Tag Archives: Content Writing

What is data journalism and how to use it for writing compelling content?

The image shows a stream of data depicting various social media websites

Using data journalism for better content writing

By now you must have come across the term “big data” multiple times. As goes the old saying, “the devil is in detail”, data, if analyzed properly, can tell amazing stories.

Data journalism means using data to put your point across. Don’t get confused by the term “journalism” because when we are reporting about our business, when we are providing information about our business, we are all being journalists.

When you use data in content writing, it increases its credibility.

60% of online marketers publish at least one new blog post everyday. 70 million blog posts are published every month just using the WordPress platform.

This Forbes report says that (published on May 21, 2018) 90% of the data the world has right now has been produced in the last two years alone.

With so much content, how do you stand out?

Taking example from the above Forbes report, suppose you want to present some information about social media, you can use these stats:

Snapchat users share 527,760 photos
More than 120 professionals join LinkedIn
Users watch 4,146,600 YouTube videos
456,000 tweets are sent on Twitter
Instagram users post 46,740 photos

Unless you are in the habit of saving such bits of information, it may take you lots of time to gather these numbers.

Compiling such numbers and presenting them in a blog post or an article is data journalism.

You back your claims with numbers. Just as above, instead of saying millions of blog posts, I have used 70 million blog posts. It gives you a number.

When you apply data to “thousands of people are buying our cough syrup”, it becomes “1,53,000 people bought our cough syrup in January 2019”.

Similarly, if I apply data journalism to my own content writing service:

Without data:

“I have helped hundreds of businesses improve their conversion rate with my content writing and copywriting services.”

With data

“8 out of 10 businesses were able to improve their conversion rate by 150% within 6 months of using my content writing and copywriting services.”

Moving away from content writing and content marketing for a few seconds, I find the concept of data journalism fascinating because these days, journalism (I’m talking about news journalism) is more about opinion and propaganda and less about stating facts. So, when people must use data journalism to convey stories, it would be very difficult for them to indulge in opinion-making. Data doesn’t lie.

Back to content writing and content marketing.

Infographics are the best examples of using data journalism.

Why data journalism gives your content writing an edge?

Researching and finding data and then weaving a narrative around it isn’t stuff for the fainthearted.

It isn’t even cheap.

Even to write a small blog post you may have to scour the Internet for a few hours not just to gather data, but also use some tool or some method to make sense of it.

Whenever a trend or a technology emerges everyone wants his or her share of pie and hence, the place becomes crowded and consequently, you need to stand out so that people can distinguish you from the others.

If everyone is using content writing and content marketing, you need to present your information in such a manner that it draws people to your website and gives them something interesting to think about.

Numbers always fascinate people. Data reaffirms the information they are absorbing and gives it a solid shape.

Besides, a certain degree of expertise is needed to use data journalism for content writing. It gives you an edge.

How to write content for voice-activated devices

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Content writing for voice-activated devices

Here is how to write content for voice-activated devices or voice search:

Write your content in the form of questions and answers.
Write your content according to the trigger words like why, when, who, where, and so on.
Optimize your writing for Google’s featured snippets.
Use simple words and smaller sentences.
Format your text to look its best on mobile layout.

Content writing is fast becoming “Voice-First”. Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, Google Home, and Amazon Echo are all examples of technologies that use voice as a primary source of information exchange.

Voice-activated or voice-controlled devices are everywhere these days. You can use even your phone with voice these days (Google Assistant, for example). If you’re using Google Voice, you are using a voice-activated device.

But there are some dedicated voice-controlled and voice-activated devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home. These are smart devices. These are also a big part of “Internet of Things”. They exchange data between each other. They fetch you information from the Internet.

Just in America, 53 million people have some sort of smart speaker. According to comScore, 50% of the searches will be voice searches by 2020. 30% searches will be without screen by 2020, according to Gartner, which means, you will speak into your device and the device will speak back to you.

In terms of content writing, if you want to write content for voice-activated devices, it means writing content in such a manner that when someone speaks a query into a smart speaker like Google Home, it can quickly retrieve the information from your website and then convey the information, through voice, to the person searching for the information.

If it is simply going to read the information from your website, what’s the big deal about specifically writing content for voice-activated devices? What’s the difference?

Well, first of all, when we are speaking, we don’t speak very long, complicated sentences.

We use short phrases. The language is conversational. It is to the point. We don’t beat around the bush otherwise the listener gets confused. The question is asked, and the answer is given with as little fuss as possible.

When you interact with a voice-activated device, it takes your audio input, turns it into text and then uses that text to fetch information from the Internet, turns the textual information into voice and then plays the voice to you.

This happens within a second, so you don’t realize all this transformation happening in the background.

Should content writing for voice-activated devices be different from regular content writing?

It depends on what you call regular content writing.

Even when you are writing without taking voice-activated and voice-controlled devices into account, you should stick with simple writing, shorter sentences, and paragraphs that express just a single thought.

This has two benefits:

Your text is easier for people to read.
Search engine ranking algorithms find it easier to process your text and hence, you enjoy better search engine rankings.

By nature, and by passion I am a writer. I prefer to let myself lose without bothering about how my text is going to sound, as long as it sounds fine to me. I don’t mind using complicated sentences and complicated words. Ideally, I couldn’t care less how search engines interpret my text as long as it is loved by my readers.

But we don’t live in an ideal world. When I’m writing for my content writing clients, I pay close attention to writing in simple language.

Simple language doesn’t mean dumbifying the content. It means avoiding using 10 words when 5 would suffice.

Remember when people were having two simultaneous versions of their websites, one for mobile phones and one for desktops and laptops?

These days most of the websites have liquid layouts: the same website readjusts information according to the screen size. This saves us from having multiple websites for multiple screen sizes.

The same should be applicable in content writing. When you are writing content for your website or your blog, you shouldn’t have to write different copies for human readers and for voice-activated devices.

Take for example this blog post. You can read it easily. Even the voice-activated devices shouldn’t have any problem reading and voicing the text on this blog post.

Whether you are writing for voice-activated devices or for human readers, write as simply as possible.

Listed below are a few things you can keep in mind while writing content so that it is easier to read by voice-activated and voice-controlled devices.

People use conversational queries when using voice search on voice-activated devices

People use “find me someone who can fix my sink” instead of “plumbing services”. Or “plumbing services near me”.

It has been observed that when people type their queries, they use smaller search terms but when they are talking into their devices, they use longer sentences.

Now that I’m writing this, I’m thinking that above I have written that when optimizing content for voice-activated devices you should focus on smaller sentences.

That still holds. Smaller sentences and simpler words are not just easy to listen to, they’re also good for your search engine rankings.

Optimize for featured snippets

Some time back I wrote a blog post on how to optimize your content for featured snippets, though, there is no exact way of doing it.

Here is the blog post: Google’s Featured Snippets: How to rank at #1 with strategic content writing.

Google often uses search results with the featured snippet box for a quick answer to your query.

As more and more people use voice search featured snippets will get more prominent.

This is because the featured snippet text is already available to Google and it can straightaway read to you the information from it instead of first having to visit the website, fetch the information and then read it to you.

Provide answers to questions

Most of the search queries for voice search use trigger words such as how, where, what, when, why, who, the and can. Given below is a small visual taken from seoClarity that lists the percentage of trigger words used for voice search.

Percentage of search engine queries for voice searches

For example, people would search for “how do I reach Sabarimala from Cochin?” or “how do I find a professional content writer for my business website?” or “best content writing service for my website”, or “where can I find a restaurant that is open at 11 PM?” or “who is the best travel agent in Timbuktu?”

Also, prepare a comprehensive FAQs section because this is a section where you can optimize your writing in the question-answer format.

Concluding remarks on writing content for voice-activated devices

The advice that I give for search engine optimization, I also give for voice search optimization or for writing content for voice-activated devices: don’t overly worry about optimization, just focus on providing good content in easy-to-read language.

Easy-to-read language keep people focused. Search engine algorithms find it easy to interpret and then rank.

Develop a habit of writing in the form of questions and answers. This is because, what does a query mean? It means asking a question. Provide the answer, the best possible answer.

5 ways content writing improves and promotes your brand

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How content writing improves and grows your brand

In this blog post I’m going to explain how your branding and content writing are inextricably connected.

You must know someone who purchases an iPhone despite it being way more expensive than an equally good mobile phone from another company.

Some people want to be seen jogging in the Nike or Reebok shoes.

You say, “I want a Xerox copy” instead of “I want a photocopy”.

You say, “Google it”, instead of, “search it”.

All these instances and references are manifestations of a strong brand presence.

You have a strong brand presence when people buy your product less for its features and more for the emotional and psychological connection that they feel towards your brand.

Here are a few benefits of branding:

It makes it easier for customers and clients to recognise your business.
Advertising is easier because people are already familiar with your name and what you represent.
You get a competitive edge in the market mostly due to the reasons mentioned above.
It is easier to introduce new products because people are already familiar with your products and have a positive association with them.
It increases customer and client loyalty because if people trust your brand, they are more likely to buy from you repeatedly.
You enjoy greater credibility because through your branding you have invested in establishing a relationship with your customers and clients.

You can promote your brand both at macro and micro levels. You don’t have to be a Google or an Apple or Reebok to have a strong brand presence.

Branding also works for you if you are a small business because, branding is basically a positive association that people have with your business. Whenever they come across your business name, your logo, or one of your products, a positive emotion is triggered. This is branding.

Improving and promoting your brand with quality content writing

Quality content writing and brand improvement are inextricably related, especially on the Internet, especially when you have a limited budget.

When writing content for your website or blog, it is often advised that you tell stories. People love to read stories about how others improve their lives using your products and services. It is reassuring. It helps them make a connection. So, a big part of content writing must be highlighting stories of other people doing great due to your business.

Your brand can also be highlighted by encouraging influencers to write testimonials about your business. Influencers are like celebrities. They are known within their circle. People want to be seen with them. People want to be associated with them.

What if you don’t have stories? How can you build your brand through content writing if you don’t have stories to tell?

Help your visitors as much as possible.

Share your wisdom and your knowledge through regular content writing.

Remember that quality content writing helps your brand when you are not constantly promoting your brand. The promotion and improvement of your brand through quality content writing must happen as a byproduct of the helpful content that you continuously write and publish.

Listed below are 5 ways quality content writing can improve and promote your brand:

1. Content writing improves brand visibility especially on the Internet

Visibility is very important. If people don’t come across your business how do they do business with you?

Quality content writing increases content wealth of your website or blog and this in turn improves your search engine rankings. Not just search engine rankings, since you provide valuable content, people like to share your content on their social media profiles, increasing your visibility in the process.

The key is, valuable content. If your content doesn’t satisfy the needs of the people who come to your website or blog, it becomes counter-productive and instead of increasing your visibility, it begins to decrease your visibility and even begins to get your negative visibility.

2. Content writing encourages people to connect with your brand on an ongoing basis

When you regularly publish quality content on your website or blog it draws people to your brand on regular basis. When your content helps people, when it solves people’s problems, even when it entertains them, it repeatedly brings people to your website. This increases brand exposure and people become familiar with your brand.

Again, positive association is must.

3. Content writing improves your search engine rankings and this in turn helps your brand

You want your content to be found for good reasons. I want to be found for “best content writer” and not for “lousy content writer” or “sloppy content writer”. This is one.

Two, they should know that I’m competent. When they are looking for content writing-related information, something like

Why quality content writing improves your SEO?

will bring them to my website and they will begin to recognise Credible Content with authoritative information on quality content.

Hence, good content should increase your search engine rankings – improve your SEO – for the right search terms and this in turn helps your brand.

4. It helps you send out emails without spamming

Worldwide, 293.6 billion emails are sent out every day, according to this Statista webpage dedicated to the corresponding piece of information. By 2023, 4.3 billion people will be using emails on regular basis. According to this link, when you send out an email campaign, the average CTR on desktop computers is 13.3% and on mobile devices, 12.7%.

What I’m saying is, if you want your brand to reach out to your target audience, sending out regular emails is still the best option you have got.

But, email is notorious for spam. This is where quality content writing can rescue you.

By regularly publishing high-quality content on your website or blog you get enough material to broadcast your email campaigns. You can provide highly useful information through your email campaigns and instead of avoiding your messages, people will be waiting for them.

5. Content writing allows you to promote your brand for different stages of your sales funnel, differently

A great thing about content writing is that you can publish highly unique content for different stages of your sales funnel and consequently, promote your brand for different user needs.

Here is a typical sales funnel:

Importance of content writing throughout the sales funnel

As it happens with every sales funnel, the biggest group you can attract is the one that still needs to be educated and made aware of your business. Content writing targets this group separately without pushing products and services and just focusing on educating and providing information.

Then you can have different content for people who are interested in your business. Although they are aware of what you do and how you can help them, they still need to decide in your favor.

People are distracted. They are constantly being approached by your competitors and even if not by your competitors, then by thousands of distractions on mobile phones and the web. Even when they have decided to do business with you, they may get distracted and end up doing business with someone else. A strong brand connection through highly focused content writing can keep them from going away.

When people have purchased from you, you want repeat business from them. Content writing and brand building for this section is different. People have already gotten a taste of what you can deliver. You need to keep reminding them without bothering them. They are the ones who become your loyal customers and clients and fall in love with your brand.

Concluding remarks on building your brand on the strength of quality content writing

At the crux of every successful branding effort lies an ongoing interaction with customers and clients. No business can become a brand without an emotional connection.

Quality content writing that focuses on user needs instead of branding needs creates multiple channels for interactions and consequently, forming positive associations with your business.

Content writing for humans means better SEO

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Write content for humans not for machines

There is lots of talk about content marketing and content writing for humans. What does this mean? Aren’t we always writing for human beings? We’re not writing for cats and dogs, are we?

There is a reason why content writers and content marketers, and even SEO experts, advise you to focus on humans when writing content: most of the people seem to be writing for search engines because they believe that the most important thing to do is draw traffic from search engines.

Search engine traffic is important. If you don’t get targeted traffic, unless there is another channel that sends tons of traffic to your website, you are not going to get customers and clients. So, it goes without saying that focusing on your SEO is one of the most important marketing responsibilities you have while promoting your business online.

The problem is, improving SEO with content writing can turn into an obsession or an addiction because it gives you a high that in many cases, can be instant – it’s instant gratification. You have just published a blog post or an article and there you have it, it is already showing on the first page of search results. How thrilling.

Search engine ranking algorithms are past that stage when you could trick them into giving you better rankings. “Tricking”, though, doesn’t work these days and most of your content is ranked according to its quality and relevance, a majority of people still believe that SEO can be improved merely by including keywords without paying attention to the quality and relevance of the content being written.

Hence, the need to write content for humans and not for the ranking algorithms.

What is the difference between content writing for humans and for machines?

Again, I’m not saying everyone does that (because there is a higher level of awareness regarding this now) but while trying to improve search engine rankings, people often forget why they are writing. All they are bothered about is, improving their search engine rankings for their preferred keywords and search terms.

This image gives you an example of how people try to “optimize” their content for better SEO

The image demonstrates text in which someone goes overboard with optimization

Going overboard with optimization

Source.

What does content writing for machines mean?

Content writing for machines means writing simply to improve your SEO. It may or may not work, but here, your primary focus is to weave your text in such a manner that the search engine algorithm finds your text appealing and consequently, ranks it well.

It involves repeating your keywords a couple of times in the title of the web page for the blog post and then copiously using various keywords as simple text as well as hypertext, mostly indiscriminately throughout the body text.

Does it work?

Personally, I’m not sure. Sometimes in the search results, I’ve seen this working, but personally, I have never been able to benefit from it. My content ranks well only when I write well.

It isn’t advisable and it is strongly discouraged by reputed search engine experts, but still, you may find many search results that are of no value but are full of keywords and ranking well.

Why isn’t content writing for machines advisable?

Why do you want search engine traffic? You want people to come to your website or blog. Why do you want that? You want them to do business with you.

Do you think they are going to do business with you just because they are on your website or do you think they need to be convinced?

Have you ever spent money on a website where you cannot make sense of what is written over there or somewhere you don’t feel convinced?

I don’t think so.

Similarly, if you are merely focusing on improving your SEO and in the process, neglecting the quality and the relevance of your content, although you may get traffic from search engines, this traffic is not going to convert.

This is where content writing for humans plays an important part.

What does content writing for humans mean?

When you write content for humans, you focus on the message, you focus on the quality and the relevance of what you are writing rather than obsessing over SEO.

When you are writing for humans, you don’t completely ignore the SEO part, but your primary concern is to make your content engaging and meaningful. You want to provide useful information to your visitors so that they can make up their mind about doing business with you.

You spend your effort on quality. You do lots of research. You pack as much useful information as possible.

Then what about SEO?

If you simply focus on the subject at hand, your search engine rankings are automatically improved.

People are constantly asking questions to search engines (something like, “looking for the best content writer for my business”) and the job of the search engines is to provide the best answers to people.

Search engine ranking algorithms are constantly being improved to achieve that. The mathematicians and computer scientists working on these algorithms don’t want to be tricked into believing that something is good when it is not.

But at the same time, they want their algorithm to be able to recognise text patterns and calculate how important that piece of content is for a keyword.

Balancing between writing content for humans and machines

This can be achieved by writing your content primarily for humans, but at the same time using the language that they use with search engines.

For example, if you are looking for a professional content writer and if I want you to be able to find my link on Google and then come to my link and after reading what I have published, you should consider doing business with me, I should focus on talking about my abilities as a content writer rather than advising you on how to become an author like Shakespeare.

Although, maybe I’m trying to convince you that I’m as good as Shakespeare and hence, you should hire me as your content writer, and there is nothing wrong in presenting my services from that angle, your primary focus is not someone who writes like Shakespeare, but someone who can write professional content for you that can help you grow your business.

The point is, if I want to generate traffic from people who are looking for a content writer, then obviously I should have lots of content talking about content writing, content writer, SEO writer, SEO content, content marketing, and such, because this is how Google figures out that I have lots of content for these terms.

But I shouldn’t obsess over these terms just for the heck of it. I should carefully choose topics that talk about these search terms in a manner that they convince you that I’m a better content writer than someone else.

Why there is a need to constantly write and publish such topics?

Compulsion.

Personally, I feel I have covered whatever I needed to help people decide whether they want to hire me as their content writer or not.

As new content emerges, old content is pushed down. If new content is not published on the website, it begins to lose its search engine rankings no matter how exceptional the content is. Search engines like Google prefer fresh content, and fresh content on an ongoing basis.

Hence, I try to publish new content every week. But, though, I need to publish content regularly, it doesn’t mean I do it with total disinterest just as a chore. I take full interest. I pay special attention to the fact that if you are reading this, you are learning something, you are benefiting from it and you are able to implement my advice on your own content writing if you want.

This is how I maintain a balance between writing content for humans and the machines.

How Internet of Things is going to affect content marketing, especially content writing

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The image shows a picture of Internet of Things

Content writing for Internet of Things

Internet of Things – IoT – is a network of appliances, gadgets and electronic devices that can send signals to each other, interpret data from each other, and then do stuff accordingly.

For example, as you approach, the things inside your house can detect the settings of your mobile phone app. The air conditioning temperature can be set according to your preference. If you prefer to take a bath, the water temperature is adjusted accordingly, on its own. Certain lights can be switched on. Even the lock on your door can be unlocked, if that’s what you want.

It isn’t just that. Your refrigerator can place an order for a can of milk at your preferred online store if it detects that you are running out of milk.

This way, devices and appliances connected to the Internet of Things can automatically take care of lots of things in the background while you go about your own routine.

Yeah, I know, if you’re reading this in maybe 2030, you must be wondering why I’m writing the obvious, but this is not 2030 when I’m writing it, it is 2019.

Where does content marketing and content writing fit into all this?

This ReadWrite blog post explains how IoT is going to affect content marketing, since I provide content writing services, I need to talk about this from the context of content writing.

The blog post refers to a Gartner study that says that by 2020, there are going to be 20.4 billion IoT devices, worldwide.

The success of your content marketing depends a lot on targeting. And what helps you in targeting? The data.

The development of the Internet of Things means that people are not just accessing your data from their mobile phones, computers and laptops. They are using different devices.

For example, someone may be accessing your set of instructions (for example, you provide recipes) from his or her Amazon Echo or Google Home placed in the kitchen.

Talking about Amazon, the company is planning to connect everything from microwave to your kids’ toys through the Internet of Things technologies.

Up till now people have been accessing your content – even your written content – through their computers and laptops or at the most, tablets and mobile phones.

Although the big shift towards using mobile phones is still happening, a greater number of people are accessing your content, reading your blog posts and articles and webpages while jogging or taking care of the kitchen chores.

That is, they are listening.

They are listening, and to retrieve information, they are talking. They tell their device what they want to hear instead of typing in a query.

The Internet of Things, especially when it comes to interacting with them, is usually a very personal affair, and this is why, plain, branded and business content doesn’t do well with the IOT experience.

The content needs to be personal and above all, highly valuable and useful.

The biggest strength in terms of writing content for IOT devices is the data that they provide enables you to tailor your content exactly for the situation your prospective customer or client is.

For example, an IOT device can tell you the current activity someone is engaged in – driving to the grocery store, passing by a restaurant, holidaying in a resort, sitting in the bed, waiting in a line or sitting in the park. You can tailor your content to completely suit the situation of your audience.

This blog post on Read Write gives example of pillows connected to the IOT network – the pillows can send give you data about the sleeping pattern of the person using them. You know when he or she goes to bed and when he or she wakes up. So, you know if he or she is an early riser or a late riser and accordingly you can tailor your content for that specific user. This sounds creepy, as an example.

As a content writer, my main focus is voice-enabled devices that accept questions and provide answers, for example, a chatbot or a knowledge base.

Ultimately, it all boils down to writing lots of useful content and simple, straightforward language, especially language that is used by your core audience.