Category Archives: Content Strategy

How to write content for the festive season

Writing content for the festive season

When you want to write content the biggest hurdle is often the lack of ideas. What to write about? The content needs to be relevant, topical, useful, informative and if possible, also entertaining. The examples and ideas must come from the things happening around you. For instance, festive season is fast approaching in the Western world. Here in India we had just had Diwali, Dussehra and a litany of other big and small festivals that are lined up between the months of July and December.

Now we’re moving towards Christmas and the New Year. How do you write content for the festive season? Remember that there has to be a relationship between the occasion and your business otherwise the meaning is lost. I’m not saying this always has to happen – not everything needs to be business- related – but if they can be combined, nothing like it.

It’s not just always about why people celebrate a particular festival, how it is celebrated or what various aspects of the festival mean to different people. These are important, but there are many big and small things that are associated with almost every festival that impact people directly and indirectly.

Take for instance overeating. We all end up overeating during festive days. If your blog or website promotes healthy living, why not create multiple articles and blog posts advising people how to celebrate their festive reason without overindulging? What about publishing recipes of foods that can be enjoyed without the added problems of upset stomachs, bloated bellies and inflated calories? What about listing gift ideas that are not just healthy but also enchanting?

What if you are selling woollen garments or winter clothes? How would you suggest people to take care of winter clothes during the chilly Christmas days? What sorts of clothes are best for celebrating a white Christmas?

Suppose your company sells alcoholic beverages. You can create a series of articles and blog posts advising people how to enjoy alcoholic beverages during the festive season without indulging in drunk driving or losing control. How about managing a hangover after raucous evening?

I’m writing content for a real estate client these days. Some people consider investing in real estate property auspicious during festive seasons. Many rich parents and relatives like to gift apartments and houses to their younger kids and relatives during festivals like Christmas and Diwali. Why not give them advice about what would be the best real estate buying options for such gifts?

The whole point of writing content for the festive season is touch upon issues that are normally overlooked but are highly relevant and important.

How to use hashtags as content marketing tools

Usi ng hashtags as content marketing tools

Hashtags are everywhere these days. People use them on Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and any other website where content is promoted using keywords and tags. You can use popular hashtags as content marketing tools.

Why use hashtags as content marketing tools?

More and more people are relying on social networking websites to find valuable, useful and relevant content. Random searches can be tiresome so people who are really interested in a topic follow hashtags (also called trending topics). They can either create streams based on a hashtag based on their favourite social networking tool (something like Hootsuite) or they can simply click the popular hashtag to view all the updates in the stream. For instance, if you want to know what all people are saying about content marketing today on Twitter, you can check out the hashtag #contentmarketing. So if you want to say something that you can somehow relate with this hashtag append it at the end of your message and post it on Twitter. All the people following this hashtag will be able to view this message. A problem with popular trending topics is that the message may not stay in front of your viewers because they scroll very fast – sometimes thousands of people are posting every second.

Do you want to use the trending topics as content marketing tools?

This is how it works…

Find out what’s trending and think of how you could use these trending topics for your content marketing requirements. Doesn’t matter if some popular trend is being promoted by a company, a sports club, an NGO or a political party. If it is in the public domain and if you can creatively incorporate it into your content marketing effort, you should go ahead and do so.

But make sure you don’t end up irritating people. I don’t believe that bad publicity is better than no publicity – in the business world it doesn’t work that way. You ruin your reputation as a business and it takes lots of time to undo the damage.

How to find hashtags that you can use as content marketing tools?

The first spot is of course the Twitter website itself if you want to use some Twitter hashtag. In fact most of the prominent hashtags are displayed on their respective websites. On Twitter you can find them on the left-hand side. You can see international hashtags as well as the ones specific to your country or region.

You can also create a list of hashtags that would be relevant to your business or your target audience and then routinely post updates and content links accordingly.

20 benefits of hiring professional content writing services

20 benefits of hiring professional content writing services

What are the benefits of hiring professional content writing services? This is a serious question because it is going to be a long-term commitment and if you’re thinking of hiring professional content writing services, both in terms of money as well as time (although in terms of time the service you hire is going to take care of most of the stuff).

As a busy professional you recognize the importance of content for your business website but either you’re not comfortable writing it yourself, or you don’t have enough time. Writing content for the purpose of content marketing is often a full-time commitment. Content writers like yours truly can do that because well, since I’m already creating content for my clients, it’s easier for me to quickly open another document and create a blog post for myself. This might not be the case with you. You may be working in altogether a different field and it is often difficult to sit quietly on a daily basis and create high-quality and valuable articles and blog posts. This is why you need to hire a professional content writing service.

Below I have listed 20 benefits of hiring professional content writing services.

  1. Publish content on a regular basis: Whenever one wants to implement a solid content marketing strategy the biggest hurdle is the content that needs to be written and published on a regular basis. When you have assigned this task to the professionals, you can rest assured that you will be getting reliable, engaging, compelling content on a regular basis.
  2. Get high-quality content on an ongoing basis: This goes without saying. Any professional service that you hire deserves to be called professional only if it provides you high-quality content without errors – grammatical as well as spelling.
  3. Enjoy better search engine rankings: One of the benefits of hiring professional content writing services is that they can provide you keyword-centric content without going overboard. This is very important. Your content writer should be able to use your keywords contextually without overusing them and at the same time sound trustworthy and compelling. This is not as easy as you may think. Simply using your keywords doesn’t mean your content is going to give you a good conversion rate even if it gets you better search engine rankings.
  4. Avail greater accountability: Professional content writing services are bound to provide greater accountability and this is a big benefit of hiring them. People should be able to trust them and rely on them. If many businesses are already relying on the content writing service that you have chosen for your business, then you can rest assured they’re going to be accountable to you.
  5. Get a dedicated content writer who is not influenced by your business: In order to influence your customers and clients you need to speak their language. This is often not possible for someone working in your organization. You need someone who is an outsider and hence, can empathise with your customers and clients, and then write accordingly.
  6. Have a greater choice of content writers: A good benefit of hiring professional content writing services is that you are not bound to a particular service or a particular content writer. Don’t like someone? You can ask the content writing service to change the writer for you, or you can change the service itself. It’s all up to you and you are in total control. This is not the case if you have hired someone in-house. Hiring and firing employees can be an expensive affair, but this is not the case if you hire professional content writing services.
  7. Update your existing content regularly: It’s very important to regularly update your existing content to keep it fresh and relevant. By hiring professional content writing services you make sure that your content assets that are already there are not neglected because due to lack of time this is something that gets ignored while you try to create as much new content as possible.
  8. Stop worrying about new content writing ideas: This is also one of the major challenges when you want to create new, fresh content for your website or blog, or even when you are contemplating getting your content published on other websites and blogs – how to get new content writing ideas? Although there is tons of stuff you can write about just when you are about to write, nothing comes up in your mind. People working in professional content writing services are used to coming up with new content writing ideas; for them it is a habit (of course, also a professional compulsions). So you don’t have to constantly worry about what to write – it is done, most often, behind your back, without bothering you.
  9. Easily scale your content writing requirements: As your business expands so will your content writing requirements. You don’t need to hire new people for that. Professional content writing services are well equipped to meet your demands. They will automatically be able to provide you more writers or more time from an existing writer. Inversely, you don’t have to fire an employee in case you need to cut down on content publishing. You simply have to let it be known to your service provider and that’s it.
  10. Save more money: One of the greatest benefits of hiring professional content writing services is that you don’t have to spend money on getting new employees and give them all the employment benefits that businesses often have to give. There is no extra money involved while hiring a professional content writing service. You pay just for the content you get and nothing more. You don’t need to dedicate computers and software to the writer. He or she doesn’t need your office space. He or she doesn’t use your electricity and your furniture. Remotely he or she can quietly work and get paid for just the content he or she gives you.
  11. Establish yourself as an authority: As a professional who depends a lot on personal branding you need to establish yourself as an authority and you do this by constantly sharing your expertise and wisdom with your target audience. If you don’t have much time you can hire a professional content writing service and it will provide you all the needed content in a well-written format. All you need to do is provide them some insightful input and accordingly they can create high-quality content for you on an ongoing basis that will help you establish yourself as an authority among your peers as well as audience.
  12. Make your brand more recognizable: Recognition, familiarity (unless you’re really screwing things up) builds trust and when people trust you, they are more eager to do business with you. By publishing authoritative content on a regular basis you make it easier for people to find you, come across your content and then remember you. By hiring professional content writing services you can rest assured that quality, authoritative content is always being written for your business.
  13. Create a reliable content stream: Reliability is very crucial when you want to continue a successful content marketing campaign. Even small gaps can lead to a totally wrong direction.
  14. Exploit all the promotional channels available to you: Since you never lack content you can exploit all the channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogging, Guest Blogging and Tumblr (just to name a few) to promote your brand and get more traffic to your main website or blog.
  15. Engage the right audience on social networking websites: You can engage your audience on social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter by consistently posting authoritative content that links back to your own website or blog. People will respect you more if the content comes from you rather than from other websites. When you link to your main content, encourage people to interact with you, ask questions and seek answers.
  16. Get published on reputed websites and blogs: This is a great way to get back links from authoritative websites. By hiring professional content writing services high-quality content is easy to come and since it is easy to come, you don’t have to just focus on your own website or blog. You can also share your valuable content on other websites and blogs, exposing your brand in front of a new audience as well as getting links from those websites and blogs.
  17. Engage customers on your website or blog: As I have already mentioned above, engagement doesn’t just happen with a few blog posts and articles. You constantly need to publish new content and then gradually people begin to respond. As they respond, according to their response, you create new content and then according to your new content, they respond again, and the cycle goes on.
  18. Enjoy higher conversion rate: Compelling content gives you a higher conversion rate. It doesn’t matter how good your search engine rankings are and how well you can engage people on social networking websites, unless you have compelling content on your own website, created by a professional content writing service, you’re not going to enjoy a higher conversion rate.
  19. Get more subscribers to your email updates: Building your own mailing list still is one of the best ways of building targeted traffic to your website because people willingly subscribe to your mailing list. If they like your content, if the content they like is regularly published on your website, it gives them a reason to visit your website repeatedly and if they really find your content valuable, they won’t like to miss it. This is the time when they will subscribe to your email updates.
  20. Broadcast your email marketing campaigns regularly: Email marketing content is as important as website or blog content and in many cases, even more important. When people open their emails, go through its contents and then click the links included in the message, they come to your website with a purpose. They are already inclined towards dealing with you. By hiring professional content writing services you can ensure a continued supply of high-quality content for your email marketing campaigns.

How do I decide what to write for a particular business or industry?

What to write for which industry

There are 2 ways. If I am working as a content consultant AND content writer for a client, I come up with my own suggestions regarding what sort of content to write to engage the right audience. If I’m working just as a content writer I’ll leave it up to the client to either send me the exact titles or a rough idea of the topics and then accordingly I write content. Even if I’m working just in the capacity of a content writer I give suggestions to my clients and it’s up to them whether they want to follow those suggestions or not.

So how do I decide what to write for a particular business or industry?

The fundamentals remain the same. The content should be

  • Relevant
  • Well-written and well-formatted
  • Error-free
  • Informative and educational
  • Engaging and convincing
  • Scalable

Once these things are taken care of I start focusing on the audience for the specific business or industry. The audience for a company that manufactures and markets water pumps would be totally different from the audience for a company selling fashion accessories. Even the language differs. But almost all the clients want

  • Better search engine rankings
  • Better response on social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter
  • Good conversion rate

Not every business requires a blog. Not every business requires informative articles. Some businesses require blog posts, some require informative articles, some require case studies, some require Facebook and Twitter content and some require email marketing content. The content writing differs from channel to channel.

If a business wants to target people on LinkedIn the content should be business-oriented. It should be data driven. You don’t find cute-cat and cute-dog videos on LinkedIn but you will find plenty of them on Facebook and even serious businesses find themselves indulging in such activities (done properly there is nothing wrong in it). Real-life examples are used to refer to problems and offer solutions.

Whether my clients are aware of this or not, most of the content that I write I write for engagement. I keep it interactive as much as possible. In order to achieve that, I constantly keep in mind what my client’s customers or clients would find useful, informative and if it can be helped, interesting. For instance, there is a private investigative agency for which I write content on an ongoing basis. In different blog posts I talk about different facets of investigation work, what sort of efficiency is required, how privacy is respected and what all it takes to be a competitive investigator whether it is private investigation or corporate investigation. You need to educate your customers and clients because then they feel empowered and their need to feel empowered helps me decide what sort of content I write for a particular business or industry.

Writing content in the age of social media

Writing for social media

Frankly whenever I write about social media deep inside my heart I know that I’m actually talking about social networking. You see, social media would be something like YouTube or even a blog publishing platform like Tumblr because it is media content prepared by people.

So the actual topic of this blog post would be “Writing content in the age of social networking” because it means writing content mostly for social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – there is a difference. But since people mostly use “social media” even for the just-mentioned social networking websites, I have created the topic using the more popular term. With this out of the way, I’m feeling much relaxed.

Writing content for social media is a bit different than writing content for your own website or blog.

Social media thrives on buzz. This is because there is too much of it. On an average an update doesn’t stay in front of your audience even for a few minutes unless you pay to promote your updates. There are only three ways you can grab attention:

  • By frequently posting new updates (content)
  • By posting interactive content (conducting polls, surveys or seeding interesting discussions)
  • By paying money

Frequently posting content on social media

In order to remain visible as much time as possible you need to post multiple times, but make sure you don’t end up creating meaningless clutter. If you post too much content without providing value your updates become like white-noise – people stop noticing them. Remain relevant. Provide compelling content. Post a mixture of images, videos, text and links.

Since I’m a content writer I’ll focus on the writing part…how do you write for social media? It goes without saying that you create shorter updates. If you are posting on Twitter keep the scope for retweets and create your posts accordingly. Use direct words that are to the point. Make sure that your content writing for social media has the following attributes:

  • Relevant, useful and interesting
  • Easy to understand and easy to share
  • Conversational and engaging
  • Encourages people to act (Like, Retweet, Respond, Share or comment)
  • Relevant to audience interest, time and to an extent, geography
  • Useful and interesting

Your content doesn’t always have to be original. You can curate content from other sources, but make sure you regularly post some unique content from your own website. For instance, if I want to promote my content writing services on social media I can go on posting useful and informative content writing tips from other websites but in between I should also post content from my own blog because ultimately I want to generate traffic for my own website rather than constantly sending it to other websites.

Posting interactive content on social media

What exactly is interactive content?

Instead of posting useful information you hold conversations with your audience. This way you keep them engaged and the more they engage with you, the better they remember you. You can keep asking them questions. You can seek their opinion. You can hold surveys and polls. You can even hold contests although this is discouraged by Facebook if you specifically hold them to garner “Likes”.

The basic thing to keep in mind while writing content for social media is engagement. You need to constantly engage your audience by remaining in front of it. For this you need to be useful, relevant, compelling and of course, regular.