What exactly is “content”?

We are constantly using terms like content marketing, content writing, content strategy, SEO content, social media content and so on, but what exactly is content?

People who write think that what’s written (text) is content. Those who produce videos think that videos are the content. The ones who deal with images think that it’s the images that make a major chunk of content. So if you have a blog where you’re constantly writing about your business the text that you have written for your blog is content for it. If you’re posting videos that are somehow related to your business, your products or services on YouTube then it’s video content. If you find your muse on Pinterest than images are your content. What you have written on your homepage, the images that you have used and if you also have animations and videos on it, they all constitute content. The product descriptions and service descriptions are a part of your content and so is your company profile and the “about us” section.

Everything existing on your website that communicates with your visitors, conveys something, elicits some response, is content.

Why am I writing this?

Because people don’t take content seriously enough. They think they require content only to improve their search engine rankings so for them, content means publishing informative articles and blog posts. This is why they want to pay pittance to content writers and this is why content writers are ready to work for pittance: both have no idea how important content is.

You lose at 2 fronts if you don’t take your content seriously or if you don’t understand properly its significance:

You don’t optimize your existing content
You wrongly optimize the content that you get created for better rankings

So in the end you aren’t exactly gaining anything.

Have a close look at the content that you have on your website and this means, all the pages and not just blog posts and “SEO content”. Even streamlining your existing content can significantly improve your conversion rate and search engine rankings.

Writing educational content doesn’t send your business away

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A couple of years ago I wrote for an accounting company. I had written their primary content (homepage, services, etc.) but the website wasn’t generating much traffic. The problem was not with SEO because you cannot optimize beyond a particular point if there are just 12 pages on the website and there is already lots of competition. I advised them to create a blog but they were clueless regarding what they would publish on the blog considering it is an accounting firm? They didn’t want educational content on their blog because they thought if they educate their visitors they might start maintaining their own accounts resulting in loss of business.

I told them that first, there was nothing wrong in publishing educational content because if it were this easy to maintain accounting almost everybody would do it (lots of educational content already available on the Internet) and second, even if they end up losing 1-2 odd clients, due to traffic increase and better engagement they will be getting many new clients. I gave them my own example: I write lots of content on content writing and content publishing but still I get business. The vertical content that I write convinces my clients that I know what I’m doing. The more I talk about my business the more convinced they get. On the contrary, if I don’t write such content, my business decreases and this has been the case with many businesses.

Since it was a new idea they were reluctant, understandably. But they weren’t anyway getting much business from the website so I asked them what would be the harm? This made sense to them and they asked me to go ahead. The next problem was, making them pay me for the work I was going to do despite the fact that they weren’t sure whether it was going to benefit them or not. I don’t do free work so I told them to take their time and when they were ready they could contact me again. After a couple of months I got an email from their representative and they were ready to pay me for 20 blog posts.

They wanted me to start with their most competitive terms and phrases around which I was supposed to create the blog posts but I told them that it would be better if they started with the least competitive terms. When writing content for the purpose of increasing traffic I always follow the bottom-top approach. Target the least competitive search terms first because it’s easier to get content from them with little effort. As you begin to get traffic, increase the scope and start including the more competitive words.

Anyway, here I’m not talking about whether to target most competitive search terms or least competitive search terms, here I’m talking about writing educational content.

I started with generic topics like what difficulties a typical firm faces while trying to hire an accounting service and how to overcome these difficulties. Why should you hire an accounting service rather than managing accounts in-house? What are the meanings of different accounting terms and what are their implications on your business? Why is accounting important for your business and why your business cannot do without accounting? What is the history of accounting? How did accounting evolve?

Some of the topics that I covered even accountants of the firm hadn’t thought about. After I had written 20 blog post for them they didn’t see any improvement in the traffic but they liked the topics that I was covering so much that they commissioned me to create 40 more blog posts. By the time they had published around 50 blog posts they started getting queries. The person who wrote me was thrilled like a kid. Once we had published more than 100 blog posts (my frequency was publishing 4 blog posts every week) they started getting one query from their website almost daily. Although not regularly, on and off I still write for them and they are doing brisk business from their website. All because of the educational content they didn’t want me to write.

Writing content in the age of social media

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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.

How I write content for the so-called boring industries

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A good thing about being a professional content writer is that you have to also write on many topics, subjects and themes you don’t find very attractive and exciting. You can always say that don’t take on assignments that don’t excite you but then this would be highly unprofessional and also escapist. Just because I find it difficult to write about a particular industry I can easily brand it as “non-exciting”. And once you start going down that road, there is no end to it. So as long as you think that the business is ethical, it provides the value it promises and it deserves to be promoted whether you want to write content for it or not, you should take up the assignment and give your best.

For more than a year now I have been writing for a real estate agency in Florida. When they approached me for the first time my initial reaction was, “What would I write for a real estate agency? All they want to do is help their clients buy and sell properties.”

Content marketing, at least not in every case, doesn’t mean direct selling. You can give credit to the copy of the listings that you may create for the real estate website, but the inherent purpose of content marketing is building your business a platform from where you can promote/showcase your products and services, and make your brand more recognizable. In the case of a real estate website, this means that you can delve into lots of interesting themes without talking about property rates and individual property details (I’ve discovered they too can be written in an interesting manner).

Whether you’re writing content for a sexy business niche or a drab one, you closely need to pay attention to the following:

Are you educating your readers?
Are they in a better position to move onto the next stage of buying or selling after reading what you have written?
Can you draw in people who, even if not directly, yet, ready to sell or buy the product or service being promoted on the website, are very much interested in the topic and would like to keep a tab on the industry? In the context of the above-mentioned real estate website, I recently wrote if the Federal Reserve interest rates would have a direct or indirect impact on the real estate property mortgage industry.
Can you relate to the stakeholders?

The last point is very important and it can help you instil a sense of excitement and drive into your content writing process (if you decide to write your own content, that is). Let us again use the real estate example.

A real estate agency would like to get as many clients as possible (whether the properties involved are being purchased or sold). It can be greatly exciting for the real estate agency to get new clients. It must send their pulses racing whenever a new query comes in.

Similarly a person looking for a good real estate property deal will be very excited if the guidance provided by your content enables him or her to make a profit or save money. Focus on that and no matter how boring an industry seems, you will be able to write interesting content for it.

Very Happy Diwali to all of you

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Diwali is popularly known as the “Festival of Lights” because the entire country is lit up and you can see India brightening up even from space if you’re fine with believing the images that go viral after the festival. But the light party is just the celebration part of it. What is the real reason? Why do people celebrate Diwali?

Again, according to the popular myth it is the day when Lord Ram came back to Ayodhya after completing his exile of 14 years and after having beaten the Demon King Raavan. It took Ram and his entourage 20 days to come back to his kingdom and this is why the festival is celebrated 20 days after Dusshehra — the day when Raam slayed Raavan.

Since India is a highly diverse country people in different regions of the country celebrate Diwali for different reasons but the main reason according to the ancient Scriptures is the one I have written above.

People also clean up their houses and business premises to welcome Goddess Lakshmi who represents wealth, prosperity and well-being.

Just like Christmas, it is become a common festival and people of all religions celebrate and enjoy.

May this Festival bring you lots of joy, happiness, success, health and prosperity.