Category Archives: Content Writing

Use content writing to solve customer problems

Content writing to solve customer problems.

For a couple of days, I have been trying to make MS Word switch on the “AutoSave” feature. This is a good feature: automatically saves every keystroke to OneDrive.

I tried to have a conversation with their “Virtual Assistant” and it kept throwing mega-long URLs at me according to what I was typing in the chat window. After that I talked to a human support provider. I did what he advised me to do and spent 40 minutes. The problem persists.

I haven’t had much time to get this sorted but having ready-made answers to customer problems saves time from multiple angles. I would suggest Microsoft to have shorter URLs. Non-tech savvy people get intimidated by long cryptic URLs.

You can use content writing to provide answers to most of the questions your customers may have. This way they don’t have to waste their time trying to explain to a support executive or your chat bot what’s troubling them.

As a content writer I often write the FAQs section for many clients. This is a good place to use content writing to solve customer problems.

I have observed that most of the clients want to create the FAQs section keeping SEO in mind. This is not a bad strategy but if you completely focus on SEO, your FAQs section doesn’t help your customers much.

Even if you solely focus on solving customer problems through FAQs, it is going to be good for your rankings.

How does content writing help you solve customer problems?

In many ways.

I have already written about the FAQs section above. In the FAQs section, through engaging and compelling content writing, you can cover every possible question your customer may have.

Creating an FAQs section shouldn’t be a one-time affair. In fact, I would suggest you set up your CMS in such a manner that people responsible for maintaining your website are able to add questions and answers on the fly.

Each time your support staff comes across a question from one of your customers that hasn’t yet been answered on your FAQs section, the question and the answer must be immediately added to the section.

You can also write lengthy trips in the form of blog posts and “Glossary”. I have a content writing glossary on my website. Right now it isn’t as comprehensive as I would like it to be, but I have started compiling content under it.

You can have a similar glossary on your website, describing all the terms that people need to know before and while doing business with you.

When you are writing and publishing content to solve customer problems, do keep in mind that you write everything from the perspective of your customers. There is no need to be defensive.

When I’m writing about different content writing topics, my main concern is to tell my visitors how my content writing services can help them

Improve your SEO.
Increase conversion rate.
Improve level of engagement on their website and blog.
Carry out effective email marketing campaigns.
Increase their content depth.
Publish fresh, helpful content on an ongoing basis.

I also share lots of content writing tips with them.

Even when sometimes I commit mistakes or have unfavourable experience with my clients, I write about them because I know such content helps my clients.

The more helpful content you write for your customers, the more cared they feel, and the more cared they feel, the more loyal they become to your business.

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.

How to write an effective cold email?

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How to write effective cold emails.

To be frank, I have never written a cold email for myself. I have written many for my clients – I’m still writing a couple for a client in Italy.

They are highly recommended. Even for my own business I have been advised multiple times to use cold emails.

Even LinkedIn has a feature that allows you to send “cold” messages to your contacts.

Here I am going to discuss some effective ways you can write cold emails.

Write a clear, convincing subject line.
Use the name of the recipient in the greeting (definitely).
Introduce yourself in the smallest possible sentence.
Immediately come to the point.
Use small, direct sentences.
Avoid being pretentious.
Politely ask to get back.

What is a cold email?

Updating on August 22, 2020: In more refined form, sending out cold emails is also called an “outreach strategy”. Many companies are running their own outreach programs in the wake of Covid-19 to generate more leads and get more business opportunities. Here is a nice blog post on Outreach Tips by Rand Fishkin.

Cold email does not mean you refrigerate your laptop for some time and then write an email on it.

A cold email is an unsolicited email message that you send to someone without having contacted that person before. It is like approaching someone in the crowd and the person is not expecting you. Or knocking at someone’s door to sell something.

It is like the cold calls that annoy you all the time. The big difference is, unlike cold calls, you are not forced to pick up your phone to check who is calling. The email message remains in the inbox and you see it when you check your email, unless, you have set up a noisy notification for new emails.

Is cold email spamming?

Cold emailing is a prominent part of email marketing. Though, there is a very thin line that divides cold emailing and spamming. They are different.

In spamming you send out email messages relentlessly, using a cheap email broadcasting server.

Somehow, you get hold of a large number of email ids. You have no idea to whom these email ids belong. You think that if you send your promotional message to 20,000 people, at least 50 may respond and since sending spam is quite cheap, you may get a good ROI.

I’m not saying it works, but most of the people think that it works.

In most of the countries, spamming is illegal. The Russian spam mafia is notorious.

The moment it is detected that the spam has originated from your server, the IP address of your server is blacklisted by the email clients like Gmail. They have very advanced technologies these days to detect spam messages even by analysing the subject lines. There are already millions of blacklisted IP addresses.

In cold email, you send one email message to one person. You send a personal message. You know who that person is.

For example, I visit your website and notice there are many mistakes in the text. Being a content writer, I can help you write better content for your website and blog. I find your email ID and I write to you. I give you some examples of how I have previously written for similar websites.

Similarly, I come across your profile on LinkedIn. I read about you and find out that you are a real estate agent or a realtor. You have a website that can use a better content writer. The past year I have written for many real estate agents and realtors. Hence, I write an email to you introducing myself and offering my service.

This is, non-spam, cold emailing. I know who you are. After reading my email, you will know that I am a content writer. You know why I am writing to you. There is clear communication. Then, it is up to you whether you want to take that communication forward or not.

Does writing cold emails work?

I have mentioned above that even LinkedIn encourages you to send cold messages. They call it their “InMail” feature. I get lots of messages from my LinkedIn contacts.

As traffic on my website is gradually picking up, many people send me pitches for guest posting. Since I already have a link on my website and blog that encourages people to contact me, although these are cold email messages, one way or another, I am already expecting them.

So in this case, I can say that the cold emails that people send me often work. I know in most of the cases, well, in all the cases, they are looking for backlinks, but they also help me save time by giving me quality content for my blog.

Coming back to the topic, cold emails do work. Since most of the people who use them don’t know how to draw a line between writing effective cold emails and spamming, cold emailing gets lots of bad rap and people are wary of using them and receiving them at both ends of the spectrum.

In this Inc.com article, the writer, Larry Kim claims that his response rate is approximately 1 in 5 with cold emailing, which is higher than the traditional email marketing response rate.

Personally, I believe there should be no reason why cold emails shouldn’t work, provided you send them with a sense of purpose. The key is, what approach you follow.

Before I talk about how to write effective cold emails, I’m assuming you are going to write the emails to people who can actually benefit from your proposition.

Writing effective cold emails

Recently I was reading a copywriting book by Robert Bly and many of the suggestions can be applied to sending cold emails. He says that the most important task is making people pick up your pamphlet, read the headline and then proceed towards the body text.

You need to follow the same approach when sending cold emails.

The importance of the subject line when sending effective cold emails

You must come up with the subject line that prompts people to open your email message. If they don’t open it, they don’t read it. If they don’t read it, they don’t respond to it. If they don’t respond to it, there is no use contacting them.

Hence, without getting too dramatic, the subject line of your cold email is a matter of life and death in the context of your email. So, spend a lot of time figuring out what subject line you’re going to use.

There is no definitive subject line that you can use, but be as specific as possible.

It will take some time for you to finally settle on the right subject line. For example, what subject line would I use if I send out cold emails?

Some of the ideas that come to my mind are:

“Need a content writer for your website?”
“Introducing my content writing services”
“Hello, I can write content for your website”
“I can improve your SEO with my content writing”
“Some suggestions for the writing mistakes on your website” – use such subject lines carefully.

There is no need to be dramatic because dramatization may confuse the recipient. Clearly specify what you’re offering.

Writing the main copy of your cold email

If you cannot personalise your cold email, don’t send it. Just don’t.

Hence, always greet the recipient with his or her real name. Even if you have to make an extra effort to find the name of the person, find it, and then use it.

Remember that your cold email is not a marketing message. It is a one-on-one interaction. You are bringing up something. Of course, you’re promoting your product or service, but since this is a personal message you need to be tactful.

Introduce yourself as clearly as possible. Don’t use a very long sentence. Preferably, in a single sentence, tell the person who you are and what you do.

Then, in the second sentence, tell the recipient why you are writing. It needs to be a genuine reason.

For example, if I am sending out a cold email, first I am quickly going to tell that person that I am a content writer. Then I will tell the recipient that there are certain things that I noticed on his or her website and thought of contacting.

Every content writer has a different style. When I write emails, I don’t want to impose my opinion on anyone. I want the other person to make his or her own decision and I apply the same approach when I’m writing cold emails for my clients.

Keep your writing style conversational. Use some references to convince the other person that you have actually gone through his or her website and are writing a personal message and not merely using a template.

60% of the email writing must be about what the other person is going to gain by associating with you. Don’t focus too much on problems. Focus on solutions. Focus on benefits.

In conclusion, in a couple of sentences, you can talk about your experience, the number of clients or customers you have served and how you have been able to benefit the others.

In the end, ask the person to contact you.

Concluding remarks

Writing effective cold emails is all about making a personal connection. You shouldn’t mass email cold emails because then they become spam.

Just because you have got someone’s email ID doesn’t mean you should be sending emails to that person. Maybe he or she doesn’t even remotely require your services.

If you are a content writing service, should I be offering content writing services to you? Of course, if I need to partner with you or collaborate with you, there is nothing wrong in that, but I shouldn’t be offering you my services for YOUR website.

How to be courageous when writing content for your business

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How to be courageous when writing for your business.

When you are writing for your business (or when your content writer is writing), you want to play safe for obvious reasons. As it is you want to attract clients. If you piss off even those clients who are interested in doing business with you, this is not a good content writing and content marketing strategy.

In his latest update, Brian Clark asks, Are you a courageous content creator?

By being courageous what he means is having the courage to go against the tide. It means doing your own thing whether people agree with you or not. It means not giving in to pressure and sticking to your ground provided you are sure of what you’re doing.

How do you apply this attitude when writing content for your business? How do you become “courageous”?

When you are writing for your business, don’t always try to please your customers and clients. The purpose of writing for your blog or your website is to inform and engage. Give them the right information even if it means, at least at that moment, they decide not to do business with you.

For example, there are some clients who don’t need my content writing services.

A few months ago, a client sent me a “rough draft” to improve. The draft was so well written that I thought it would be a travesty if I meddled with it. I told the client that she shouldn’t get the draft written by me as she herself had written it so beautifully. She just needed to make a few changes here and there and it was perfect to be published.

Initially the client disagreed simply because she thought that she is not a trained content writer and she mostly deals with software. A good thing was, she trusted me as a writer and when I told her that her initial draft was quite well-written, she acquiesced and decided to publish it on her website. I lost an assignment and as a result, some money, but I had the satisfaction that I had been honest with the client.

Coming back to the original topic, how to be courageous when you are writing for your business? Since I don’t mean to write a lengthy post, here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Believe in your abilities to deliver and write with that mentality – it will show through your writing.
Don’t avoid disagreeing with popular belief. For example, I don’t believe that you necessarily have to publish very lengthy blog posts for better search engine rankings. Just focus on quality and regularity and your organic search engine rankings begin to improve.
Always come up with something new, not just for the heck of it, but because you have some good ideas to share.
Be yourself.

Some good thoughts to ponder when you are writing content for your business website or business blog.

7 ways you can use content writing for better brand awareness

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7 ways you can use content writing for better brand awareness.

Brand awareness is an important segment of your overall business strategy. It’s the extent to which your potential customers and target audience are familiar with your brand. Naturally, you want to raise your brand awareness to a higher level and ensure you’re reaching a wider audience. Content writing is one of the best tools to help you reach this goal.

Using content writing to boost brand awareness is a great strategic move you need to consider using. If you’re not sure how to do it, just keep reading. Here are the best methods for using content writing to increase brand awareness.

Let’s take a closer look together.

1. Establish a Brand Personality

Before you even start writing and go deeper into your content writing strategy, you have to think about your brand.

How do you want to represent it? What do you want from people to think about it?

It’s important that you establish a brand personality before your major content writing efforts. This will ensure uniformity across all platforms you’ll be using.

Establish a brand personality by defining:

your tone & voice
your style of writing
your identity & traits

Try to define your brand as if it was a person, and make this a foundation of your content writing strategy. Then, stay consistent in your brand personality in everything you write.

This will help your target audience understand you, embrace you, and recognize your content.

2. Use Blogging

If you know anything about content writing, you know blogging is one of the strongest tools that you have to own.

Blogging gives you a chance to reach out to your target audience and build a relationship with them.

Diana Adjadj, a marketer and writer at Best Essays Education, agrees: “Your content writing strategy should heavily rely on your blogging strategy. The two are inseparable and have to go hand in hand together.”

There are two ways you should use blogging to raise brand awareness:

In both cases, make sure that you:

write posts for your target audience
provide valuable information
serve as a credible source of data and facts
cover trending topics from your niche
write interesting, relevant content

Blogging is a great way to get organic traffic, build brand awareness, and expand your audience.

3. Rely on Storytelling

If you want more people to learn about your brand, and share it with their friends, you should rely on storytelling in your content writing.

You may also like to read: The importance of storytelling in content marketing.

Storytelling is great for building firm bonds with your target audience and deepening your relationship. It makes them feel emotionally closer to you, which is the recipe for success.

Share stories such as:

how your brand was established
people behind the brand name
fun acts
inspirational team members stories
customer stories

Give them something more personal and revealing to make your brand even more human. The further you go from your image as “just a company” or “just a brand”, the better.

4. Socialize

Social media is powerful. Today, almost every brand has a social media account on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

You may also like to read: 5 ways to make your content social media friendly.

You shouldn’t be an exception.

Social media allows you to aim your content writing directly towards your target audience. All you have to do is take the right steps:

create interesting social media posts
reply to comments and messages
get involved in discussions within your industry
communicate with other brands

Your social media presence can win you a huge number of new followers. It also creates additional space for you to show your brand personality, as we’ve discussed in point 1.

5. Team Up With an Influencer

Influencer marketing is flourishing. Brands team up with people who have a large audience and get them to promote them.

But, there’s more to influencer marketing than you think.

Here’s what you need to have in mind:

choose an influencer from your niche
make sure it’s someone your target audience likes
make sure you agree with all their public attitudes, opinions, and their ideology
choose an expert, celebrity, blogger, or anyone who could win you more audience

Neightan White, a blogger and contributing writer at Supreme Dissertations, says: “Once you choose an influencer to promote your brand, you’re linking your brand to everything that person says or does. Choose wisely and make sure you preserve your brand personality.”

6. Use Visuals

When we’re talking about content writing, we have to mention the power of visually appealing content.

Naturally, what you write is more important than what it all looks like. But, visuals have far greater power than just making your content look better.

Visuals can turn your content around and make it:

appealing
dynamic
entertaining
memorable

Images, videos, GIFs, and infographics are there to support your content and make it richer. They will make your content worth sharing and thus more popular.

Use visuals to add more appeal and value to your content. It will skyrocket your brand awareness.

7. Watch Your Competitors

Your brand needs to be unique and stand out from the rest. And the only way for you to do it is to know what everyone else is up to.

To raise brand awareness, you need to:

identify your competitors
keep an eye on their content strategy
understand their plans and goals

Once you know all this, you’ll be able to think of something new, fresh, and different. And that’s what your target audience is going to appreciate.

Final Thoughts

Raising brand awareness is a task you should constantly work on. From one level to the other, use content writing as a tool to help you improve.

Use the tips we’ve shared above and start working on your content writing strategy. Focus on raising brand awareness and give your target audience a reason to love you even more.