and services while establishing your brand as an authority. Do you need more convincing that a brand blog is the way to go in 2022? Here are some reasons to compel your brand to give blogging a go. Blogs help search engines find your brandSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is a tricky skill. Just when you think you have mastered it, search engines like Google change their algorithms. Using SEO when you blog is worth the effort. Professional bloggers and SEO copywriters rely on keyword research to discover which keywords will help your content rank higher organically. For instance, let’s say you want to blog about choosing an air purification system to reduce the spread of germs in residential settings. Using a keyword tool identifies words relating to the topic based on search engine activity. Plugging in the phrase “air purification system germs” and optimizing for Google produces a list of potential keywords to include in your content. Some of the suggestions:
In addition to SEO, you also can find out what searchers are looking for by doing a search yourself. Go to your search engine of choice and enter “air purification system germs” again. The results will produce a list called “Common Searches” that reveal the key phrases others are using to find information related to this topic. Include those in your blog as subheadings to maximize your searchability factor. This is super easy to do in a blog. Blogs target your audience with relevant contentHard as it is to imagine, businesses did not always have the advantage of touting their wares online to a global audience. Once upon a time, they had to print ads, buy mailing lists, and send those mailers out to potential customers in their service area to entice them. Direct mail campaigns have not completely disappeared. They can be quite effective under the right circumstances. However, they can eat into your advertising budget. The average cost to produce and send a direct mail advertisement is between 30 cents and $10 per mailer. Cost varies and depends on whether you use professional copywriters and designers to produce the advertisement and a printing/publishing company to mail them. Blogging eliminates much of the cost associated with targeted mailing campaigns. Hiring a professional writer to plan and produce the content can cost between $50 and $2,000 depending on the blogger’s experience level and length of content produced. While you certainly can find writers who will crank out a blog post for $30, you likely will not get the kind of quality that tickles the fancy of Google and other search engines. Copywriters that charge low rates tend to produce “copy mill” content that is recycled from other information they find online. Search engines look for relevant content that adds value. Producing copy that helps your target audience solve a problem attracts both prospective customers and search engines. “How to” blogs featuring your products or services can attract an audience and eventually convert them into valuable customers or business partners. Blogs establish brand authorityBuilding your brand requires earning the trust of your customers. This is known as brand authority. An effective method for gaining customer confidence is to provide relevant content that solves problems or answers questions. Establishing brand authority is easy with a well-crafted blog. Choose topics to which your target audience can relate. Then, commit to producing the kind of quality content that will have them returning to your site for more tips and tools. Brands that provide accurate and compelling content build lasting relationships with their target audience that convert to eventual sales. Once consumers realize your blog is a source of valuable and trustworthy information, you can build rapport. Helping customers solve a problem before do business with your brand convinces them to return when they need your products or services. After repeated exposure to your blog, they will view you as an authority. They enter the sales funnel with pre-existing knowledge of what you bring to the table, making it easier to convert them. Blogs help with brand storytellingConsumers today want more than impersonal sales transactions with a brand. They want to connect with your products or services and the people behind them. Blogging is an effective way to tell your brand story and give target audiences a reason to return to your business. You can feature news about team members doing incredible things in their communities or announcements about the launch of helpful new products or services. Best of all, since it is your blog, you can control what information is shared and verify its accuracy before publication. Blogging allows businesses to show their human side. Customers never want to feel like they are nothing more than dollar signs. Humanizing your brand can help flip the narrative. There is no limit to what kind of storytelling you can do on a brand blog. Blogs drive long-term resultsBlogs are the gift that keeps on giving. Sure, you might spend $1,000 on a professionally crafted piece of content, but it has the potential to drive long-term results. Once you hit that post button, blogs can continue to drive traffic to your site and convert customers eager to do business with you. Blogs that perform well in search engines offer the best return on your investment. Once your blog begins ranking, it remains relevant in most search engines for months or years, depending on the topic and how much competition there is for the SEO keywords. Well-written blogs continue to work hard for your business. Copywriting professionals call them compounding posts because they contain evergreen content that continues producing leads. Hiring a pro to help with your brand blogBefore you rush off to your computer and start writing your first blog, you may want to consider bringing in a pro to assist. Just because anyone can write does not mean they should write. Content production is not as easy as it sounds. First, you must develop a content strategy that aligns your mission, vision, and values with any copy produced and published. Then, you must identify your target audience. Your brand cannot provide value without fully understanding who it is serving. Other aspects go into content planning, including competitive analysis and researching information from credible sources. A professional blog writer can assist with these steps required to establish your brand authority through blogging. Reach out to the brand blogging experts at The Write Reflection™ to learn how we can leverage the power of blogging for your brand. First-time customers receive a 25 percent discount on their first blog order. AuthorShari Berg has known she wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil in her hand. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and it’s her job to discover it. Shari owns The Write Reflection, a Pittsburgh-based copywriting and content writing company that empowers small business owners to wield the power of words. As a professional copywriter, one of the questions I get frequently from prospective clients is, “How long will it take you to write a blog post?” That query usually is followed up by, “How much will it cost to write a blog post?” Reputable copywriters have a process and always are happy to explain it to their clients. Where we tend to get into a conundrum is when clients come into the process with a preconceived notion of how long a project should take and what is involved in producing the work. One of my favorite assumptions as of late is the idea that any copywriter worth their salt can write the perfect blog post in an hour. Apparently, there is a so-called expert out there claiming this, complete with instructional videos on how to create the perfect 1,500-word blog post in one hour. That sure does sound appealing. I can understand why clients would be enticed by such a claim. The problem is it is not realistic. Can you write a blog post in an hour? Sure. Is it going to be top quality? Probably not. Let’s break down the rationale behind this “perfect blog post in an hour” promise and explore why it is not the best method for producing the kind of content search engines will adore. Claim #1: Hit lists Keeping a “hit list” of articles reduces writing time. The theory is that if you have a go-to list of topics that already includes relevant keywords and some subheadings for inclusion, it will save you time later. This is not an entirely bad idea. Many copywriters who have clients in specific niches find creating such a list helpful. The downside to this is if you have several clients within the same niche, you risk repeating copy for clients. Then you get into spun content territory, which never ranks well on search engines. What is spun content? It is taking the exact same copy and reworking it just enough that it appears slightly different to search engines. It contains all the same keywords and basic ideas, just rearranged a bit. Sometimes search engines can be slow to catch on to spun content, but Google’s bots are getting better at detecting it. Google dislikes this practice, and if it catches a website egregiously using spun content, it will penalize it by ranking it poorly. Claim #2: The guy next door Some of these self-proclaimed writing experts suggest you can cut your research time in half by taking the “guy next door” approach in your response. Rather than do proper research, the notion is to admit you are not an expert in the subject and that you had to do some quick Googling yourself to get the answers. Then just state the information without citing your sources. While the “I’m not an expert, I just play one on TV” approach might work sometimes, it is not appropriate for every blog post. Some clients may be experts in their fields and require content that establishes them as an authority. In fact, 95 percent of the content I write for clients falls into this category. Conducting proper research and citing sources takes time (most definitely more than an hour). Claim #3: Earning rich snippets Anyone can earn a rich snippet if you just follow this guide to writing the perfect blog in an hour. At least, that is the claim from some self-appointed writing gurus. Before we explain why it is harder than it looks, you are probably wondering what the heck a rich snippet is and why you need to earn one. Amiright? A normal snippet displays the page title, the URL where it is located, and a short description of what the page is about. A rich snippet includes extra information above and beyond the norm. It can include photos and reviews or ratings from customers if it is a product or business page. Rich snippets are important because they tend to produce a higher click-through rate on websites. Consumers love search results that give them a lot of information upfront. Here is an example of what a rich snippet looks like: The claim says to earn the coveted rich snippet, you should write your opening sentence and paragraph before you do anything else. You must write it in a question-answer format known as a response-style blog. A response-style blog poses a question (ideally in the headline or opening sentence) and then answers it within the first paragraph of the blog post. To help boost your chances of earning a rich snippet, these experts suggest bolding the answer part of your response. The thinking is bolding text will help Google’s bots know you mean business and to reward you for your efforts. While bolding text is an old SEO copywriting trick to attract Google’s attention, it is not a surefire technique. Why can it go wrong? Well, we can think of a few reasons. The most obvious is that your content is not original. We are going to circle back to that whole idea of spun content again. If you did the “guy next door” approach to your research, chances are, there is not much new or unique about your bolded content. So, even if the bolded text initially attracts Google’s web crawlers, they still may refuse your content a rich snippet if it is just like 20 other posts on the same topic. Claim #4: Subheads can hurt your ranking Long-form content ranks better with search engines. Why? Thorough content has a greater chance of earning quality backlinks that can boost your rating with search engines. One of the final aspects of these so-called perfect blogs in an hour is a warning that Google can sometimes treat long-form content like puny, thin content. Why? Their rationale is the subheadings lack substance and are irrelevant to the original topic. On this, we can agree – to a point. Copywriters who shove subheadings into a blog just to reach word count are doing their clients a disservice. If the content does not add value, Google’s web crawlers will completely discount it. The best way to keep long-form content relevant and exciting to Google and other search engines is to turn long-tail SEO keywords into subheadings. It is a sneaky way to ensure your extra words stay on target while giving them some extra oomph. Quality trumps quantity every time Cranking out the perfect 1,500-word blog post in an hour is simply unrealistic. The methods that some of these writing gurus tout will not earn your blogs the ratings they promise. Like any other “get rich quick” scheme, it really is too good to be true. It will just end up causing you frustration when these methods do not produce the promised results. Quality trumps quantity every time. Any good copywriter understands this and will never agree to methods that do not promote thorough research that produces engaging and relevant content. Ready to learn more about the right way to produce unique content that adds value to your brand? Contact us today to schedule a no-obligation consultation. AuthorShari Berg has known she wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil in her hand. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and it’s her job to discover it. Shari owns The Write Reflection, a Pittsburgh-based copywriting and content writing company that empowers small business owners to wield the power of words. |
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