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How do I write content on very difficult topics?

What makes a content writing assignments difficult?

There are two ways a content writing assignment can be difficult.

The topic is totally alien. I have no clue what even the title means. I don’t feel like asking the client because then he or she will get uneasy thinking that I may not be able to write.
The topic is familiar but no good information is available on the web. The current content published by other authors doesn’t impress me. The research data is not there.

Very few times I have had to turn down the assignment because it was too hard for me to take up. I can’t even remember.

Yes, I remember recently I turned down an assignment not because it was difficult, but because I thought the client was writing it better than I could. She sent me an outline which in itself was exceptionally written. Once I explained this to her, she agreed, and she was also impressed by my honesty.

Anyway, coming back to the topic, with a little bit of research, I can find the needed information and do a job that meets my standards. But sometimes, the topic is completely out of my league. How do I handle such topics?

Here are a few things I do:

Remind myself that this is not the first time

Starting writing on a difficult topic is the most difficult. It’s because you don’t know what to write. You don’t even know how to begin. How do you write the first sentence? And if you cannot write the first sentence, how do you bring yourself to starting to write?

Have I been in such situations before? Multiple times. So many times I have felt that I won’t be able to complete a content writing assignment because it is too difficult or the information available is too little, but by the time I’m through with the document, it turns out to be a great job.

When I cannot begin, I remind myself that. I remind myself that I have been in such a situation innumerable times. Somehow, I just need to start and once I start, I will finish. As far as I can remember, this has always worked. I cannot recall the occasions when it has not worked. In fact, even right now I’m going through the same phase. I need to start working on an e-book which I’m finding difficult. I need to start writing it. But I know that once I start, I will be able to complete it.

Start preparing an outline

This might be an extension of the above point, but preparing an outline always helps. I start writing random words and sentences in bullet points. This works both at psychological level as well as practical level.

I tell myself: at least I’m doing something. I’m not wasting my time going through social media timelines or spending time on another wasteful activity. I’m working on the project. If I need to write 1500 words, I have written 50 words. That is some work done.

When you’re randomly thinking, lots of useful thoughts come to your mind. If you’re not putting them down, you often lose these thoughts. When I’m randomly writing sentences and words, I’m preserving the thoughts that are coming to my mind. These thoughts can then be used to write the complete piece. Otherwise, once lost, these thoughts rarely come back.

Sometimes these notes are so precise that I simply need to expand them and by the time I’m done with that, I have completed my project.

Have a system to save research material

This is a long-term strategy but over the years, I have collected so much material using OneNote (Evernote before that) and Google Keep that once I start going through it, there is not a chance when I don’t get a new idea or when my thoughts don’t get unblocked.

I’m not saying I always get the information that I need from my saved notes, but they get my motor started.

The gist is, start writing. After a while, it starts coming on its own.

14 ways to make positive impact with your content writing

1. Always keep the interest of your readers in mind

Nobody wants to read your personal journal, unless they derive something out of it (inspiration, or some insight, or an example). People want to read something useful. Something that can help them. Something that can make their life better than it was before they started reading your blog post or article.

If you want to make a positive impact with your content writing, always write what interests your readers. Try to find what they want to know, and then tell them. This will keep them coming back to your website or blog.

2. Craft the title of your web page or blog post with care

This is a technical aspect of writing and publishing impactful content. Title is something that draws people to your link.

When they come across your web page or blog post title on search engines or on their social media timelines, they should immediately be able to know what you are offering. This means, your title should never be ambiguous.

For example, the title of this blog post tells you 14 ways to make a positive impact with your content writing. So, if you’ve been looking for something like this, you want to check it out immediately.

People have different opinions on how long your title should be, but it depends on exactly what you are trying to say. Two things are important when you are creating a title for your blog post or web page:

For SEO purpose, your title must be 50-65 characters, including spaces. This is because these are the number of characters (maximum 70) that Google shows when it shows your listing on search result pages and the rest it truncates.
People should be able to understand your title within a single glance. If they need to make an effort to make sense of your title, they’re going to get distracted and they may not read the rest of your blog post or web page.

3. Make your writing mobile friendly

Write shorter sentences. Divide complex sentences into smaller, multiple sentences.

It makes it easier to read and grasp on mobile screens.

The same holds for paragraphs. Write short paragraphs. Not more than two sentences per paragraph.

Again, this is less about the quality of your content writing and more about paying attention to technicalities, but you cannot hope to make a positive impact if people find it difficult to read your content and consequently, leave without reading it.

4. Organize text under headings

Headings make your writing scannable. One can understand the gist of your web page or blog post by simply running through the headings.

Headings are also good for SEO. Use your long tail keywords when writing your headings.

5. Write for people who have a shorter attention span

Don’t take it negatively. Life these days is full of distractions. As I’ve written above, lots of people access your content on their mobile phones.

While reading your content, they will get constant notifications. They might be traveling. They might be in the midst of a conversation. They might be waiting for their doctor’s appointment.

The thing is, the amount of attention is limited these days whether people read your content on their computers and laptops, or on their mobile devices.

Make this assumption when you are writing content.

You don’t have to lower your writing quality. There is no need to dumbify your text.

As mentioned above, use simpler sentences. Use direct language. Stick to the point.

6. Convey your important point as soon as possible

Since the attention span is limited these days, there is no use beating around the bush. You don’t need to build up a narrative unless you are creating an interesting story.

By the time people are through with your first paragraph, they should know what you’re trying to communicate through your content writing and what they are going to achieve after they have read your blog post or article.

In terms of a business website, suppose you want to sell an e-book. As soon as people come to your website, people should know what information is contained in the e-book and you are selling it, and not offering it for free. These points must be made clear in the beginning preferably, in the first sentence itself.

7. Do keyword research to use the right language

When I say keyword research I don’t mean you need to stuff your writing with your keywords to improve your SEO.

Yes, you need to use your keywords strategically, but if you know the right keywords to focus on, it improves your language and the way you convey what you need to convey.

8. Back up your claim with data from credible sources

Data is very reassuring. If you tell someone that 72% B2C content marketers attribute their marketing success to the quality of their content, your readers will find it easier to believe you if you let them know that you have taken this statistic from Content Marketing Institute.

If you mention in your blog post that by 2021 content marketing will be a $400 billion industry it’s better to let your readers know that you are getting this number from Forbes.

9. Don’t underestimate the visual aspect of writing content for business marketing

Just because I am writing about content writing, it doesn’t mean we should overlook the importance of incorporating visuals into your overall message. Visuals are highly effective.

Visuals not only help you present your ideas attractively (if you are using graphs and pie charts), they also provide a brief relief to people. When they are reading text, and suddenly they come across a visual, it distracts them for a few seconds and they need to refocus. This helps them focus better.

Make sure that the images and graphics that you use are relevant to your current topic.

10. Write in a conversational style

This may sound like a clichéd (oft repeated) piece of advice, but it is very easy to end up ignoring it when you are in the thick of your creative things.

Write the way you talk.

It doesn’t mean if you talk in monosyllables you also write in monosyllables, but make your writing conversational. Whenever possible, use first person.

When you’re writing for a business, especially when you are writing for your business blog, try to use “you” and “I” instead of “you” and “we” unless there is reason to use “we”.

A good thing about writing in a conversational style is that you will avoid using big sentences and bigger paragraphs. Usually when we talk, we use precise sentences. Also, we don’t use complicated words when we talk.

This makes your writing easier to read and instills in it an easy flow.

11. Empathize with your readers when writing content

Convey it to your readers that you can understand or you can relate to what problems and issues they are going through.

Suppose you’re writing a blog post about an SEO tool you have just developed.

Talk about the problems people may have faced while using other SEO tools. Tell them that you understand the importance of improving their SEO and how their business depends on better search engine rankings. Concur with them that they face tough competition and they need a convincing tool to improve their SEO.

12. Know your readers properly

It is also called defining an ideal persona. This will tell you whom you are writing your content for.

13. Clearly define the propose of your current blog post or article

Of course the long term propose is that you want to engage, and then consequently, build a loyal following of readers/visitors who repeatedly visit your website or blog and takes your word seriously.

The short term propose could be a mix of

Educating your readers about a particular topic concerning your business.
Publishing content people would like to share.
Increase information wealth of your website or blog.
Getting more subscribers for your newsletter.
Improving your search engine rankings for a particular search term.

14. Use real-world examples

Want to show how your SEO tool actually helps entrepreneurs improve their search engine rankings?

Talk about a real-world example. Tell about a real business. Capture screenshots of current rankings of that business and publish them. If possible, mention the link of the website. Try to get a quote from the owner, or the person who used your SEO tool to improve the SEO of the website.

Why it is important to make a positive impact with your content writing?

Sustainable business is all about building relationships. It is not about tricking people into coming to your website and then leaving it up to them whether they want to do business with you or not.

It is very easy to trick people into coming to your website. If you can remember, they used to have banner ads with a monkey running left and right and you were asked to click the moving monkey with precision, making you believe that it was some sort of game. All it did was, take you to the advertiser’s website. On the website, something totally unrelated was being sold and whatever was being sold had nothing to do with a moving monkey or not even with a game.

Although these days most of the businesses don’t go to that extreme, still, one way or the other, they’re playing the monkey trick on the visitors by tricking them into visiting the website.

It’s all about numbers. If you have lots of money to publish tons of junk content just to draw traffic from search engines and social media websites, some of the traffic may convert. If one visitor converts out of every 1000 visitors, then maybe bringing 1,000,000 visitors to your website can get you 1000 customers. This is the logic used by spammers.

Can you really get 1,000,000 visitors to your website? On an ongoing basis?

On the other hand, if you publish impactful content, out of those 1000 visitors, maybe 50 or 100 people will convert, or even more. This is a much better conversion rate. Also, more sustainable and repeatedly doable.

This is because when people find quality content on your website they trust you.

Writing that is meant to make a positive impact also draws targeted, focused traffic to your website or blog. For example, people who come to my website or my blog either need a content writer or they want to read about content writing.

Although video marketing is also content marketing, since I’m a writer and I don’t provide video marketing services (at least not a dedicated service), I don’t aim to draw traffic for this keyword (or any other that does not involve content writing vis-à-vis content marketing). This saves me lots of effort, lots of time, it also improves my conversion rate. People know what they are getting when they come to my website or blog.

So, to make an impact with your content writing, focus on your core topics, focus on the needs of your readers, and even if you publish fewer blog posts and articles, only publish relevant, meaningful and useful content.

5 Content Writing Tips to Win Over Your Customers

Why do you need to read about content writing tips to win over your customers?

Interesting question (patting my own back here). Many people actually want to read, and should read these content writing tips because although they are writing and publishing lots of content on their website and blog, they are not getting customers. Why is it so?

This is because many people want to use content writing without understanding its real meaning. They get confused.

You see, taking a shortcut is a natural human proclivity so it isn’t like, people are nasty. It just happens. Even if I didn’t know how important content writing is for winning over your customers I would do all sorts of silly things assuming that they are the right things to do.

In fact, so much junk content was being written to win the SEO game that Google had to come up with updates like Panda and Penguin to weed out content that was published solely to get better search engine rankings. Again, I’m pretty sure that most of the people indulging in such activities weren’t even aware that they were not right practices. Many were prompted by their the so-called “SEO experts”.

If you don’t follow these tips (the tips that I have listed here) then you run the risk of spending lots of time and money on a wasteful activity. No matter at what stage of content writing and content marketing you are, even if the harm is done, it can be undone.

Why content writing plays an important role in getting you more customers?

To be frank, there is a trust deficit on the Internet. Not everybody is out there to get your money, but many people are. Also, since there is practically no entry barrier when it comes to setting up shop on the Internet (you can do it practically free), there are many “businesses” that are not businesses.

One of the greatest reasons why you need content writing to get more customers is that advertising is growing less and less effective. As you must have experienced yourself, people don’t want to see ads – even you don’t want to see ads when you’re looking for information or when you are entertaining yourself. People even use ad blockers these days to make sure they don’t encounter ads.

Continuous content publishing, on the other hand, helps you establish relationships. This is because, effective content writing means providing solutions to people’s problems. When do you use the search engine? When you are looking for some information. Even when you want to buy something, even when you want to hire a service, you look for things in the form of a question, something like “is there a content writing service for my boutique?”.

Continuously writing and publishing content in today’s context means providing solutions to people’s problems. If you can consistently solve people’s problems (directly, or slightly indirectly, pertaining to your business) they begin to trust you, and when they trust you, they do business with you.

Also, there is lots of noise on the Internet and your important messages tend to get lost. People’s attention span has come down drastically. This means you have to constantly be in front of them. Your updates should constantly appear in front of them. There must be some way you remain on their radar. When they need something they should know that you provide that thing.

Tips for writing website content to win over your customers

Your website content should be all about helping your customers. The more you help them, the more you get them. A good example would be the Open Forum Blog maintained by American Express. The multinational financial service doesn’t use Open Forum to promote its business directly, but indirectly. The forum is full of useful information for business executives and managers. The information is so good that it can be used to build an entire business. This information and its usefulness generates goodwill for American Express. People who use this information to grow their businesses and careers, when they need financial services, whom do they choose? Of course American Express.

You may think that American Express is a very big company so it can afford to experiment with various forms of marketing. But this sort of success through content writing can also be achieved at a micro level. Just follow the tips below.

Provide answers to people’s questions: Everybody has questions. There is a complete website dedicated to questions – Quora.com. If your prospective customer wants to improve his search engine rankings he will be probably looking for “how can I improve my search engine rankings?”. Provide this answer. Giving answers builds trust. It helps to solve people’s problems. When you solve people’s problems they like your content writing. When they like it, they appreciate it. When they appreciate it, they readily do business with you. This way you your business gets new customers.
Focus on SEO content writing: On this webpage titled SEO article writing service I have written that there is no such thing as “SEO content” because every piece of well-written content is actually “SEO content”. Nonetheless, you have to take care of your SEO while writing content. Here are a few links that you may like to check out to improve your SEO content writing: 10 tips on how to write SEO content for your website; 5 content writing tips to improve SEO; and 5 ways to beat your competitors at SEO with content writing. Improving your SEO with effective and quality content writing is very essential to bring targeted traffic to your website.
Write consistently and regularly: Content writing isn’t a one-time affair. Millions of webpages and blog posts are being crawled and indexed and, ranked, every day by just Google. You can easily imagine how much content is being published and how much content your content writing has to compete with. If you don’t do content writing regularly, you will be left behind by your competitors because many of them are doing content writing regularly. When you write content consistently and regularly you increase the probability of covering all your topics and also increasing your overall keyword density. Plus, Google likes to index fresh content regularly.
Write longer blog posts and articles: Actually, this is a part of writing SEO content. Google and other search engines these days prefer blog posts and articles over 1000 words. To make things difficult for people who just want to spam search engine results without working hard. If you do some research you will notice that longer blog posts and articles rank higher compared to shorter ones. I would like to stress again that getting good rankings is very important because unless you get your prospective customers to your website, how are you going to make them do business with you? Although there are many other ways of getting your prospective customers to your website (PPC campaigns, for example) the most effective way of getting them over is through effective and passionate content writing.
Talk about benefits and advantages instead of features: Your prospective customers couldn’t care less about how great your product is. What is in it for them? Is it going to solve their problem? Is it going to give them what they want? Is it going to make their life easier? If you want to win over your customers your content writing should focus on benefits and advantages of your product instead of cryptic features. You may like to read Online Copywriting: difference between features and benefits.

Here is another very important point that I missed: create realistic personas before writing your content.

Personas are the profiles of your ideal customers and clients. People will react to your content according to their mental state, their financial state, their age, where they live, what professions they are in, whether they have kids or not and sometimes, what gender they have. If you have a clearly-defined persona laid out in front of you, you can target your content writing in a better, effective manner.

These content writing insights to get more customers for your business are not all-encompassing. I may have missed out a few great tips. But these tips can give you a head start. These tips will stop you from taking a wrong direction.