Category Archives: Content Strategy

Very simple content writing strategy for startups

Simple content writing strategy for startups.

During the Covid-19 times, lots of on-demand services startups have approached me for my content writing services.

They understand that only through-high quality, informative content, they can increase their visibility in this crowded space.

Understandably, most of the startups don’t have the budget for getting lots of content written and published.

As a result, either they end up choosing inferior content, doing more harm than good, or they abandon their project (as was my experience recently with one of the startups).

When it comes to startups, I try to be as accommodating as possible, but I must confess that during the times of the pandemic, I need to maximize my time on moneymaking projects.

Previously I could squeeze some time for less paying assignments but right now, it is becoming increasingly difficult.

Of course, there are some startups that are backed by big businesses and consequently, they have enough financial resources for high quality content writing but most of the startups are hard pressed.

This becomes a vicious cycle. How do you break the cycle?

Typical problems faced by startups and how they can be solved it quality content writing

Some problems faced by startups include

Fierce competition

Startups are big into hot markets.

As I mentioned above, due to Covid-19, there is lots of demand for home delivery apps.

Since there is lots of demand in this sector, everyone who can build an app or who has some idea of how to deliver optimally, is considering a startup, or in the process of starting up.

This gives rise to lots of competition.

For innovation, competition is good.

Competition is also good for customers because they have a greater choice.

But, it creates lots of problems for new entrepreneurs.

Big ideas are slaughtered at the altar of relentless competition.

How can content writing help you withstand competition?

Develop a unique voice.

Write in a manner (or get written in a manner) so that you stand out.

Write content about topics that are relevant to your startup idea but not many people are writing about them.

Offer a different perspective on a highly debated topic.

Take a stand.

I know, for a business, especially for a startup, taking a stand can be a risky proposition, but it can also pay you dividends if it works in your favor.

Communicate to your core audience daily through your blog and social media.

As I recently wrote, don’t worry about how long your blog posts should be.

It hardly matters.

Focus on something meaningful.

Center all your postings around an idea.

Believe me, there are so few people or businesses posting regularly, that even if you do this one single thing, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors.

A race against time

Time to market is very critical for every startup.

Although, how fast your programmers and developers can build a mobile app or a software application depends on your team, you can maintain a buzz, as advised above, by publishing regularly.

Don’t wait till your app is ready to download.

Perhaps, that will be too late.

Remember that it is not a mobile app or a cloud-based service you are excited about.

You are excited about the idea.

When you are excited about the idea, you can start sharing your idea without having to wait for the product.

One of your team members can closely coordinate with a content writer to publish daily.

I have learned one thing over the years.

As a content writer I need to charge less for writing and more for ideation.

Lots of time is spent on research and coming up with material to write about.

But, if someone from within your startup can prepare an outline in such a manner that this outline can be quickly turned into a quick blog post, it doesn’t take much time.

Saves you money. Saves you time.

Cash crunch

Frankly, every business, every organization has a “cash crunch” when it comes to paying for content writing.

Anyway, some cash crunch situations are real, especially when a couple of innovators are trying to launch a new startup on their own and they haven’t gotten any funding.

How do you deal with your cash crunch and still write and publish high-quality content?

The biggest problem entrepreneurs face is that they are too much concerned with writing and publishing something outstanding.

A few years ago, I worked with a startup entrepreneur and he was always so hellbent upon writing something “outstanding” that most of the time you are not writing anything.

This is called policy paralysis.

Of course, you must be outstanding in your approach but at the most basic level, people want their questions answered.

This is the easiest thing to achieve when you want to start writing content for your blog.

Since you know a lot about your startup idea you can answer pretty much every question about it.

Make a list of about 20 questions.

Every alternative day, write and publish a small answer to individual question.

This will give you lots of topics to cover.

As you write or as you get your content written from a content writer, new ideas begin to emerge on their own.

I have been writing for my blog for more than 15 years now and I still face this problem of coming up with ideas.

But the problem only surfaces when I have written for my blog for a few months (yes, undesirable, but happens) and when I restart, I can’t think of anything to write on.

Though, when I am in the midst of a few blog posts, the idea generating process is on autopilot.

If you want to use content marketing to promote your startup idea, writing high quality content is inescapable, indispensable.

It is like wanting to have a website without registering a domain name.

The good thing is, with little bit of innovation, cooperation and creativity, you can regularly publish high-quality content for your startup.

Is there a benefit of posting small blog posts?

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Should you publish smaller blog posts?

I have always believed in the concept of “something is always better than nothing”.

If there is a choice between posting a small blog post and posting nothing at all, I recommend that you post a small blog post.

What am I talking about?

Search engine experts and, to an extent, even Google, recommend that you should avoid thin content.

What is thin content?

Thin content is blog posts and web pages posted just for the heck of it with little content on them.

This Yoast post describes in detail what is thin content.

Over the past two decades, I have maintained multiple blogs.

I had one technology blog. I actively posted content on the blog for two years and it had some decent traffic.

I’m not discussing here why I abandoned the blog, but I would like to focus on what I learned.

Beyond a point, the length or the number of words in your blog post or web page hardly matter.

What matters is the information that you provide to your visitors.

I used to publish quick blog posts on the technology blog randomly, but regularly.

Someday, when I had time, I published 3-4 blog posts. Someday, I published just one. Sometimes, none.

But, in a week, on an average I was publishing 10 blog posts.

Not very big. Never more than 400 words.

It started getting good traffic, if I remember correctly, within four months.

Ever since then, a lot has changed. Even the Google algorithm has gone through multiple transformations.

Now we live in the times of longform content.

At least the concept is promoted by most of the reputed SEO and content marketing companies.

Publish 3000-4000 words, they recommend. Even 6000.

Don’t publish blog posts; publish guides.

A complete guide to this and a complete guide to that.

There is a logic, and I do understand the logic.

When you are writing about a topic, cover the topic from multiple angles under different sections.

This way, when the visitor comes to your link, she finds everything she needs to know about the topic she has just searched on Google.

I do agree: if written well, longer blog posts mean the person spends more time reading these blog posts and this lowers your bounce rate.

A lower bounce rate is good for your SEO.

It is also good for your conversion rate.

Hence, it makes sense to publish blog posts and web pages that extensively cover your topic.

But, you can’t be writing long blog posts all the time.

If you have the budget, if you have the time, sure, you can have a content calendar and you can publish 3-4 4000-word blog posts every month.

What if you neither have the budget not the time?

If that is the case, there is no harm in publishing smaller blog posts.

As I said in the beginning, something is better than nothing.

Make sure you provide value, though. That’s most important.

If you’re simply publishing rubbish, it is going to do more harm than good.

Check out Seth Godin’s blog if you haven’t already done so.

He hardly publishes 100 words.

But, he publishes everyday.

I have been observing his blog for more than 10 years now.

One of the best-known blogs on creating businesses that stand out.

Tiny blog posts.

Of course, he’s not bothered with search engine rankings.

He is a brand in himself.

He has published multiple books.

He constantly has speaking gigs.

Even when he hadn’t authored multiple books, he followed the same format – very small blog posts.

Just a single thought.

The point that I’m trying to make is, focus on delivering value.

Then what about your keywords?

What about covering longtail keywords?

I’m not saying that you always publish small blog posts.

You publish them when you don’t have time.

For example, right now I’m publishing this blog post.

I didn’t have time. But I didn’t want to miss posting an update.

An All-Inclusive Guide To Creating A Content Calendar

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Guide to creating a content calendar.

Bill Gates, Diane Hendricks, Warren Buffet, and Oprah Winfrey.

Apart from being billionaires, what is a common thread among these highly successful individuals?

The power of ‘organization’ is an enviable characteristic.

All content creators have felt the need to be a little more organized and disciplined about their schedule at some point or the other.

A content calendar does just that!

Have a schedule to prepare and plan your content posting.

Hope you’re on onboard because we’re going to find just how to do so:

Meaning & Definition

Think of it as an editorial calendar.

Like your mom plans grocery shopping, cooking, arranging, taking care of your (unnecessary) needs, and working!

You too can plan when to post your next piece on great white sharks, status updates about your upcoming music, announcing a partnership with your favorite content creator (you’ve been waiting for this but it needs some build-up!)

Other updates regarding your content and promotional activity!

Where Can I Do It

While the medium is only a means to an end, it is necessary to pick one that you’re comfortable and quick in.

Your options are Microsoft Excel, Google calendar, Google sheets, Looming, Co-schedule, editorial calendar plugin for WordPress, to name a few.

The selection of a content calendar tool depends on your team, your content, and familiarity.

Don’t be afraid to try a few to pick the one that’s best suited to your line of work.

How To Do It?

Step One – repurpose & start with what you have

Remember that old pitch you made to a brand you wanted to work with?

You can break it down into articles, personal blog posts, or videos for your website / social media handle.

Step Two – the best content will come from your friends, family, and coworkers

Setting up a workstation and traveling to look for interesting interviewees can take up too much time.

The best intimate, personal, and spontaneous moments are discovered with the people who know you the best!

Especially for vloggers and influencers, this allows you to be more productive when it comes to scheduling, marketing, and blogging, all at the same time.

While your followers get a peek into your life, you also save time chasing other people for interviews!

Step Three – creating your kind of content – find your usp

Depending on what your forte is, you should create more effective and impactful videos on your preferred medium.

Improve your social media presence by creating relevant content that strikes a chord with your audience.

You can do this in the following ways:

This involves two types of content –

Regular Content –

All types of podcasts, webinars, reports, a series of videos, etc that fall under the same theme and structure.

Your content could be entertaining, informative, or both.

Know who your audience is and keep reaching out to them by updating your content.

Regular posting – Posting every once in a week is a good lesson on how to properly update your content for SEO.

Plus, this means you can reach out to newer subscribers or followers on Instagram or YouTube.

Special Content –

Campaigns, research papers, and contests are less regular and don’t need as much posting but require more attention to detail.

Since your audience knows your stance and voice, these types of posts need more research and must be carefully planned out for release.

An example of this would be a collaboration with an NGO or an informative show.

Step Four – editorial meetings

While planning and creating content, you are likely to miss out on sitting down with your team and discussing your evolving strategies.

It is also a great opportunity to discuss pending timelines, newer product collaborations, ideas, social media activity, and feedback.

This is a good place to change and tweak your content for last-minute changes to increase customer satisfaction and improve response time before publishing.

Statistics regarding your revenue model and engagement can be discussed and brainstormed.

Step Five – have a content repository

Does your content calendar seem full of things to do and ideas to execute? That’s okay.

You will always want to take inspiration from previous experiences and moments.

A content repository is a storage, like your journal – with your ideas, thoughts, and your work – complete and incomplete.

It’s like a safe space for your work that you can come back to whenever you want to.

Step Six – make it shareable

You can edit your content calendar from time to time but let it be accessed and viewed by your team as much as possible.

Since content is never created alone, it is ideal to have the people working with you to be aware of your expectations, timelines, and deadlines.

This way, everyone works together in making sure that the best work is completed.

You can even share it with your mentors and peers, people whose feedback is important to you.

Step Seven – change is the only constant

Lastly, make sure that you update your content calendar as much as you can.

Regular updates will allow you to evolve and change your process according to the situation to target your potential customers granularly.

This way, you can also allow time for creative discussions and set aside time for ideation whenever required.

Conclusion

If there was one thing I had to leave you with, it would be this – there’s no right or wrong way to create a content calendar.

Start with a template and then commit to the realistic deadlines you set yourself for better productivity and an overall better work ethic.

Personal brand building through strategic content writing

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Building your personal brand with content writing.

What is different about writing content for personal branding?

What is content writing for personal branding?

What do you look for if you need a content writer to build your personal brand?

Personal branding is the association that people make with your name.

What sort of feelings does your name arise among people you are targeting?

What do they think about you? Do they respect you? Do they recognize your authority? Do they pay attention to what you say or what you publish?

Building your personal brand matters to you if you seek business partnerships through the power of your name and recognition.

Content writing can help you clearly define your personal branding on the web and reach your target audience through it.

In the times of Covid-19, an increasing number of people are working from home.

Many successful professionals have lost their jobs and they are eking out their own livelihood.

Previously they were using their talents and abilities for the companies that hired them, but now they’re trying to use their talents and abilities as individuals rather than employees of a company.

Personal branding through content writing

For them, building their personal brand is as important as setting up a business. In fact, for people offering their skills as individuals – for example, I promote myself as a content writer and my content writing services are basically me – it is very important that their target audience recognizes them for their talents and abilities.

But first,

What is personal brand building?

What does personal branding mean?

Personal branding has two attributes: your name and its association.

Although, I don’t want this to be my identity everywhere, in business circles, when someone comes across the name Amrit Hallan, I want people to immediately associate the name with “content writer” or “content writing” or even “SEO content”. My regular content writing helps me in this regard.

If enough people see my name enough number of times and they can recall that I am a content writer, my personal brand is established.

Even conversely, when people come across terms like “content writer” or “content writing services” or “content writing” or “SEO content writer” they should be able to recall, “Oh yes, Amrit Hallan does that!”

Of course, branding is more than that. Branding isn’t just about knowing what you do, it is also about how well I do it.

Hence, aside from knowing that I am a content writer, my personal branding means people know that I can help them improve their search engine rankings or provide them content that improves their conversion rate.

They recognize me as someone they can depend on. They respect my knowledge. They acknowledge my experience and expertise.

Famous examples of personal brands would be, if you come across Guy Kawasaki, you can immediately recall that he is an Apple evangelist, a venture capitalist and an author. If you come across Avinash Kaushik you know that he’s a data scientist.

So, personal brand building includes:

Associating a skill, a knowledge domain, some character or quality, a speciality or anything that sets you apart from the others, to your name.
Making sure that you are easily findable based on what you can deliver.
Trust factor.

Why trust factor?

When you want to get work based on what you can deliver, people need to trust you.

For example, if someone hires me as a content writer, that person should be able to trust that I’m going to deliver quality content writing.

He or she must feel reassured that once he or she decides to work with me, he or she can count on me.

Otherwise, no matter how great a content writer I am, if I’m not reliable, if lots of people have shared bad experience about me online, brand building is of no use.

Hence, personal brand building means establishing yourself as an authority in a topic or domain so that people hire you or decide to do business with you, coupled with creating your presence so that people can easily find you when they need you.

“Finding” doesn’t just mean that when people come across Amrit Hallan the expression “content writer” must immediately pop up in their minds.

Sure, this should happen. But it should also happen the other way round. When they are looking for a content writer, they should be able to find me.

Enter content writing.

How quality content writing helps you build your personal brand

Quality content writing helps you build a personal brand.

As I have explained above, brand building means associating your name with something that you can deliver, as well as associating something that you can deliver with your name.

Along with that, it should be easier for people to find you for what you can deliver.

Quality content writing helps you achieve all these.

Associating yourself with your capability through content writing

Suppose you want to be known as a business coach.

You can just write on your website that you are a business coach, you give good advice, you have helped so and so and hence, people who are looking for a competent business coach should get in touch with you and preferably, should hire you.

There is nothing wrong in doing that, but the problem is, just like you, thousands of other business coaches have similar websites.

They have more or less the same information.

They call themselves great.

They showcase their achievements on their websites.

They also have testimonials.

They also insist that people who are looking for business coaches must contact them and hire them.

In such a case scenario, you need to establish yourself as an authority in your subject. You must stand out.

Why do professionals write books?

There are many business coaches who are also authors.

If there is a choice between hiring a business coach who has published a few books and a business coach who has never published, who do you think people are going to hire?

Yes, you’re right. The business coach who has published books.

Writing and publishing a book is not a mean feat.

Just the fact that someone has completed a book tells you that the person can focus and work hard.

Don’t see yourself writing a book in near future but would like to be known as a professional in your field? You can work with a content writer to publish authoritative content on your website or your blog.

Regularly publish articles and blog posts on your website. They are as good as writing and publishing book. Sometimes, even better.

Seth Godin, for example, built his personal brand through his blog. He wrote and published books much later.

Share your knowledge. Share your insight. Help people who come to your website.

When people regularly come to your website and read your thoughts on business coaching, they begin to associate your name with business coaching. They begin to recognize your brand.

Isn’t it obvious? If you are constantly writing about business coaching and how it can help people, people begin to recognize you as a business coach.

If your advice is good, if your advice is applicable and if people begin to benefit from your advice, they begin to trust you.

They begin to talk about you. They begin to tell others that you are a business coach. Even those who have never come to your website start visiting your website.

Making it easier for people to find you for your skills through content writing

Regular content writing and publishing builds your presence.

When you publish blog posts and articles on your website, you promote them on your social media timelines. You may also broadcast them to your newsletter. It becomes easier for people to find you.

Your targeted content also improves your SEO. Your organic search engine rankings improve for relevant search terms.

It’s obvious that when people search for your name it should come up in search results along with your speciality.

But, even if someone searches for your speciality, your name must come up.

If someone searches for a business coach in a relevant field, if you provide business coaching services in that relevant field, your name must come up.

Persistent content writing helps you achieve that.

Search engines love fresh content. They also love authoritative content.

You can provide them both with regular content writing and publishing on your website and blog.

You achieve personal brand building when people are able to find you, whether using search engines or social networking websites or direct references, both by your name and by your skill.

Again, you can achieve this level of personal brand building only through regular content writing.

Why regular?

Just as you are doing personal brand building, so are other professionals in your field. Everyone is constantly catching up. This is the reality of our times.

What sort of content should you write and publish for building your brand?

Your content should be able to achieve the following if you want to build a personal brand on its shoulders

Help you stand out
Build thought leadership
Grow trust and credibility
Help you build a solid network

Listed below are a few writing tips to build your personal brand through content writing:

Write a brand mission statement

What defines you?

Who are you as a person?

What do you do and what do you deliver?

What change do you make in people’s lives?

What do you stand for?

What is your philosophy in life?

What are your values?

What can be your most valuable contribution?

Write a list of your brand content goals

What do you want to achieve with you content that will help you elevate your brand?

Do you want to raise awareness about your field?

Are you a brand ambassador of your field of expertise?

Do you want to portray yourself as a trustable individual?

Do you want people to get familiarized about your thoughts and opinions?

Write and publish content regularly

Once you have clearly defined your objective and figured your target audience, start publishing content regularly.

You can begin with explaining the various concepts of your profession.

For example, if I claim that I can help you improve your search engine rankings with my content writing services, I should be able to illustrate this ability through proper examples.

In my case, my clients get live examples because they can find my web pages and blog posts for the search term they are using.

Regularly publish your research and observations.

Talk about your interactions with other industry leaders.

Share useful information from other sources that you come across.

Remember that regularity is very important.

The Internet is quite noisy.

In fact, it is one of the noisiest ecosystems in the world.

Within seconds thousands of pages, blog posts, videos, and images are added to the web.

Amidst all that, you need to remain visible if you want to build your brand on a sustained level.

Even the biggest names begin to lose their presence when they don’t constantly write and publish content.

Be persistent. Remain focused. Share your knowledge. Prove to people that you are an authority in your field. Sustain it over a long period of time. You have built yourself a personal brand.

Factor in machine learning when content writing

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Content writing for machine learning and AI.

The search engines are increasingly being powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to this interview of Fabrice Canal, Principal Program Manager at Bing, Microsoft.

So, keywords are not important?

For a few years, keywords are going to be important because to be able to ignore the keywords completely and just focus on what your message intends to deliver, the AI will need to be much smarter.

Nonetheless, even at this nascent stage, your SEO depends more on factoring in machine learning and searcher intent and less on the keywords and the search terms.

When you genuinely want to improve your search engine rankings – mostly customers come to your website and not random searchers – you need to know the intent of your average visitor.

I will give you my own example: I publish content for two reasons:

Attract people who will pay me for my content writing services.
Attract people who would like to link to my content, share it on their social media profiles, and in general, help me spread my content as far as possible.

I keep it 60:40 – 60% of my content is for spreading information and 40% is to tell people what I can do with my content writing services.

How important is searcher intent for content writing effectiveness?

The term “searcher intent” was introduced in the wake of the BERT update from Google. It stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. It is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. It not only helps the machines to understand what the words in a sentence stand for, but also the context and the nuance.

Neil Patel on his blog gives very good “Before” and “After” examples of how the BERT update affects the search results.

The point is, the search intent of the search engine user is carefully analysed by the background AI to show appropriate results.

After all, people should be able to find information they are looking for instead of what search engines like Google and Bing think people are trying to find.

Therefore, Fabrice Canal says that the ranking algorithms at the search engines are constantly evolving and the machines learn on their own what people are searching and what search results they need.

What is search intent?

I have explained it multiple times on my website, but I will quickly recap.

Knowing the searcher intent means knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for. The search terms need to be interpreted according to their need and not according to just the words being used.

Thanks to BERT when you search for “the benefits of apple” the search engine completely ignores the Apple company which, previously, it did not. All the top results are about the benefits of eating apples.

On the other hand, if you search for “I have an apple” Google gets confused and starts showing results from various “Apple” products and reviews. It is not taking an inference from my previous search and then sticking to the fruit instead of the tech company.

Anyway, knowing the searcher intent during content writing keeps you focused and helps you write content your target customers and clients are looking for.

Again, I will come back to my own example.

Suppose someone searches for “need a content writer”.

This becomes confusing for the search engine. Is the search about the qualities that are needed in a content writer? Does it mean “I need a content writer”? Does it mean “do you need a content writer?”

Big difference. When someone looks for “I need a content writer” it is a person who needs a content writer.

When someone looks for “do you need a content writer?” question is being asked whether someone needs a content writer.

These are very subtle things, but they can have a big impact on your search engine rankings. Even if the rankings of your core content pieces don’t fluctuate much, the sort of traffic that you get may not generate you much business.

What do I do to solve this problem?

I solve this problem by writing highly targeted pages. For example, instead of trying to target something like “need a content writer” or “I need a content writer” I try to write about “content writer needed for a web design agency” or, “looking for content writer for the real estate company”.

This brings us to the discussion of using longtail keywords. These keywords or search terms may appear long, and you may think that very few people may use them, but at least these people will be clearheaded and precise.

For example, when someone searches for “looking for a content writer for email marketing” and then comes to my website, I know that the person is actually looking for someone who can write email marketing campaigns.

You will get higher conversion rate.

The topic of this post was content writing for machine learning.

Search engine engineers at Google and Bing suggest that don’t worry much about keywords. With every new update, keywords begin to matter less. What matters more is the essence of your message.

Hence, focus on quality. Focus on relevance. Focus on searcher intent.