33 content writing tips for content writers
No, I’m not writing these 33 great content writing tips for content writers, I’m simply linking to this excellent blog post that has collected opinions from highly experienced and talented content marketers and writers.
As you must have noticed – or you haven’t, because this is just a second such post – I have started publishing shorter blog posts, mostly linking to content writing and content marketing posts published on other blogs and websites, with a small take from yours truly.
Of course, this is not going to be my dominant blog posting pattern, I’m going to do it just when I’m too busy to create lengthy blog posts of my own. When I get lots of assignments, my blog lies in a state of neglect, sometimes even for a month, which is not good.
As I have written in this blog post titled Why it is important to publish fresh content regularly on your website, if I don’t publish content for a long time, other content publishers surpass me and my traffic from search engines decreases. Queries from my website suddenly begin to dwindle.
It doesn’t mean when I’m writing lots of blog posts – lengthy blog posts – I have less work, no, those are my more efficient days and somehow I’m able to manage to shuffle between writing for this blog and writing for my clients. Sometimes I lose this balance, and since I cannot afford to neglect client work, the blog ends up being neglected.
Coming back to the 33 content writing tips for content writers. If you don’t feel like visiting the above link, I’m presenting those steps as bulleted points below:
- Let your individuality drip through your writing. Just because you are writing for a business doesn’t mean you cannot write with a flourish. Use humor. Give your readers some rude shocks. Contradict. Be flamboyant. But remember one thing, your sole purpose is to promote the brand or the business for which you are writing.
- Write useful content. People will be reading your content to either get entertained or to derive some mileage out of it– for example, you are reading these content writing tips either to improve your content writing, or just to get an idea so that you are more aware when you are working with a content writer.
- As I mentioned in .1, be yourself as a writer, but always put the needs of your readers before your desire to be a writer. Write to help them.
- Know the pain points of your readers and address them as soon as possible.
- Be consistent. Although as a content writer this tip is good if you are writing for your own website or blog (like yours truly), what it means to say is, you need to publish your content regularly. Better, follow a pattern. If you have decided that you are going to publish one blog post every week, then make sure that you publish one blog post every week.
- Provide answers to people’s questions. Provide them as much information as you have or can gather. Write in such a manner that they can easily follow what you are saying because they might be accessing your answers from their mobile devices.
- Pay attention to your title. The title is the hook that is going to draw people to the body content. The title is also important to get clicks from search engines and other websites because it is your title that often appears as the main hyperlink. If your title is uninspiring, no matter how great the rest of the content is, you are not going to get much leverage.
- Write share-worthy content. What it means is, whenever you are writing, put all your energies into it and make it as good as possible.
- Challenge your readers. To keep them interested in your writing, you can always withhold some information. It isn’t always necessary to give them all the answers they seek. Maintain the curiosity level by holding back some information.
- Editing. Proofreading.
- Authentic.
- Relate to your readers’ needs and write accordingly.
- Be yourself.
- Do something original and then write. Don’t regurgitate (as I’m doing with this post). You will come up with original ideas if you stretch yourself and do something out-of-the-box, and then write about it.
- Write something you care about. People will be able to feel your enthusiasm through your words. If you’re not an enthusiastic about what you’re writing, your writing will seem boring and uninspiring to your readers.
- Write contemporary and topical content.
- Present accurate data, but with your own personal twist.
- Focus on originality. For that, for a change, instead of writing blog posts, you can write case studies because case studies are normally unique because they are written around a particular situation and its solution.
- Share your experiences. Share what you have learnt yourself.
- Make your writing valuable (I know, many of these tips are repetitive).
- Empathize with your readers (again, repetitive).
- Understand your audience and master your craft.
- Have fun. If you have fun writing, people will have fun reading – this is actually true.
- Use very focused, succinct and crisp sentences. Longer sentences confuse people.
- Tell unique stories. Tell stories that only you can tell.
- Write for one person. It is like, define a persona, and then write for that persona. This is some advice that I often give to my clients (at least those who care to talk to me). You don’t need to please everybody. You don’t need to target every keyword in your industry.
- Experience (yup, I know).
- What’s the point in what you are writing?
- Know your audience inside and out (again, again, again).
- What is the purpose of writing what you are writing?
- Define the personality of the person you are writing for and then solely pour your heart out to that person.
- If not one, then write for two people (yes, this is a tip too).
- Always keep a big list of ideas with you so that you never run out of them (a very good tip).
So, these are the tips compiled in the above-linked blog post. When I was writing the steps above, as you realized it with me, many tips are repetitive and this seems to be one of those posts when more than the content, what’s important is linking to influencers so that you can tell them that you have linked to them and then hopefully, they will link back to you or they will tweet about you.
But, anyway, it is always good to revisit good things about your craft because it keeps you focused.