You’ve heard you can start improving your business cost-free by feeding your website with content marketing. You might have a blog, or you just have an online store for consumer goods, content writing is an opportunity to improve your relationship with your customers or your prospects. This is an important approach in whether big or small businesses because you show your customers that you care about their needs and you’re willing to help free of charge!
In this article, we will cover what content marketing is, how can content marketing carry your business to the next level of success and how to write content for your website in 7 steps. It’s going to be fun!
How to Write Content for Your Blog?
1. Create Pillar Pages
2. Find a Topic to Write
3. Define the structure of your post
4. Use sub-headers
5. Use multimedia content
6. Make sure of effective writing
7. Check spelling and punctuation
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is being a credible, authoritative resource on topics that matter to potential customers by creating content like educational articles, e-books, videos, entertainment, and webinars that answer specific questions people have.
It’s the best way to get your business discovered by the right audience and earn their loyalty and trust. In return, it enables your brand to strengthen its customer relationships, grow an active and engaged subscriber base, and even increase its profits.
This’s how HubSpot’s started building its audience. HubSpot is a developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. I remember, when I came across one of their articles about marketing and gave my e-mail information in return to that helpful content. Well, as it’s purposed, they contacted me to have a meeting for sales purpose of their services. In the end, they offered me their marketing software for 1 month free.
I remember that time (about 2014) they didn’t have so much of an experience with copywriting. Their blog page looked like chaos like random people post some articles about unrelated topics every minute and you feel like just lost. Too much information, too much content bombardment and those are unrelated to each other! I didn’t want to log in once again because it felt so overwhelming.
So, this is what you shouldn’t do as an example.
How to Write Content for Your Blog?
1. Create Pillar Pages
The most important thing in content marketing is to identify the topic you want to be known for. Then you generate your strategy around it. Do you want to be known for “online marketing”? Then first you should create a main page for a major topic.
We call this Pillar Page. Pillar Pages are the landing pages of your main topics that answer every kind of questions your reader might have in mind. Pillar pages are usually very long and informative. So make sure you cut your writing from time to time with a related 5 mins video to watch or with an interactive infographic.
Then write Cluster Pages which contain related topics to your major page and connects to your major page in the end. In this case, you can write about “google ads” or “online content marketing”. Help your audience understand how does online marketing work “free of charge”. Show them which online platforms they can use to create a professional-looking social post “free of charge”.
If you have more than one major topic, it’s going to be the same. You create multiple pillar pages and connect related cluster pages to them. For example for the pillar page of Social Media, cluster pages could be like “Benefits of Social Media for Small Businesses” or “How to Run a Successful YouTube Channel”. If you have another pillar topic like Digital Advertising, your cluster pages could be like “Basics of Google Advertising” or “How to Create Eye-Catching Advertisement Visuals”.
So, whatever your main topic is, go around that boundaries.
2. Find a Topic to Write
Well, when you are in your shoes, it can be hard to figure out, what your audience is looking for. As you know all the dynamics of your sector, sometimes it’s hard to think simple.
So, my first advice for this would be to gather your interns around and make them read an article about your pillar page. Make sure to comfort them about the things they don’t know. So that you will see they ask the terms inside. For example, if my intern was reading this article, he/she could ask “what is a pillar page?” then answer that question. Because your audience, your potential buyer doesn’t also know what that means. In this case, my article would be “What is a Pillar Page and Why it Matters for Your SEO”. Then he/she might ask “what does SEO stand for?”. It goes on like this…
My second advice is if you’re to find ideas on your own, reading a lot. Check what are your competitors doing, check what is trending on social media, check Quora… Here is a pro tip: Type your ideas on Google, and there you’ll have autofill by Google. This shows you what has been searched about this topic on Google before.
Also, 2-3 results after you see Google’s “People also ask” search box which also shows you related searches made in the past.
You can also go the bottom of the search page and there you see related search results to give you more idea about the topic.
3. Define the structure of your post
Decide what type of post you are writing. Is it a How to blog post? Or is it a What is a blog post? Here I leave some more detailed blog post types and templates for your own.
After deciding what type of post will yours be, then create your title. An ideal title will be 50-60 characters and should include your keyword. Let’s give an example with a “How To” post. Let’s say your keyword is “Social Media” and to be specific “Social Media Strategy Results”. So simply add “How to” and there you have it; “How to Get Results for Businesses with Social Media Strategy”. It's that simple.
4. Use sub-headers
Use sub-headers, bullets or numbered lists in your writing. This user-friendly approach makes the content more readable and that's what search engines like Google are picking upon. Lists also help to differentiate the text from the others.
As an opportunity to link to other relevant pages on your site, you can use your lists. Your readers will appreciate this and you will probably be rewarded by search engines.
5. Use multimedia content
The ideal blog post length is around 1600-2000 words. Instead of repeating your keyword multiple times, consider writing synonyms. It’s always good to interrupt long writing with expressive visuals. Images will also help your SEO if you use alt-text on them. If you don’t know what that means, check our Hot to Use SEO in Your Small Business to Rank Higher post.
I’d also suggest using video content from trusted sources. Videos are a great way to interrupt the reader’s focus. It’ll help to refresh and gain concentration again.
Embedding social media posts from public figures will also nail your blog post.
6. Make sure of effective writing
When writing an article it’s important and tough to keep your audience reading. Therefore I have some little tips on that. So instead of keeping your writing academic as “That results have been…” use contractions. Such as; it’s, don’t, that’s…
Write simply. There’s no need to use high language for an article that you’re trying to help. You don’t want your audience to leave your page every time you use an uncommon word. Do you?
Be specific and clear on what you’re talking about. Don’t go on a topic and another.
Avoid long and complicated sentences, long paragraphs. When you read a long paragraph intentionally, you can turn it into 3 paragraphs by breaking it.
Don’t use fluffy words like “honestly, actually, incredibly”.
Use active voice and decide what tone you want to keep and execute that in every new post.
Avoid using jargon. No matter what industry you’re in, don’t freak your audience out with jargons in your writing. Let them read in peace.
7. Check spelling and punctuation
This is kind of a red spot. Sometimes one single spelling error can cause you to lose credibility so fast. If you don't know how to properly spell it, why should anyone trust a word that you say?
In this case, check your spelling and punctuation best with Grammarly. However, that’s not enough. Ask someone else in your team to read it naturally and ask if there is anything can be misunderstood. Ask someone else to criticize openly so that your article gets better.
There you have a proper blog post already.
Make sure to write and conclusion for your copywriting. Write a conclusion that will move your readers to action. Clarify your whole point about the article and add a call-to-action.
Content marketing is such a journey to engage with your audience by educating them. Writing content helps to gain credibility, build trust and the most importantly gets you ranked on Google.
Let’s meet to build your content strategy.
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