Author Archives: Amrit Hallan

About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

Content marketing doesn’t merely mean publishing more and more content

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Before Panda and Penguin updates people were creating massive amounts of content to improve their search engine rankings. The 2012 updates from Google changed the game. Rankings disappeared overnight and businesses based on merely creating content for the purpose of getting higher search engine rankings were basically ruined.

It was also a year when content marketing evolved into a specialized profession. A glimpse of this E-Consultancy survey shows that over 90% companies recognize the overwhelming importance of content marketing. Coca-Cola, the biggest consumer brand in the world, has drawn out a 20-year content marketing strategy that is being considered as one of the most comprehensive paradigm shifts in the way brands are going to promote their products and services.

But no matter how mainstream it becomes, people are still confused about how to implement an effective content marketing strategy. Many still confuse it with creating and publishing lots of content. Of course you need content, but there is more to that.

In order to implement a successful content marketing strategy, you need to understand why people would look for your content. Why they would like to read or consume what you have published, but be it video, text or images? “Why” is very important. If you understand this “why”, 90% of your problem is solved.

If you are in the entertainment industry, then people access your content to get entertained. They may also access your content to know more about the people who entertain them (for instance, celebrities and players). If you are a news agency then people will access different categories of your content according to their interests such as politics, sports, industry, technology or science. If you are selling smart phones people want to know their various features and advantages over other smart phones.

Different people have different content needs and as a content marketer it’s your job to figure out what they’re looking for. Once you have sorted that out, you need to find out what format your target audience prefers, and tools and services your target audience uses in order to find the content it is looking for.

So content marketing doesn’t just involve publishing lots of content to improve your search engine rankings. It’s primary objectives are

Finding out what content your audience is looking for
Creating content that your audience is looking for
Publishing relevant and topical content as the need arises
Making that content available in a format your audience prefers
Making that content scalable so that it is accessible across multiple devices and platforms
Optimizing that content so that it is easier to find it on search engines
Making it easier and attractive to share that content on social media and social networking websites
Streamlining existing content and producing new content according to rapidly changing preferences of your audience

These may seem like lots of points, but whether you are a big business or small enterprise, in one way or another you can implement these points to drastically cut down your costs on conventional advertising.

What sort of content gets you good Google rankings?

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You create content for your users and visitors, and not for search engines, and this is a good strategy. But it does you no harm, if Google likes your content too. This blog post on Copyblogger talks in detail how Google these days gives more importance to the quality of content rather than its quantity or the number of websites and blogs linking to it.

Despite scores of updates by the end of the day Google wants to present high-quality content to its users. What makes your content high-quality? If you are able to create and publish such content it not only pleases your visitors it also pleases search engines like Google.

The primary attributes of high-quality content are:

It is informative
It is topical
It is useful
It is relevant
It is well-written and well-formatted
It is engaging

How do you achieve these attributes? To be frank I never like to put content writing within various boxes, but according to tried and tested observations, the following types of content can get you good Google rankings aside from pleasing your audience.

Compilation of useful resources

There is a ton of useful information on the Internet but people either don’t have enough time to scour the web or don’t have the right tool to reach the right content. Why don’t you provide quality resources within one single blog post or article? Something like “50 Killer Tips On Content Writing From Best Writers On the Web”, or “15 SEO Resources You Cannot Live without”. These types of articles and blog posts rank well on Google because they pack lots of information at a single place and this information can actually help its users.

A list of things

The year 2012 was often called the year of lists in the circle of content writers because practically everybody was creating them and almost every list was going viral on social networking websites. This also fetched them higher search engine rankings. Lists still do great because, again, they provide lots of useful information at a single place. An example of a useful list would be “25 Ways to Lose Weight Without Eating Less”.

Product or service reviews

Well-balanced useful reviews help your reader decide what they should purchase and how they should spend their money. Therefore, this sort of content is highly useful and relevant. Often it is also vertically focused and hence easier for Google to rank.

Interviews with industry leaders

Interviewing industry leaders not only provides highly valuable insight to your readers, it also increases your search engine rankings naturally. Most of the industry leaders these days publish their own blogs. They already enjoy high rankings on Google. They have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook. When you publish an interview of one of them he or she will surely mention it on Twitter and Facebook and if you’re very lucky he or she might also create a small blog post linking back to your interview. This will give you an immediate boost over Google.

Content that goes viral on social media and social networking websites

All types of content, including the ones mentioned above, can go viral on social media and social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, and there is no set formula. Again, the key is, creating highly useful content that people would like to share. You can also create attractively presented infographics.

News

Industry-specific news is quickly picked up by Google because millions of people are constantly looking for such information.

This is just a broad representation of the sort of content you can create for your website or blog in order to improve your Google rankings that are immune to the various algorithmic updates the search engine keeps on introducing every few months.

Publishing content for mobile devices

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So much has been written about the importance of creating websites that scale seamlessly according to the device they are being accessed through that it has almost become a cliché. But what about content? Do people prefer different content when they are accessing your website via mobile devices such as smart phones and 7 inch tablets?

There is a client of mine for whom I write a weekly newsletter. Whenever he sends me the brief he never forgets to mention that I should keep in mind that most of his recipients will be reading the newsletter via their blackberries (what he means is, via their phones, which means, very small screens). He prefers content that doesn’t go beyond 3 paragraphs and every paragraph shouldn’t be more than 2 sentences.

This makes sense. Nobody would like to scroll through an umpteen number of lines on a tiny screen. Besides, people never specifically sit down to check their e-mails on their mobile devices. Most probably they are doing something else and hence, distracted, while they are accessing information on their mobile devices.

While formatting/creating content for mobile devices, you need to truncate it to the minimum. Stick to the most essential aspect of your content and remove things you can do away with. Create smaller sentences and if possible, present your information in points rather than long sentences.

Prioritization is very important. Remember that you have very little time to grab the attention of your visitors and during that time you have to convey the most important message to make an impact.

When people access your website from their smart phones and smaller tablets they’re looking for the most relevant information. Don’t make them jump from page to page in order to make a point. Present your idea within a couple of paragraphs, and as mentioned above, normally have one or at the most two sentences per paragraph. Use small words that are easy to understand and while formatting your content, make sure that there is lots of white space around words and lines.

Unless you have visuals that are indispensable, don’t use images and graphics because this unnecessarily increases the load time and causes distraction. Of course if it is an e-commerce website and you enable people to shop from their mobile devices you will have to display the images of the items people want to purchase, but if you’re presenting just information, stick to text.

What’s better, longer or shorter blog posts?

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There was a brief exchange somewhere between two prominent bloggers whether it’s better to publish longer blog posts (1000-2000 words) or shorter (300-500 words). What do I advise to my clients?

Once again, what I normally do, I say it depends on the topic, or the need of the hour. I favor both long and short blog posts.

In fact length doesn’t really matter, as long as you know what you are writing, and how much detail is apt for your audience. What’s important is regularity and relevance.

Case for longer blog posts

Longer blog posts are good if you are publishing an analytical piece that has lots of information, lots of sections and subsections. It can be a detailed report on something. It can be some account of an event that happened at your workplace, or at a conference. It can be a detailed research. Such posts can be highly useful and they have a greater chance of going viral. Since they pack lots of highly useful information they also enjoy better search engine rankings.

Case for shorter blog posts

Shorter blog posts are easier to write and publish. You don’t have to make lots of effort. You can publish shorter blog posts with greater frequency. Besides, quickly publishing a couple of paragraphs is better than having no content simply because you don’t have enough time to create longer, more comprehensive blog posts.

Eventually, what matters is having lots of relevant content on a regular basis. Keep in mind that the fundamental purpose of creating content on your website or blog is keeping your visitors informed as much as possible.

Should you outsource your content writing or do it in-house?

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The answer varies from where you look at it. As a content writer I would suggest you to outsource your content writing work as much as possible, and even time management gurus like Tim Ferris suggest that outsourcing is the key to maximizing your productivity.

On the other hand there are many people who think that efficiency can only be achieved if you have in-house content writers because then they get to understand your business from within and they can relate to you more because they are exclusively writing for you.

Both points are right. Just because I provide professional content writing services I’m not going to insist that you should always outsource your content needs. Every business has its unique needs and restraints and one must act accordingly. There is never a fit-all solution.

But one thing cannot be denied: content marketing is unavoidable. Big businesses have already invested millions of dollars in their content marketing strategies, and even smaller businesses are realizing it’s massive potential. Once you know how important content marketing is for your business, it’s up to you whether you want to outsource your content writing or you want to do it in-house. Being a content writer I can throw some light on why you should outsource, but then again, I’m not saying that you should DEFINITELY outsource. Here are some reasons to outsource your content writing needs:

You don’t want to hire a full-time writer
You don’t have enough office space
You would have written yourself but you don’t have enough time
You’re not very comfortable with the language in which you need to create your content
You want to tap into the global talent pool rather than restricting yourself to local talent
You are totally comfortable working with professionals from remote locations
You don’t have regular content writing needs

In good business sense, you should outsource your content writing if you are a small business because there is greater flexibility and less cost involved. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to hire a full-time content writer if you just require three blog posts every week.

On the other hand, if you are a big business and you need to publish scores of pages every day and almost all the content is specialized, you should have a team of in-house content writers.