Tag Archives: Content Writing

Content writing is just a tiny part of content marketing, but the most important

No, I’m not saying this because basically I’m a content writer. It really is the most important.

Today in the morning I wrote an email marketing content for one of the clients. The kind of message they wanted to convey in a most convenient manner could only be written. They have hundreds of images on their website. They also have many videos on YouTube. But these images and videos wouldn’t have done the trick. Only written content could.

There used to be a time when everything was text. Then came images. Then came video. Then came images and videos. Then images and videos kept on coming. Images and videos are still coming.

While content writing is a potent tool when you want to communicate and strike up a rapport with your prospective customers and clients, images and videos can make a greater impact because everything is presented before you visually. You can just sit back and watch, view or listen.

Besides, in images and videos, you can actually show things happening rather than talking about them happening. As goes the clichéd proverb in the world of writing: show, don’t tell.

So yes, these days, content writing is just a tiny part of content marketing. But this tiny part is still a big part. You see, everything comes down to writing. Whenever you say something, it’s basically writing, its text. Whenever there are words, there is content writing.

Besides, when people come to your website you cannot simply bombard them with videos and images. Videos and images are complementary. Content writing, though, a seemingly tiny part of content marketing these days, takes the centerstage.

Content writing is easier (provided you know how to write convincingly) – you just need a keyboard and a basic text editor or if you prefer, pen and paper – whereas images and videos always require some sort of an extra device. I’m not downplaying them because these days creating a video is just a matter of using your mobile phone but still, if you want to sell your bonsai plant you cannot just click a few photographs or record a video and then upload. You have to describe your bonsai plant. Through your words you have to touch the right chords. You have to explain the process. Your pricing needs to make sense. Your choice of seeds and the species of the plant need to make sense. You do this with content writing.

So yes, this is the age of images and video but still, when it comes to the core of content marketing, content writing still rules the roost. It is not going anywhere. It is here to stay.

How to repurpose old content

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Repurposing old content means creating different versions of the content that already exists on your website or blog. Do you have many blog posts and articles already written on your website? Have you gained all the benefit that you could have gained from the content you have written or generated so far?

It is a necessity that you constantly need to write new content. You can also use your existing content to create new content. This is called repurposing your old/existing content.

Suppose you have a blog post that you wrote a couple of years ago that was received very well by your audience but right now it isn’t getting much attention may be because it is old or maybe people have moved on. The information contained within that blog post is still valuable. What do you do?

Here are a few things you can do with that old blog post in order to repurpose your existing content

Create a slideshow of the main points – People love slideshows created in PowerPoint and other presentation tools. Extract the main points of your old blog post and then create individual slides from those main points along with attractive visuals. Then distribute that slide’s repurposed content.
Rewrite the blog post with a new perspective – Wisdom is eternal but there are always new ways of making use of that wisdom. Technology has changed in the past two years (since you wrote that blog post). Even the way people do content marketing has changed. Why not rewrite the old blog post by adding more information, updated information to it?
Create graphic visuals of important portions – There might be many important portions – a paragraph, a couple of sentences – that you can take from the blog post and combine them with related images and then create graphics. Then you can upload those graphics to Pinterest or simply share them on Facebook and Twitter.
Post important and impactful sentences from the old blog post on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

These are just a few ideas that you can use to repurpose your existing content. You can come up with many more according to your niche.

How to measure the success of your content

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Many people wonder how to measure the success of their content, especially when they have to spend money and time on getting content for their website or blog.

Just like any other aspect of your life, success can be measured in terms of tangible returns. The success of your content is not as esoteric and vague as it is made out to be by some content writers and content marketers. Solid results can be obtained from your content and the metrics of success can be as clearly defined as in any other marketing field, or for that matter, even better.

Whenever you need to measure the success of an event or an effort, you need “before” and “after” data. If you haven’t yet started your content marketing and you haven’t yet started publishing content on your website or blog, you must make note of your current situation. Gather data on

How much traffic you are getting from search engines
How much traffic you are getting from social media and social networking websites
How much traffic you are getting from your email marketing campaigns
How many people are subscribing to your email updates on a daily basis
What is the engagement level on your website (how many people leave comments on your blog posts and online forums)
How much time people are currently spending on your website
How many back links you have got
How much you are part of conversations happening on other websites and blogs
How your primary and secondary keywords are performing right now
How many business queries you are getting on a daily or weekly basis
How much business you are generating currently

The list can have more attributes but this can give you a fair idea of the data that you should make note of before beginning to publish regular content on your website or blog and initiate your content marketing strategy.

Unless due to some fluke or unless you have got a ton of money to spend on marketing, your content won’t give you success in a few days or even a few weeks. You will have to observe the performance of your content for a few months before you can see the signs of success.

What are the signs?

Content marketing is very scientific whether one realizes it or not. The sort of content that you publish on your website or blog is going to decide how success manifests.

Depending on what sort of content you use in your content marketing strategy you may experience more traffic from search engines, more people talking about your brand on websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, more people clicking the links in your email marketing campaigns, more people linking back to your website or individual webpages, more people spending more time on your website and eventually, more people doing business with you.

The greatest measure of success of your content is that people begin to trust you. They begin to recognize you. People trust you if through your content, you deliver value and they perceived the value of your content.

After publishing content and using the available channels to distribute your content you will need to revisit the 11 metrics mentioned above and see if they have improved or not.

Has your search engine traffic increased?
Has traffic from social media and social networking websites increased?
Are you getting more clicks from your email marketing campaigns?
Are greater number of people subscribing to your email campaigns?
Has engagement on your website or blog increased and its quality improved?
Are people spending more time on your website?
Compared to the time when you had just started your content marketing, has the number of back links to your website or blog increased?
Are more conversations taking place about your website or your brand on other websites and blogs?
Has search engine traffic for your primary and secondary keywords (keywords that you are using in your content) increased?
Are you getting more business queries on daily and weekly basis?
Has your overall business increased ever since you started content marketing?

I would say, if the answers to even 2-3 questions above are yes, it can give you enough data to measure the success of your content.

What essential skills should you have as a content marketing copywriter?

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As content marketing goes mainstream it is becoming more and more difficult to stay ahead of the pack or to use another cliché, stand out. Since everybody seems to be using content marketing to promote business people tend to think that it must be quite easy. Yes, it is easier and more economical compared to native advertising, but just because you can run your content marketing strategy practically for free if you have got lots of time to spend on it, it doesn’t mean it comes easy. Companies like Coca-Cola are spending billions of dollars on their content marketing. The more businesses use it, the more difficult it gets to compete.

So naturally, the content marketing copywriter needs to have exceptional skills to give your business the sort of leverage it needs. Surely, content marketing doesn’t just mean writing stuff. It also means creating high-quality videos and visuals but since I am a content writer by profession, I am more interested in the writing part rather than the video and graphic part.

This Content Marketing Institute blog post by Neil Patel lists 5 essential skills that a content marketing copywriter must have in order to perform well.

Undoubtedly, copywriting is a big part of content marketing because whenever there is marketing and selling, there is copywriting. You should know how to put your point across convincingly and compellingly. You should know which words to use to convey which emotion and for what effect. According to the blog post written by Neil, the essential content marketing copywriting skills are

Great writing skills that allow you to create easy-to-read content and organize your ideas in order to make complex topics simple and convincing.
An ability to create trustworthy and compelling headlines.
Awareness of user experience.
Authority and specialization.
Awareness of the only marketing fundamentals and an ability to tailor content accordingly.

Always running out of content ideas for your content marketing? Social media might be the answer

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One of the biggest challenges faced by content marketers is constantly coming up with relevant and valuable content writing ideas. In order to succeed in content marketing, you need to churn out high quality content almost on a daily basis (in case you face lots of competition). How do you generate so much content? In one of my previous blog posts I have touched upon the topic in a post titled 10 tips to write high-quality content extremely fast. One of the 1^st points discussed in that blog post is that you should always be on the lookout for good content writing ideas on social networking and social media websites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and so says this LinkedIn post.

The writer of the post ominously, but rightly, says, “The longer it takes to write a blog post, the lower your ROI. Improve your process!”

What’s that process? In the context of this LinkedIn post, it is the process of coming up with great content writing ideas on an ongoing basis. When you embark upon your content marketing strategy, initially it may not seem such a big deal because you might be bubbling with new ideas. But as you begin to publish daily or even on a weekly basis, you run out of topics and then you need to devise a way to get hold of new topics.

The above LinkedIn post primarily talks about researching on LinkedIn in order to find content writing ideas, but you can use all the platforms available to you. In fact, you can also use Google alerts.