Looking for insightful blog posts on content writing, and SEO copywriting? You will find them on Credible Content Blog. Updated almost daily. Fresh, unique perspective.
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.
Importance of understanding user intent for content writing
In India there is a famous Bollywood song sung by the legendary Kishore Kumar: Hum the wo thi aur sama ranged samajh gaye na? Jaate the Japan pahunch gaye cheen samajh gaye na?
Roughly translated, it means, I was there, and she was there, and the weather was magical, but, while trying to reach Japan, we reached China (means, I meant to say something else, but I said something else).
The second expression of the song, trying to reach Japan but reaching China, often happens in SEO, and due to faulty content writing.
When writing content for SEO, it is very important to understand the user intent: exactly why a person is using a search term to find information he or she is looking for.
If you haven’t optimized for the right search terms, you may get lots of traffic, but the traffic won’t convert, and then you will wonder why it’s not happening.
It’s like, you run an art gallery where people should come and buy, but they think it is a museum, so they simply visit, admire the art, and leave.
There was a time when the sole purpose of search engine optimization was increasing traffic.
Businesses even used banners with animated monkeys and asking users to click on the monkey and then when people clicked on it, they were taken to a website. Such was the level of directionlessness and desperation.
As the dust settled and “SEO experts” as well as website owners realized that more traffic didn’t necessarily mean more business, greater stress was laid on conversion.
Understanding user intent and then writing content accordingly, is the best way of improving your conversion rate.
In terms of SEO, what is user intent?
What is the intent for searching?
What is the intention of the user? Why is he or she using the search engine at this very moment?
Is he or she looking for information to increase general knowledge or he or she is looking for something to buy?
Suppose, someone searches for “content writing”.
Now, merely by looking at the phrase “content writing” you cannot make out whether someone looking for this term wants to learn about content writing, is researching about the topic, or looking for a content writing service?
If someone searches for “what is content writing” it is clear that the person wants to know what the term means.
If someone searches for “content writing services” it becomes clear. The person is looking for a content writing service.
If someone searches for “how to set up a content writing service” the intent is completely clear. The person wants to learn how to set up a content writing service.
If a person searches for “content writing service for my web design business”, again, the intent is completely clear. This person is looking for a content writing service for his web design business.
This HubSpot blog post explains the concept of understanding the user intent with the example of a pizza. The author is a Google rater. The author explains how to use the experience of a Google rater to understand the importance of user intent and then create content accordingly.
Writing your content according to longtail keywords makes user intent as clear as it gets.
Think from your own point of view. When you are searching on Google, you want to find the most appropriate information for your search.
To make sure that you find the right information, you submit a search query that is as precise as possible.
Recently my wife wanted to find a sofa repair service in the neighbourhood. It wouldn’t have been much helpful if she had simply searched for “sofa”, or “repairing sofa” or “sofa repair” or, totally skipping sofa and searching “repair service”.
She searched for “sofa repair service in Indirapuram”. Although the listing that she found was from JustDial.com, it is the most appropriate query for the job and hence, if you are a sofa repair service that wants to attract customers in Indirapuram you must target for this search term. Here, the user intent is as clear as it can be.
For your business, instead of going for generic keywords, go for the exact product or service, or the exact feature your target customer or client should be looking for.
If you are an interior design company, it would be nice if you could manage to get yourself listed on Google’s first page for the search term “interior design company”.
Realistically it might not be possible considering there might be thousands of interior design companies vying for the same position.
Instead, aim for something like “interior design company in LA” or, “interior design agency in LA” or, “interior design company for residential complexes” or, “interior design company for my reception area” – try to understand the user intent and then create/write the content accordingly.
Not to totally rely on its algorithms, these Google human quality raters are given actual searches to conduct, drawn from real searches on Google. Then these quality raters have to rate the top results.
It has been said for a long time that your content writing should be more for humans and less for search engine algorithms.
Write content for humans first
But this is because it is often believed that the ranking algorithms are as good as humans and when they are ranking your content, they are using many human factors.
Though, this is still true and when you write content you should still focus more on the “human side”, the fact that Google uses actual human search quality raters makes it more important that you write content centered around actual people rather than trying to trick the search engines.
Most of the SEO websites say that the human quality raters have no direct bearing on your search engine rankings. For example, if a human quality rater doesn’t like your content and reports your content to Google, your rankings may not suddenly dip.
The data from the quality raters is used for experiments in the Google search lab.
Does it mean you shouldn’t care for the opinion of the human quality raters when you are writing content? I wouldn’t advise that.
Simply because, you should anyway be writing for humans, even if you merely want to improve your search engine rankings and nothing else.
What do these human quality raters look for when evaluating your content?
Word to the Google human quality raters look for?
According to the latest guidelines (linked to above) aside from the quality of the content and the genuineness of what is being said, the human quality raters from Google must also take into consideration the “reputation” of the author.
In the guidelines, this text appears: “Reputation of the website or the creator of the main content”.
What does this mean?
The author reputation has been in the reckoning for a long time. Reputation means how well you are known in your field.
In my case, how many people know that I provide content writing services? What do they have to say about my services? Do they like to link to my blog posts?
Algorithmically the Google algorithm can find out how many people are linking to you and how many people are talking about your content on social media and social networking websites, but, according to the current technology, only humans can detect what sort of conversations happen around your content and about your name.
For example, even if you are notorious the Google algorithm may think you have a good reputation simply because many people are bitching about you.
The human quality raters will be able to find out if people say good things about you or bad things.
Another significant point is “beneficial purpose” – what do visitors gain when they visit your website.
Why it is important to take Google’s human quality raters seriously when writing your content?
Whoever writes about Google’s human quality raters stress upon the point that the ratings don’t impact your search engine rankings immediately.
Most of the findings are used for research purposes and experimentation.
If this is the case, if it doesn’t matter how they think of your website, why you should bother about them?
One reason is, you never know when Google decides to take their opinions seriously and make them a part of its ranking algorithm.
Although artificial intelligence is rapidly reducing reliance on humans, what humans can find, still, artificial intelligence cannot. You don’t want to get caught off guard, the way you were after the Panda and Penguin updates.
The second reason is, most of the guidelines are also applicable to Google’s core ranking algorithm.
Hence, if you write content targeting Google’s human quality raters, you automatically write content for better SEO.
Writing content for Google’s human quality raters
The most significant thing that is emerging out of the new guidelines is the reputation factor.
It is easier to enjoy better search engine rankings if you have a good reputation.
Take for example Seth Godin. Everyone who reads about Internet marketing or digital marketing must know about him.
If he writes even a 200-word blog post about marketing, it will be ranked better than your 5000-word blog post on the same topic, no matter how comprehensive your topic is, if you don’t publish content regularly, and not many people know about you.
This is how even real life works.
Now, I’m not saying this is DEFINITELY going to happen, because rankings depend on many other factors, but this is how reputation works according to Google’s human quality raters’ guidelines.
How do you improve your reputation?
Improving your reputation with quality content writing
The foundation of reputation is, high-quality content, published regularly. You cannot even think of building your online reputation without high-quality, useful content.
When someone searches for information on Google and then comes across your link, and then clicks the link and goes to your website or blog, does he or she find the information he or she intended to find?
Does his or her search stop after having visited your website or blog, or does he or she have to come back to Google and carry on the search?
This is a very pertinent question and it can have a long-term impact not just on your search engine rankings, but also on your overall conversion rate.
If your content solves searcher’s intent, you are publishing relevant, high-quality content.
Then what happens?
People want to link to valuable content. So, they do. They start referring to you as an authority figure. Reputation improves.
People start quoting you because they respect your wisdom. Reputation improves.
People share your content on their social media timelines with greater frequency and when they do, there is lots of activity in terms of “Likes” and “Sharing”. Reputation improves.
Your search engine rankings improve. More of your content is found for relevant search terms and then people go to your website from search engines. They find your content useful. Reputation improves.
Branding is very important.
This is why, even renowned brands use reputed individuals to spread the word around rather than using one of their own experts.
The best example is, search for mobile phone reviews on YouTube. You will find a successful YouTuber explaining the features of the latest iPhone rather than someone from Apple. This is because people trust their favorite YouTuber more than they trust some unknown technologist from Apple.
Listed below are some content writing tips to help you write content for Google’s human quality raters:
Focus on relevance.
Always deliver value.
Focus on one topic at a time.
Solve real problems.
Write shorter, crisp sentences.
Encapsulates the entire essence of your blog post or web page within the main headline.
Organize your main points under various headings, subheadings and bulleted points.
Come to the point as fast as you can.
Become socially active through publishing high-quality content and encouraging engagement around it.
Write and publish content regularly because more content means more content for Google to index and more content for people to talk about and react to.
Conclusion
As you can see, most of the tips to write content for Google’s human quality raters are also applicable to general SEO writing guidelines.
Hence, the age-old wisdom is always applicable: focus on quality and relevance; publish persistently and make it easier for people to find and share your content on search engines and social media and social networking websites.
As my Credible Content blog is picking up on search engines and social media, lots of bloggers are asking if they can publish guest blog posts on the blog.
On-and-off I do publish guest blog posts. Since these queries are increasing, I thought, why not prepare a separate page with some guidelines?
Both English and Hindi blog posts accepted
I don’t want to prepare a comprehensive guidelines-set. I believe that every writer has his or her own way of writing and that is fine with me. As long as your writing is interesting, informative and without errors, there is no specific stylesheet that I follow.
Anyway, keep the following in mind:
I accept blog posts on the following topics:
Content marketing
Content writing
Email marketing
SEO
Digital marketing
Copywriting
External links have the “nofollow” attribute within the body text, but you can have a link to your website or profile in the author box with a “follow” attribute.
Use lots of headlines, subheadlines and bullet points.
Keep your blog posts between 1200-2000 words.
You can submit blog posts in the following languages:
English
Hindi
Goes without saying: no plagiarism and copy/paste.
Goes without saying: proper proofreading and Grammar check.
I will update this page if something else comes up in my mind. Use my usual contact form to contact me if you are contacting me for the first time.
Long tail keywords is a slightly older concept in search engine optimization but it is often ignored.
Note: I’m just doing some SEO experiment so I will be repeatedly switching between long tail and longtail.
When I’m writing content for my clients, I naturally incorporate long tail keywords, sometimes, or rather, most of the times, these clients not even realizing it.
In fact, whenever they give me a list of shorter keywords like “mobile app development company” I encourage them to be more specific like “mobile app development company for retail business” or “native mobile app development company in Chicago”.
Many people think that users don’t use very long phrases, but they are mistaken. More so when an increasing number of people are using voice search and voice search can be quite conversational and hence, consisting of long tail keywords and search terms.
Effective content writing these days involves automatically incorporating longtail keywords into the text.
The concept of long tail keywords has been around for quite a long time but online marketers and SEO experts started paying more attention to it when Google unleashed Panda and Penguin updates.
For many years long tail keywords are being used during content writing not just to improve SEO, but also to improve user experience.
I believe when you target longtail keywords instead of short, precise keywords, you are helping your users to find just the right content they need instead of throwing vague pieces of content at them.
Here is the Wired editor talking about the importance of long tail keywords as back as in 2006.
Getting good search engine rankings before these updates was quite easy: create lots of content covering all possible keywords and keyword combinations in your niche, get lots of back links from other websites, and your search engine rankings would improve.
This resulted in lots of junk content coming up in Google search results.
When people begin to manipulate their way into anything, crap is bound to gather, and the same happened with Google search.
It’s a complete saga: many businesses were destroyed due to these unanticipated Google updates.
Long tail keywords reduce your dependence on high competition keywords and help you focus on the features and strengths of your business rather than random keywords.
The power of longtail keywords lies in their collective performance. Individually, your main keywords may bring you more traffic, but if you add up all the traffic being brought by your long tail keywords, you will be surprised to know that they are collectively performing much better than your main keywords.
Also, they are more targeted. Traffic coming from longtail keywords converts better than the traffic coming from your main keywords or primary keywords. This is because searches carried out using long tail keywords are very specific.
What are long tail keywords and what are the benefits of using them?
Marketers have this obsession for coming up with peculiar-sounding terms to impress people. Common phrases or full phrases, or even full sentences don’t sound as cool as “long tail keywords”.
But, it’s the concept, it is a visual representation of the data traffic that is generated, that gives such keywords such a name rather than simply being a cool phrase.
Right now, don’t worry about the extra information, figures and numbers present in the above image. Just focus on the “Long tail 70%” part.
It has been observed that 70% traffic from search engines comes from long tail keywords. Although, these figures may vary according to who is measuring the data, one thing is for sure: you can get more traffic by targeting longtail keywords instead of the main keywords.
Since traffic generated from longtail keywords appears like a long tail, hence, the name.
Ok, I still haven’t explained what these keywords are.
When you’re searching on the net, you don’t use very small search expressions. You try to be as specific as you can.
Take for example looking for a content writer for your business.
Although there may be a chance that you may search for “content writer”, most probably you will be looking for a “content writer for interior design website” if you want a content writer for your interior design website.
Similarly, you look for “experienced content writer for my dentist website” instead of simply “content writer” if you want a content writer for your dentist website.
If you want longform content for your website, you will look for “longform content writer”, or “content writer for longform content”, or any such variations. Or, “writer to write my leadership building e-book”.
While searching for a Samsung phone, you won’t simply search for “Samsung phone”.
If you’re looking for a phone with a good camera but you’re not sure of which model that would be, you will search for “Samsung mobile phone with best camera features”, or something like that.
These are long tail keywords.
There was a time when people simply focused on keywords containing one, two or maybe three words: very short phrases.
Obviously, there was high competition for them and since there was high competition for them, people resorted to all forms of spamming and other black hat tactics to improve your rankings.
Long tail keywords allow you to gain an edge over your competitors, especially when your competitors are simply creating noise instead of delivering value.
Another, and perhaps, one of the biggest benefits of targeting longtail keywords is that most of the users using voice search on mobile phones use longer phrases, very specific phrases.
They won’t say “running shoes needed”; they will say “where to buy light running shoes of size 9?”
Since a mobile phone can make out where the person is, according to his or her location, it will bring up the shops selling running shoes of size 9 and if you have optimized for your locality, your shop should show up at the top.
Are you using Google AdWords to promote your business? Primary keywords are very expensive to bid but longtail keywords are not.
How difficult or easy is it to write content around long tail keywords?
Difficulty and ease depend on – in terms of getting good search engine rankings for them – your competition. If there are many websites or blogs ranking well for your chosen longtail keywords, you may have to work harder and use more creativity.
If there isn’t much competition, you can easily rank well for your chosen search terms.
Why is it easy?
Because every business is unique one way or another.
If you are selling Kindle Reader cases that look like books, you would want to optimize your content for “Kindle Reader cases like books” instead of simply “Kindle Reader cases”.
If you are selling Kindle Reader cases made of leather, then write about leather Kindle Reader cases instead of simply Kindle Reader cases.
The more specific you get, the easier it becomes to optimize your content.
How to find the right long tail keywords for content writing?
Finding longtail keywords
The best way of finding long tail keywords for content writing is using logic.
You know your business best.
In case you don’t, talk to people who are constantly looking for your business.
What search terms do they use? How do they often find you?
As mentioned above, write for specific services and products and be as specific as possible.
You can aim for complete sentences.
For example, there is nothing wrong trying to optimize your web page for “I need plumbing services during non-working hours”.
Having said that, it is always advisable to use tools that give you a clear picture of exactly what search terms people are using and how much traffic these search terms are generating.
On-and-off I have been using LongtailPro. As the name suggests, this tool helps you find long tail keywords for your business.
I know, I have repeatedly mentioned this tool on my website, but compared to other tools, I really find it good.
The benefit of using LongtailPro is that it doesn’t just find you the right long tail keywords, it also tells you, according to your domain’s authority, whether it’s worth trying for particular keywords or not.
Suppose there is already too much competition for particular keywords.
Right now, no matter how hard you try, your rankings for those keywords are not going to improve.
It will be a waste of time.
It is better to go for the low hanging fruits.
LongtailPro tells you which the low hanging fruits are.
You first optimize your content for these keywords and when you have started generating traffic for these easier keywords, you can start focusing on the more difficult keywords.
If you do a search in Google, at the bottom it also shows you Searches related to <your search term>.
For example, when I search for “content writing services”, I see these suggestions:
Longtail keyword suggestions for content writing services
So, this is also a good way of finding related search terms which are much better compared to your primary keywords.
There are many other tools available, some are quite expensive.
For example, you can use BuzzSumo to find out what topics related to your search term people are writing on mostly.
It mostly uses social media activity to find which are the top keywords currently being used.
In fact, LongtailPro derives most of its data from the Google AdWords database.
I’m a little bit skeptical about the Google AdWords database because its primary purpose is to advise you as many keywords as possible simply because the more keywords you bid on, the more money Google makes.
I’m not saying that there is something wrong in Google trying to make money, but you don’t need to bid on every keyword listed in the suggestions.
The best approach is creating a list of long tail keywords manually, and then using a tool like LongtailPro to find out whether it is feasible to optimize on them or not.
Incorporating longtail keywords into your content writing
Incorporating longtail keywords into your content writing
Since the entire purpose of using longtail keywords is to use natural phrases used by your prospective customers and clients, you need to incorporate them into your content writing as naturally as possible.
Listed below are some ways you can use your longtail keywords within your content writing.
1. Use the long tail keyword in the title of your web page or blog post
There are two benefits of using your long tail keyword in your web page or blog post title:
When people see the exact phrase as hyperlink in the search results, they are more prone to clicking it and consequently, improving your click-through rate.
Search engine algorithms take the text within the title tag seriously when ranking your content. By including your longtail keyword in your title, you are telling Google that it’s an important thing to consider.
2. Use your search phrase within the first 100 words of your body text
This rule is not written in stone, but it may help you if the search engine crawlers can come across the main search phrase as early as possible.
Remember that the search engine crawlers don’t spend much time on your web page. They may leave without crawling the entire page. Hence, it is better to provide them as much useful information as possible – but make sure you don’t sound spammy.
3. Scatter your long tail keyword judicially throughout your content
Try to use various parts of your longtail keyword, contextually, at different places. You don’t always have to use the phrase in its entirety each time you use it.
For example, if I try to optimize my content writing for “content writer for web design business”, I may use the phrase in its entirety in the title or somewhere, maybe in the headlines, or a couple of times in one-two paragraphs, but other than that, I can also use the parts of the phrase: “content writer”, “writer”, “content”, “web design” and “business”, and so on.
4. Use LSI variations
Sometimes, even if you don’t mean to, you need to use your keyword repeatedly. Over optimization can be a big problem whether you’re using longtail keywords or primary keywords.
To avoid indulging in that, you can use LSI keywords.
Now, if you go by this article, it says that there is no use using LSI keywords because there is no evidence that they actually help your SEO.
Even if LSI keywords don’t directly help you improve your search engine rankings, I think it is better to use them than repeatedly using your longtail keyword and ending up sounding spammy.
If there is no good using LSI keywords, there isn’t even harm. In fact, as I have mentioned above, the benefit of inserting LSI variations is that you are not forced to repeatedly use your keywords even if you HAVE to.
5. Use your longtail keywords around your images
You can get lots of traffic through image searches.
Although regular advances are being made to enable software to identify individual objects contained within an image (a tiger sitting under the bush staring at a deer, for example), the technology still hasn’t reached where it can be used as an image search engine totally devoid of textual information.
This is why to enable people to find your images contextually, you need to surround your images with the right sort of text.
For example, if I want people to be able to find an image about content marketing on my website or my blog, I should first choose the most appropriate image representing the topic of “content marketing”, I should also surround the image with text that talks about content marketing.
This way, when Google indexes the link to this image, the algorithm will think that the image has got something to do with content marketing.
6. Use longtail search terms with hyperlinks to your other webpages and blog posts
Hyperlinks on your website are taken seriously by search engine ranking algorithms.
The text in the hyperlink tells the crawler what to expect on the web page or blog post being linked to. This is why, it is very important that you use the correct text in your hyperlink instead of simply saying “this link”.
7. Focus on a single long tail keyword when writing content
Vertically focused content is ranked better than something in which you try to cram up everything. This gives Google a clear idea of what your link represents. It also clearly tells prospective visitors what to expect when they click the link.
For example, when you come to this blog post, assuming that you find it on Google or Bing, you expect that I’m going to tell you how to use longtail keywords when you are writing content for your website or blog.
Although all sorts of related information may do you good, primarily you want to learn about this topic. If you want to learn about some associated topic, you may look for that topic on Google.
Having said that, there is a concept called topic clusters and pillar pages that involves creating highly-detailed blog posts and webpages covering every possible subtopics under the main topic.
Personally, whether I’m writing for my own blog or for my clients, I try to follow a gut feeling and flow with the topic. If I feel more needs to be written about a topic, I write more, if I feel enough has been written, I put a stop.
Concluding remarks
Search engine optimization these days is less about repeatedly using your keywords and more about publishing quality content that helps people and provides them useful information.
A sure shot way of improving your search engine rankings by generating lots of content around your primary and longtail keywords is by providing as much information about your business as possible, on your website or blog.
A personal brand means a unique, identifiable professional identity that helps people recognize you immediately when they come across your name, business name or business logo.
A personal brand is, when people decide to work with you (or not) based on their perception of you.
Suppose you are a well-known motivational speaker recognized for high-caliber corporate leadership training workshops.
People know you.
Some people have attended your workshops and benefited immensely.
Some people have come across your books and articles.
Your name as well as your face is quite familiar to them.
The moment they come across your name or your face, the thoughts of leadership and authority crosses their minds.
They want to listen to you.
They want to be associated with you.
They wish you would endorse them.
There is a sense of pride in being associated with you.
They want to attend one of your workshops even if it means spending more than they can afford and travelling a great distance.
They want to hire you as a business consultant or their marketing consultant.
That’s your branding.
Why it is important to build your personal brand?
Importance of branding yourself
A personal brand opens many doors to opportunities simply because people are familiar with your name, they trust you, they respect your knowledge, they admire you for the stands you take.
You can be an author. You can be a journalist. You can be a business consultant. You can be a public speaker or a motivational speaker. You can be a politician.
Wherever, whenever people want to deal with you because of “you”, it is your personal brand that is working for you.
Many times you must have noticed, especially through blogging and social networking, many authors first create a presence on the Internet, build a brand for themselves as influencers, and then start publishing books, going on speaking assignments and getting published in reputed publications.
Branding doesn’t just help in business. It also helps to advance your career.
It helps you get a better deal when you get a job.
It enables you to charge more for your services instead of constantly having to negotiate and haggle.
As a celebrity, if your branding is good, it can get you lucrative sponsorships and endorsement campaigns.
If you want to publish a book, publishers will be more eager to have a look at what you have written, compared to a totally unknown person.
People take what you say, seriously.
You can do lots of good work if you have built your brand in any manner.
It opens multiple doors for you. Even in unrelated fields.
Building your personal brand with content marketing
Building personal brand with content marketing
Prior to the advent of the Internet it was very difficult to build a personal brand unless you had powerful connections or unless you had striven for years.
It either needed to be a full-time job or a fluke of luck.
Building a personal brand in the times of the Internet is easier compared to the olden days, although I’m not saying it’s easy.
Every worthy cause takes effort, hard work, persistence and creativity and building a personal brand is no different.
All those people I have mentioned above have spent years creating high-quality content – text, video, images – to constantly remain visible and instigate conversations among their peers.
They are always in the reckoning.
People are constantly talking about what they talk about.
Everything on the Internet is content.
This blog post that you are reading is content.
The Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter update that you just checked is content.
The interesting YouTube video that you watched is content.
News websites like New York Times, Washington Post, Drudge Report – whatever they publish, is content.
The email that you read is content.
Basically, whatever is digitally being produced and then being used to convey something, or to show something, or to prove something, or to annoy or to please you or to make you cry with cuteness… whatever, is content.
When you use this content strategically, to achieve something like make people pay attention to what you’re saying, what you are selling, what you are promoting, what agenda you are running, it’s content marketing.
Simple definition: when you use content for marketing, it is content marketing.
With content marketing, you strategically produce, publish and distribute content to:
Keep your audience engaged.
Keep your audience informed (or misinformed, as in the case of politicians and journalists)
Educate your audience
Entertain your audience
Help them solve problems
Eventually, be a part of their lives in such a manner that whenever you reach out to them through your content, they welcome your presence.
In fact, they’re looking forward to hearing from you.
What’s the benefit?
It’s easier to do business with a person you respect, recognize and trust.
You trust that person’s judgement.
You look forward to learning from that person and enriching your life directly or indirectly.
You endorse that person by sharing his or her thoughts and insights with friends, family members and colleagues (or with random Twitter followers who don’t care about what you are sharing with them).
To sum it up
People know what you do.
People respect you for your wisdom, wit, insight and knowledge.
People know that you can be trusted.
When they need something that you provide, they get it from you.
As I mentioned above, you can be anyone.
You can be a politician.
You can be an author.
You can be a celebrity.
You can be a corporate trainer, an IT consultant, a motivational speaker, a financial adviser or a business consultant.
In any field, where it can make a difference how people think of you, building your personal brand with content marketing can help you.
5 ways you can build your personal brand with content marketing
1. Have a clearly-laid out content marketing plan before you begin building your personal brand
Have a long-term content marketing strategy for personal branding
Why planning is important?
It always helps if you know what you’re doing, what you’re getting into, and what it entails.
For content marketing to be effective, to really be able to contribute to building your personal brand, it will need to be persistent.
It cannot be something like “Okay, I will try a few blog posts and see what happens”.
It is just like life, if you treat content marketing casually, it is not going to give you serious results.
Have a plan for at least a year.
Of course, to have a year-long plan you need to really believe that it is going to work for you.
How do you believe something?
Do research. Read case studies. Watch videos.
Unless you truly believe that you need to use content marketing to build your personal brand, it will be very difficult for you to succeed.
You will easily give up.
Anyway, assuming you’re pretty sure content marketing is the way to go, have a plan for at least a year.
Having a plan means
Deciding where mostly you’re going to publish and market your content – your own blog or social networks and social apps.
Knowing what sort of content from you will be appreciated by your audience – food pics, cute baby and animal photos, pics of your butt (if you are one of the Kardashians), authoritative blog posts in your field, conversations with industry experts, latest news updates from your area of expertise, advise, views and reviews and so on.
What is going to be the frequency of content publishing – you may decide to publish every day, whenever you feel like, or on fixed days, something like every Wednesday. Depends on how eager your audience is to lap up your content and how much time it takes for you to create quality content.
What is your budget – your budget is going to have a big impact on your overall content marketing. Remember that your personal branding solely depends on the quality of your content. Save your money anywhere else, but when it comes to getting quality content, don’t try to save a few bucks here and a few bucks there.
Building your own mailing list for personal branding
When you set up a website or a blog, having a lead capturing form should be one of the topmost priorities. Despite social media apps and websites, people still check their emails every day and they prefer to receive updates in their inboxes, provided you don’t spam them.
Keeping track of one’s timeline on Facebook and Twitter or even LinkedIn, can be a challenge. If you follow lots of people and if these people are very active, you may miss many important updates.
The same may happen with your audience.
But they are sure to check their emails.
You can use your mailing list to let your subscribers know whenever you publish new content or whenever you do something that needs to be shared.
I mostly send an update when I publish a new blog post on my Credible Content blog.
I have another mailing list that I use to distribute my journalistic opinions and since most of the people who have subscribed to that mailing list are strongly opinionated, my open rate is normally 35% and click through rate is 25%.
Search engine rankings are very important for your personal branding, especially in the field of business.
People are constantly looking for information on search engines.
If you provide the information they’re looking for, they should be able to find your content on search engines.
99% of your audience won’t be specifically looking for your name. They will be looking for the topics you write on, or create visuals on.
The best way of drawing people to your website or blog is by making your content visible on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, and by improving your search engine rankings.
The click through rate on social networking websites is mediocre because when people are browsing through their timelines, they are reluctant to leave their timelines. They would rather miss an important update than move away from Facebook or Twitter.
Also, timelines move very fast. If they are not staring at their timelines all the time, there is a big chance that there are going to miss your update.
On search engines on the other hand, since people are already looking for links to go to, they don’t think twice before clicking the link.
Once your links begin to appear in search results, they are going to remain there for a long time.
How do you improve your search engine rankings?
By publishing very focused content.
Content that solves specific problems and handles specific topics.
Writing for search engines, while maintaining quality, takes practice and experience.
No matter what the “experts” say, keywords and search terms matter.
But you need to use them in such a manner that search engine algorithms don’t conclude that you are trying to trick your way into top rankings. If this happens, instead of improving your rankings, they reduce them.
Strategically use your keywords and search terms in the topics of your blog posts, videos and images.
4. Whatever content format you prefer personally, don’t ignore YouTube or IGTV
Video marketing for personal brand building
There are many reasons people prefer videos to other content formats.
A video is easier to watch. It is a full audiovisual experience.
It’s also faster: something that may take 1000-1500 words if you write a blog post, can be communicated in a couple of minutes in a video.
Besides, people trust you more if they can see you live, moving, talking, making expressions, pointing at things, twisting your lips, rolling your eyes or rubbing your chin, and saying cool stuff.
YouTube is of course one of the most known video streaming platforms.
Now you also have IGTV on Instagram.
You will need to see where your videos perform well.
Making a video is not very difficult these days.
You can make a video with every mobile camera.
You can even create a slide and then turn it into a video if you don’t prefer to create live videos.
Any animated bit of information that can be uploaded on a video platform will do, provided it is interesting, crisp, fast-moving and above all, useful.
5. Publish valuable content to build credibility and authority
Build credibility and authority with content marketing
The visual quality of your content is icing on the cake. Even the regularity doesn’t matter much these days as Google increasingly focuses on credibility and authority.
This is where you should focus the most when you are trying to build your personal brand with content marketing.
There is no use creating a very sleek video that people should be able to enjoy in 4K HD if after watching the video they don’t gain anything except for feeling impressed.
The same goes for your blog posts. There is no use writing a 2000-word blog post if it is just a meaningless monologue written solely to improve your search engine rankings.
Always deliver value.
Doesn’t matter if you are not Salman Rushdie.
Doesn’t matter if you’re not Steven Spielberg.
As long as you deliver value. As long as people can use your content to enrich their lives, to improve their work lives and personal lives, you’re good to go.
Through regularly sharing useful information – information that can be used in some manner to solve problems and make life easier – you build your credibility and authority.
This makes it easier for people to listen to you carefully and believe in what you are saying.
They are more inclined to share your content and recommend it, or react to it.
The influencers in your field feel good about being associated with you.
When you have a personal brand image it opens many doors for you and creates unique opportunities that are otherwise not available to lesser-known people.
Through content marketing you don’t need to force yourself up on people.
Content consumption is very natural these days. Publish something valuable, and people automatically consume it.
You just have to figure out what your target audience appreciates and then start producing it and publishing it.
Make sure that you are not known for the nuisance value of your content. Be known for your content’s authority, credibility and trustworthiness.
Constantly, persistently publishing high-quality, relevant, valuable and authoritative content is the best content marketing strategy for building your personal brand.
