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.

How to generate more leads with content writing

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How to generate more leads with content writing

In this post I’m going to throw some light on how you can generate more leads with content writing consistently.

Every business wants to generate more leads. A lead is when a prospective customer or client approaches you (through your contact form, through a phone call, through an email, through an advertisement or whatever mode of communication) and shows interest in your product or service.

Leads may have different meanings for different business models. Generating leads doesn’t necessarily mean people coming to you to buy your product or service. A lead can also be when someone subscribes to your email newsletter. A lead can also be a casual inquiry.

Basically, whenever someone shows interest in your business for the sake of buying one of your products or using one of your services, he or she is a lead.

Businesses eagerly pay for leads. There are many websites that sell you qualified leads – people leave their requirement on the website and then the website contacts you telling you that someone needs your product or service. Then it is up to you whether you make use of that lead and do business, or squander it away.

Why generating leads are important for your business?

It’s easier to sell to people who are interested in buying from you, compared to those who are not interested. Hence, there is a greater chance of a lead turning into your customer or client, if you strategically lead your lead to the ultimate point of making the purchase. Leads are easier to convert.

It is very difficult to get noticed on the Internet these days. For every business there are thousands of contenders. If you use advertising, your competitors can too. If you think you can improve your search engine rankings there are thousands of others who think on similar lines and may even outrank you in a matter of a few weeks or a few days.

Hence, there is a constant cat-and-mouse game going on and the more businesses try to vie for attention, the more noise they create, and the more noise they create, less it becomes possible for prospective customers and clients to understand their marketing messages and even if they can understand, it becomes difficult to distinguish one business from another.

A lead immediately changes the scene. You’re not vying for the attention of your customer or client – he or she is already interested in you. Your business or your brand has got his or her attention despite all the noise. This is a major gain. It’s like in a crowded party full of strangers someone has walked up to you and have started a conversation.

Content writing and how the process of generating leads has changed

I specifically mention content writing because this is what I provide – content via writing. For your case, content can exist in any form. It can be videos, it can be images, it can be infographics, it can be slideshows, it can be Instagram posts, whatever works for you. So, when I see content writing, you can call it video publishing or email marketing, or whatever comes to your mind.

Marketing and lead generation have changed

In the olden days, marketing was all about telling people how great your business is and what they stand to lose if they don’t use your product or service. Advertising and marketing was unscientific. It was like throwing lots of gooey mud on the wall expecting that some of that goo would stick.

Marketing these days, especially after the advent of the Internet, is more customer-centric. Through your content writing, you don’t promote your interest, you promote your customer’s interest.

Amazing writer

For example, when you’re reading about my content writing services, do you want to know what an awesome writer I am, or do you want to know how I’m going to help you generate more leads and consequently, more sales? Obviously the latter.

You couldn’t care less if I have written books or if I have earned citations for my pros. Yes, it may reassure you that I know a thing or two about writing, but your primary concern is, whether I can help you generate more leads and grow your business.

So, when I write, I’m constantly addressing your concerns. If you’re reading this blog post, you want to generate more leads. You don’t want traffic, you want people on your website who would buy from you or subscribe to your newsletter or do something that makes you money. Can I do it? This is what you want to know.

This has changed across the board. No matter how big a business you are, if you don’t impress your customers, they’re not going to give you a second glance.

So, how does content writing help you generate more leads?

You want to be a part of your customers’ lives. This can be achieved by providing highly useful and high quality content on an ongoing basis using the channels your prospective customers and clients use. You cannot simply tell them to do business with you because one, there are many choices available these days and two, there is always this other business that is more eager to engage, interact and provide a meaningful relationship rather than always wanting to sell.

It’s very logical.

If you have a business, you don’t need to repeatedly tell people that you have a business, your customers and clients know it. If you have a product or service to sell, provided there is no ambiguity in your messaging, everybody knows that you have a product or service to sell. You don’t need to repeatedly tell people how great your furniture is, how exceptional your web designing is, what an awesome make-up artist you are or what a prodigal content writer you are.

I’m not saying you should never tell people what a great business you are running, but you don’t need to do it constantly.

But if you don’t do it constantly, you fear losing your customers and clients to your competitors. What you do then?

You publish content that is useful to your prospective customers and clients. This way, they want to hear from you rather than you wanting to talk to them.

People who positively receive your content are also your leads. They may not buy from you immediately, but if you constantly engage them, if you provide them value through high-quality content writing, then when they eventually need the products or services that you provide, they’re going to come to you.

Another benefit of content writing is that it improves your search engine rankings. Search engines are continuously looking for new content to index and rank. As their crawlers find new content, they push the older content down and if the newer content is good, they push it higher. This is an ongoing churning that is happening every second.

Higher search engine rankings can bring you practically unlimited leads.

To generate qualified leads, you may decide to focus on the following channels:

Your business blog and content marketing through it
Website optimization and usability improvement
Search engine optimization
Social media marketing
Email marketing
Press releases

Content writing plays a pivotal role in every channel. You need well-written content for your website so that you can clearly communicate your message, people can understand it, and then decide to do business with you.

Search engine optimization is not possible without well-written, optimized, relevant and quality content.

Even if you write just 2 sentences, your social media marketing is incomplete without good content writing.

Email marketing and press releases solely depend on high-quality content writing.

All these are lead generation channels.

As you can see in the above image, unlike the older ways, you don’t go to your customers and clients and urge them to buy from you.

You create funnels through high-quality content that you disseminate using the channels your prospective customers and clients use.

Whether it is personal branding or business branding, your brand should be familiar to them and they should respect your brand. They should value your content. They should be able to use your content to improve their business and enrich their lives.

Many of my clients think that this is a long shot but it is not. It is a sure shot way of generating more leads following a well-defined path. Give them value through quality content writing and content marketing and they will buy from you.

Importance of segmentation in email marketing

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Importance of segmentation in email marketing

Email marketing is good. Segmentation makes it better. Here I’m going to explain how you can use segmentation to your advantage when implementing your email marketing strategy.

According to this Radicati report, 34% of the people in the world, that’s about 2.5 billion people, use email. Contrary to predictions that email marketing might be on its way out due to social media, the number is projected to increase to 2.8 billion email users in the next 2 years.

The same report says that 196 billion emails are sent daily and out of these, 109 billion are business emails. Even if a major part of this deluge of emails is spam, still, it is a big number to consider.

Why is the use of email so prevalent? Even to open social media and social networking accounts you need an email ID. Useful information is constantly being sent via email. When you get an important notification from your office, provided you are not using a tool like Slack, it comes via email. Teachers are sending homework via email. Banks send OTP via email.

Everyone has an email. If someone uses the Internet, he or she has an email account.

Despite online chat, instant messaging and Twitter, consumers prefer to communicate with brands through email. A Marketing Sherpa study revealed that 72% consumers don’t mind receiving promotional messages through email, provided the messages are useful.

Marketing Sherpa email marketing graphic

Why doesn’t email lose its sheen? Despite different means of communication popping up almost every week, why does email sustain? Here are a few reasons:

Most of the email services are free: Email services like Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook.com and Hotmail have made sure that everyone can have an email ID free of cost.
It’s very easy to use email: Email can be used on mobile phones, tablets and computers with equal ease. In fact, these days, email apps for mobile phones have more features than their PC and laptop counterparts.
Email is very personal: Every email account is protected by a password, and these days, even 2-factor authentication. The information exchange in an email remains confidential. Sharing your email password still remains an intimate act of trust and hence, it is rarely done. Nobody can access your email unless you are hacked or you willingly allow access.
Email is instant: In most of the cases. The moment you send out an email, it is received by the recipient.

Precisely this is the reason why email marketing still remains a hot activity among online marketers and it is an inseparable part of content marketing.

It’s segmentation that makes your email marketing effective

To be effective and successful, email marketing needs to be data-driven and scientific. If you simply build a mailing list and then go on sending out messages, although you may elicit some response, you won’t be tapping into the full potential of email marketing.

According to a Campaign Monitor finding, businesses have experienced an increase of 760% in their revenue through segmented email marketing.

What’s segmentation?

Segmentation means sending out emails based on the behavior of the recipients, or based on some action that they have recently performed or based on something that is going to have an impact on the way they respond to your email message.

How do you know their behavior? You can’t just know it.

There are many ways of creating segments.

For example, you may have a different sign up form (to build your mailing list) on your Facebook business page. You may have a different subscription form link for your Instagram campaigns.

On your website or on your blog you may have a different sign up form.

I have a signup form on my website and on my blog. People can subscribe to my email updates on their own.

In my contact form I have a checkbox that allows people to tell me if they would like to subscribe to my email updates. The information submitted through the contact form is saved in a Google Docs spreadsheet and then later on I manually add these email addresses (for people who have checked the checkbox) to my mailing list.

I also have a “Hello” bar at the top and people can use that bar to subscribe to my email updates. Once in a month I log into my Hello account, download the email addresses of people who have subscribed using the Hello bar, and then manually add them to my mailing list.

Recently I have started associating tags to different sources so that later on if I want to send an email message to those people who opted to subscribe to my mailing list from my contact form, all I have to do is, segment my campaign using that particular tag.

Then, if you have an online business you may have email ids of people who have registered themselves but have never shopped.

Some email ids may belong to people who recently abandoned the shopping cart.

Some people have just shopped and you would like to send them related offers.

Segments can be created based on people’s job titles or the organizations they work in.

These segmentation methodologies fall outside of the ambit of your email marketing campaigns management tool or service.

You can also create segments according to the way people interact with your email campaigns. You can have different messages for people who clicked a link in your email and those who never clicked.

You can also have different messages for people who opened your last email campaign and those who didn’t.

You get this data gradually, sometimes even after sending your first most campaign. But, the more data you have, the more precise your segmentation gets.

Almost all email marketing services provide segmentation these days

As far as using email marketing services like MailChimp and Constant Contact go, they allow you to create segments very easily, out of the campaigns that you have already sent. You can also send campaigns – in many cases – to people residing in particular regions of the world. For instance, you can send Christmas greetings to your European or American subscribers and Diwali greetings to subscribers living in India.

As mentioned above, you can even create segments on people who opened your email messages on a specific day of the week – for example, those people who opened your message on Wednesday no matter when you send out your messages.

Does segmentation mean creating multiple emails for your email marketing campaigns?

In most of the cases, yes. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing, one, segmentation is must, and two, highly targeted messages need to be created. This often means creating multiple campaigns. But the effort is worth it.

14 ways to make positive impact with your content writing

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Making a positive impact with your content writing

Every piece of content writing that you publish on your website or blog (or elsewhere) needs to make a positive impact.

Of course, whenever people think of publishing content their primary concern is improving their search engine rankings. Nothing wrong in that, but that shouldn’t be the only concern.

Remember that ultimately, people need to decide whether they want to do business with you are not.

How do they decide that?

When you can convince them.

To convince them, you need to make an impact.

Just because they are on your website doesn’t mean they’re going to buy from you. You have to address their concerns. You have to give them the right information.

When they read the information on your website, they should think, “Yes, these are the guys I want to work with, or buy from.”

The short-term approach is, you throw mud at the wall hoping that some of it will stick, and some of it does.

So, you indiscriminately publish content that gets you search engine traffic and then you hope some of the traffic will convert. Some of it converts. The majority of it doesn’t.

The long-term approach, which is more sustainable and more profitable, is to build an audience.

You build an audience when you make an emotional connection. People want to then come to your website regularly. They want to read or view what you publish. They want to share your content. They even want to save your content. They become loyal to your brand. When they need to buy what you sell, they buy it from you.

This is how you make a positive impact.

But how do you make this positive impact so that people become your regular readers, and begin to trust you, and begin to pay attention to what you have to say?

You can do these 14 things:

1. Always keep the interest of your readers in mind

Nobody wants to read your personal journal, unless they derive something out of it (inspiration, or some insight, or an example). People want to read something useful. Something that can help them. Something that can make their life better than it was before they started reading your blog post or article.

If you want to make a positive impact with your content writing, always write what interests your readers. Try to find what they want to know, and then tell them. This will keep them coming back to your website or blog.

2. Craft the title of your web page or blog post with care

This is a technical aspect of writing and publishing impactful content. Title is something that draws people to your link.

When they come across your web page or blog post title on search engines or on their social media timelines, they should immediately be able to know what you are offering. This means, your title should never be ambiguous.

For example, the title of this blog post tells you 14 ways to make a positive impact with your content writing. So, if you’ve been looking for something like this, you want to check it out immediately.

People have different opinions on how long your title should be, but it depends on exactly what you are trying to say. Two things are important when you are creating a title for your blog post or web page:

For SEO purpose, your title must be 50-65 characters, including spaces. This is because these are the number of characters (maximum 70) that Google shows when it shows your listing on search result pages and the rest it truncates.
People should be able to understand your title within a single glance. If they need to make an effort to make sense of your title, they’re going to get distracted and they may not read the rest of your blog post or web page.

3. Make your writing mobile friendly

Write shorter sentences. Divide complex sentences into smaller, multiple sentences.

It makes it easier to read and grasp on mobile screens.

The same holds for paragraphs. Write short paragraphs. Not more than two sentences per paragraph.

Again, this is less about the quality of your content writing and more about paying attention to technicalities, but you cannot hope to make a positive impact if people find it difficult to read your content and consequently, leave without reading it.

4. Organize text under headings

Headings make your writing scannable. One can understand the gist of your web page or blog post by simply running through the headings.

Headings are also good for SEO. Use your long tail keywords when writing your headings.

5. Write for people who have a shorter attention span

Don’t take it negatively. Life these days is full of distractions. As I’ve written above, lots of people access your content on their mobile phones.

While reading your content, they will get constant notifications. They might be traveling. They might be in the midst of a conversation. They might be waiting for their doctor’s appointment.

The thing is, the amount of attention is limited these days whether people read your content on their computers and laptops, or on their mobile devices.

Make this assumption when you are writing content.

You don’t have to lower your writing quality. There is no need to dumbify your text.

As mentioned above, use simpler sentences. Use direct language. Stick to the point.

6. Convey your important point as soon as possible

Since the attention span is limited these days, there is no use beating around the bush. You don’t need to build up a narrative unless you are creating an interesting story.

By the time people are through with your first paragraph, they should know what you’re trying to communicate through your content writing and what they are going to achieve after they have read your blog post or article.

In terms of a business website, suppose you want to sell an e-book. As soon as people come to your website, people should know what information is contained in the e-book and you are selling it, and not offering it for free. These points must be made clear in the beginning preferably, in the first sentence itself.

7. Do keyword research to use the right language

When I say keyword research I don’t mean you need to stuff your writing with your keywords to improve your SEO.

Yes, you need to use your keywords strategically, but if you know the right keywords to focus on, it improves your language and the way you convey what you need to convey.

8. Back up your claim with data from credible sources

Data is very reassuring. If you tell someone that 72% B2C content marketers attribute their marketing success to the quality of their content, your readers will find it easier to believe you if you let them know that you have taken this statistic from Content Marketing Institute.

If you mention in your blog post that by 2021 content marketing will be a $400 billion industry it’s better to let your readers know that you are getting this number from Forbes.

9. Don’t underestimate the visual aspect of writing content for business marketing

Just because I am writing about content writing, it doesn’t mean we should overlook the importance of incorporating visuals into your overall message. Visuals are highly effective.

Visuals not only help you present your ideas attractively (if you are using graphs and pie charts), they also provide a brief relief to people. When they are reading text, and suddenly they come across a visual, it distracts them for a few seconds and they need to refocus. This helps them focus better.

Make sure that the images and graphics that you use are relevant to your current topic.

10. Write in a conversational style

This may sound like a clichéd (oft repeated) piece of advice, but it is very easy to end up ignoring it when you are in the thick of your creative things.

Write the way you talk.

It doesn’t mean if you talk in monosyllables you also write in monosyllables, but make your writing conversational. Whenever possible, use first person.

When you’re writing for a business, especially when you are writing for your business blog, try to use “you” and “I” instead of “you” and “we” unless there is reason to use “we”.

A good thing about writing in a conversational style is that you will avoid using big sentences and bigger paragraphs. Usually when we talk, we use precise sentences. Also, we don’t use complicated words when we talk.

This makes your writing easier to read and instills in it an easy flow.

11. Empathize with your readers when writing content

Convey it to your readers that you can understand or you can relate to what problems and issues they are going through.

Suppose you’re writing a blog post about an SEO tool you have just developed.

Talk about the problems people may have faced while using other SEO tools. Tell them that you understand the importance of improving their SEO and how their business depends on better search engine rankings. Concur with them that they face tough competition and they need a convincing tool to improve their SEO.

12. Know your readers properly

It is also called defining an ideal persona. This will tell you whom you are writing your content for.

13. Clearly define the propose of your current blog post or article

Of course the long term propose is that you want to engage, and then consequently, build a loyal following of readers/visitors who repeatedly visit your website or blog and takes your word seriously.

The short term propose could be a mix of

Educating your readers about a particular topic concerning your business.
Publishing content people would like to share.
Increase information wealth of your website or blog.
Getting more subscribers for your newsletter.
Improving your search engine rankings for a particular search term.

14. Use real-world examples

Want to show how your SEO tool actually helps entrepreneurs improve their search engine rankings?

Talk about a real-world example. Tell about a real business. Capture screenshots of current rankings of that business and publish them. If possible, mention the link of the website. Try to get a quote from the owner, or the person who used your SEO tool to improve the SEO of the website.

Why it is important to make a positive impact with your content writing?

Sustainable business is all about building relationships. It is not about tricking people into coming to your website and then leaving it up to them whether they want to do business with you or not.

It is very easy to trick people into coming to your website. If you can remember, they used to have banner ads with a monkey running left and right and you were asked to click the moving monkey with precision, making you believe that it was some sort of game. All it did was, take you to the advertiser’s website. On the website, something totally unrelated was being sold and whatever was being sold had nothing to do with a moving monkey or not even with a game.

Although these days most of the businesses don’t go to that extreme, still, one way or the other, they’re playing the monkey trick on the visitors by tricking them into visiting the website.

It’s all about numbers. If you have lots of money to publish tons of junk content just to draw traffic from search engines and social media websites, some of the traffic may convert. If one visitor converts out of every 1000 visitors, then maybe bringing 1,000,000 visitors to your website can get you 1000 customers. This is the logic used by spammers.

Can you really get 1,000,000 visitors to your website? On an ongoing basis?

On the other hand, if you publish impactful content, out of those 1000 visitors, maybe 50 or 100 people will convert, or even more. This is a much better conversion rate. Also, more sustainable and repeatedly doable.

This is because when people find quality content on your website they trust you.

Writing that is meant to make a positive impact also draws targeted, focused traffic to your website or blog. For example, people who come to my website or my blog either need a content writer or they want to read about content writing.

Although video marketing is also content marketing, since I’m a writer and I don’t provide video marketing services (at least not a dedicated service), I don’t aim to draw traffic for this keyword (or any other that does not involve content writing vis-à-vis content marketing). This saves me lots of effort, lots of time, it also improves my conversion rate. People know what they are getting when they come to my website or blog.

So, to make an impact with your content writing, focus on your core topics, focus on the needs of your readers, and even if you publish fewer blog posts and articles, only publish relevant, meaningful and useful content.

How to publish quality content regularly on your website

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Publishing quality content regularly

Regularity is as important as quality if you want to get benefit out of your content marketing efforts.

When you regularly publish quality content on your website it gives a message to your visitors that you’re constantly updating your website and hence, they should keep track of it (a motivation to sign up for your email updates).

Search engine crawlers – this is something that I have observed but I don’t know if it actually happens or not – also take note of your publishing schedule, and start crawling your website accordingly.

If you publish content regularly, your website is crawled regularly.

The more you publish, the more reason you give human visitors as well as search engine crawlers to access more content.

The more you publish, the more search terms you cover.

The more you publish, the more content you make available that can be shared on other websites and blogs, and on social media websites.

But it is easier said than done.

There are two obstacles to publishing content regularly:

Great ideas for publishing new blog posts
Making sure that the quality is up to the mark.

B2C content marketing challenges chart

So, regularity and quality are both indispensable. One or the other tend to suffer when you try to maintain a balance.

The quality aspect can be easily taken care of.

Be genuine.

Try to provide something valuable, something meaningful, something you think can really help people.

This will ensure that you publish quality content.

Quality means meaningfulness.

Meaningful means something that really helps people.

What helps people?

Take the example of my business: content writing. How can I help you? There are two ways I can help you:

Help you write better content yourself
Help you decide whether you should hire me as your content writer or not

But, why should I help you write better content because this means you won’t hire me?

You may or may not.

If you want to write on your own, you will do it anyway.

If you don’t find the information on my website, you will find it somewhere else.

You’re not looking for a content writer, at least not right now.

Right now, you want to write on your own, and you’re just looking for some good start, or some insight that can help you write better.

Right now you don’t want to hire someone, and if I don’t offer you help, you will get that help from somewhere else.

So why should I provide you that help?

If nothing else, it generates goodwill for me.

In the future, if content is needed by you or by someone you know and if that content cannot be written without the help of a content writer, you would rather hire me than someone else.

Then comes the second point: helping you decide whether you want to hire me as your content writer or not.

How do you decide that?

You want to know how I write. You want to know how I express ideas. To help you with this

I publish dedicated pages on every possible question or doubt you may have regarding my content writing services.
I regularly share my knowledge with you through my content writing and content marketing blog.
I provide you samples of my work.
I improve my search engine rankings so that you can find me for relevant keywords and search terms.

This gives me plenty to write about.

This brings us to the question of how you can publish quality content in your website or blog regularly, for your particular business. You can do the following…

Maintain a list of topics

There are many tools you can use these days to maintain a list of topics. You will be creating topics according to the topics, and consequently, the keywords that you want to cover.

Remember that topics must be consistent with the central theme of your website or blog. If you are a mobile app development company them most of your topics must be about mobile app development and related fields.

You can use a simple note book to jot down content writing ideas. You can use something like Google Keep. You can use Evernote. You can use an Excel sheet. Or Trello cards. Whatever you find convenient. But, definitely have a system of maintaining topics.

Use something you can immediately use. As you write more and more and get into the habit of thinking proactively about your content, ideas will suddenly come and if you don’t record them immediately, you may lose them.

Always be on the lookout for topic ideas

Don’t start thinking about what to write when you start writing. One option is keep your ideas repository nearby. Another option is to constantly be at the lookout. Check you Twitter timeline to see what the others in your stream are publishing. Subscribe to feeds and use something like Feedly. Subscribe to email updates that send you new blog posts and articles about your industry right in the inbox. Use Google Alerts. Interact in the forums, or at least follow the discussion threads.

If you have had an informative conversation with your client, even that can be a source of a great topic (you don’t have to reveal the name of your client).

Respond to articles and blog posts published somewhere else

Agree with something published in another website or blog? Disagree? Got something if your own? Why not respond through your own blog post or article?

In fact, this is how initially blogging spread…long time ago when it wasn’t yet associated with content marketing and SEO. Someone wrote something on his or her blog and then the others responded through their own blog post, linking to the original post. It doesn’t just make blogging interesting, it also gives you new ideas on an ongoing basis.

Repurpose your existing content

Content grows on content. Your existing content is teeming with new content writing ideas. Take for example this subtopic “Repurpose your existing content” – I have previously written a complete blog post just on this topic – How to repurpose would content.

Creating your blog posts out of existing blog posts and articles is just one way of repurposing your existing content. You can also create

Infographics
Random images to post on Instagram
Slides
Small e-books by combining multiple blog posts
YouTube videos
Social media posts

Read books and magazines in your field

Developing and expertise, in-depth knowledge in your field is very essential to creating quality content. Books, at least it is assumed, are often written by experts are people who have done lots of research and have come up with new insights into your profession. They give you lots of food for thought. You can find lots of topics in these niche books an marketing d magazines.

Hire an experienced content writer

“Experienced” is the key word here. Everyone can write occasionally. But if you need to publish high quality content on your website on an ongoing basis, it is better to collaborate with an experienced content writer rather than trying to do it on your own. You may be an expert in your field. You may also be able to articulate your thoughts through writing. But can you do it consistently? Do you have enough time to follow a schedule?

Remember that regularity is very important for successful content marketing. If you publish content haphazardly, although over a long period of time it will definitely benefit you, it will depend on chance. But if you regularly publish high-quality content following a strict pattern, the benefit will be more consistent, more predictable. This is something a content writer can provide you.

Maintain a content publishing calendar

Content publishing calendar

A content publishing calendar is basically a topics and ideas list, but with dates and timeframe attached to every stages. A calendar tells you what you will be publishing on a particular date. This instills a sense of organization into your publishing process.

You also spend some time with your content writer deciding on various topics, deciding on when certain topics should be drafted and scheduled. The more you get into the habit of organising and scheduling, the better will be the inflow of ideas.

Curate content

Content Curation

Curation is also a good way of publishing content regularly without running out of it. Curation means finding well-written blog posts and articles on other websites and then linking to them from your own website with small input from you. It takes just a few minutes and before you know it, a repository of quality content begins to build up under your domain.

Concluding remarks

Just like in any form of marketing, successful content marketing, requires consistency. A pattern needs to exist. If you decide to publish something every Wednesday, then it should be published every Wednesday. If every 15 days you want to publish a long blog post, then you need to stick to this schedule. As mentioned above, if you cannot come up with original topics regularly, you can link to content published elsewhere. Make sure the content that you publish – whether you publish original content, or you curate it, make sure that it helps your visitors.

This is a very good example of storytelling for content marketing

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Content marketing through storytelling

In the morning I received this ZDNet email newsletter, and there was a story titled How Apple Watch saved my life.

The author tells how previously he wasn’t enthusiastic about Apple products, and in fact, he was very critical of them. He constantly switched between Apple and Android devices. He owned most of the mainstream Apple products, but he wasn’t a regular user.

Being in technology, it is his work to use gadgets from all the brands objectively without getting personally involved.

One day he decided to purchase a refurbished Apple Watch because his many friends had it and he was just a little curious about the gadget. This is why he didn’t purchase a brand-new watch because he thought that after a few days he would just put the watch in a drawer and forget about it.

After a few days he received an email from Apple asking him whether he would be willing to participate in the Apple Heart Study, a large data-gathering exercise the company was partnering with Stanford University. Always interested in big data studies, the writer joined the program.

Apple heart study screenshot

Through the Apple Watch, heartbeat patterns are constantly recorded and then sent to Apple or Stanford University servers, necessary analysis is done and further action is advised.

A few days later, the writer received a message on his iPhone saying “Irregular heart rhythm observed”. The message also advised him to contact a Heart Study Doctor as soon as possible.

This led to a series of tests and discoveries and ultimately it was found that his heart had a condition that could have turned serious if left neglected.

In the article he has also described his heart condition and his previous problem of high blood pressure, a bit of obesity and high blood pressure.

Although any gadget could have helped him with a similar study being done with a similar gadget from another company, he just happened to be wearing an Apple Watch and the Stanford University study is being exclusively carried out using this gadget, the author has now totally fallen in love with all Apple products.

It is not a feature-based love and dedication because the features remain the same, it’s just that the watch played an important role in detecting the anomaly in his heartbeat and this led to his early diagnosis and treatment, emotionally he wants to repay and the only way to repay a company is to buy its products.

What can be more powerful testimonial than someone telling you that a product or service saved his or her life? And not metaphorically, but actually.

This is a good example of content marketing through storytelling.

The author uses a title you cannot resist: How Apple Watch saved my life – everyone would like to know exactly what happened. For example, I’m not crazy about Apple products and even advise people against buying an iPhone but still, I was persuaded enough to click the link and read the story.

He builds up a narrative. Initially he tells you that although he abundantly uses gadgets, he wasn’t very gung-ho about using Apple products, and in fact, he even disliked using Apple products. This could be anyone, even a person like me. Many readers would relate.

Then he very cautiously brings up Apple Watch. He even tells you that he didn’t go for a new watch and instead, he purchased a refurbished app because he wasn’t sure if he would use it regularly.

Then he signs up for this Stanford University project that exclusively uses the watch from Apple.

Two things happen here: the mention of Stanford University immediately injects a sense of credibility and, it is study on the heart conditions.

The mention of Stanford University itself invokes respect in many. Then, you read that this university trusts Apple Watch to gather “big data” on heartbeat of many people. A very big influencer.

Then, a sequence of events reveals that his own life is saved or at least, he is saved from a big health-related disaster because of the early warning provided by Apple Watch.

Now, Apple Watch didn’t directly save his life. It wasn’t a feature in the watch itself that saved his life, but it was instrumental in discovering his heart condition and him taking remedial measures. Any watch with similar features and with similar research team affiliation could have done that.

But, a positive story gets associated with Apple Watch.

In the end, the author tells readers that not just Apple Watch, now he’s going to buy everything Apple offers including iPhones, iPads, and whatnot.

Maybe it’s a paid article, or maybe it’s a real incident, but that’s not the issue. This is a good example of doing content marketing with storytelling.