Tag Archives: Content Writing

13 tips for writing thought leadership content

How to write thought leadership content

What do you mean by thought leadership? Thought leadership is the way you express yourself to demonstrate you have expertise in a particular field or a topic. For example, if I write lots of advice on content writing and copywriting, I display thought leadership.

Thought leaders not just have a command over their subject area, they are also passionate about their subjects. They may even be evangelists for a new way of, for example, writing effective content.

Benefits of thought leadership

Your potential customers and clients trust you more when you establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

One of the biggest benefits of being a thought leader is that you become recognizable.

Isn’t it easier to do business with people whom you know what people who are recognizable, compared to people who are totally unknown?

People are more receptive to your thoughts. Bloggers and news reporters more eagerly cover what you want to communicate. People respect you. They listen to you attentively. Your content is shared more on other blogs and social networking platforms. You are quoted more often. Your visibility increases. You seem more credible and trustworthy compared to people who haven’t worked on their thought leadership.

All these collectively help you grow your business.

How to build thought leadership through writing content?

The Rolling Stone magazine https://credible-content.com has compiled suggestions from 13 thought leaders on how to write content to build your thought leadership. Although the advice is not out of the ordinary, it is always better to revisit the age-old concepts so that you don’t forget them. Some of the advice include

Understand what your audience wants

Publish content that satisfies some pressing need of your audience. Everyone is looking for a solution. When people find the needed solutions through your writing, they respect you and trust you. They begin to believe in your thought leadership.

Write for human beings

When you are writing on the Internet there is often a tendency to write for search engine algorithms and robots. Although it is important to improve your search engine rankings even to build your thought leadership, don’t obsess. Remember that your primary target are human beings. Do whatever it takes to improve your SEO but ultimately, keep the primary focus on your human readers.

Keep an eye on the future

Everyone is worried about the future. Thought leaders don’t worry, but they are constantly thinking about the future of their field. For example, in the field of content writing, what is going to change five years down the line? Understanding the future helps people prepare for it.

Use personal anecdotes and examples

Being a thought leader is all about you. How you are achieving great feats. How you are discovering new things. How you form opinions. How you are discovering new insights. Share your experiences. Tell your unique stories from within the industry. How you are constantly solving problems for people who work with you.

Always be relevant

Well, this goes without saying. If your content is not relevant, it is not going to be valued, and if it is not valued, you cannot build your thought leadership.

Deliver a clear value

Always be aware of what you are delivering and what impact your content is making. There must always be a purpose. Your readers must be able to experience tangible results when they access your thought leadership content. For that, you will need to understand what drives your audience, what makes an impact on them, and what they truly value.

Have a unique perspective

Express original thoughts. Have the courage to say something that is right and valid, but the others don’t have the courage to say it. Take risks. Make predictions even if there is a risk of being proven wrong in future. As a leader you must lead. Things that people haven’t yet thought of, you should be able to think.

Improve your specialization

One of the best aspects of building a thought leadership is that it motivates you to constantly improve yourself. If you don’t increase your treasure of knowledge, how are you going to share that knowledge? If you don’t gain experience by taking risks and doing things that others don’t do, how are you going to share that experience?

Act on your own advice

Words are easier, action is difficult. People are not looking for a preacher, they are looking for a leader who acts. Come up with new ideas, implement those ideas, face the results, and then share those ideas, whether they succeed or fail, with your readers through your thought leadership content writing.

Have a consistent set of values

Values are ideas and ways of thinking you believe are important and you must adhere to them. They render a sense of clarity to your thought and purpose. They define your identity. People begin to recognize you by the values that you have on display. Therefore, as a thought leader, you must be consistent with your values. Of course, in the beginning it will take some time to define your values, but once you are clear about them, stick to them.

From Me, make a shift to You

A leader is always thinking of the others. A leader is selfless. When you are writing content, no matter how much effort you need to make, no matter how much pain you need to go through, always have in mind how your content can help your readers. You need to be at the forefront of action and leadership.

Make your advice practical

As a thought leader you may apply many unconventional methods to your field of profession, but for your readers, keep things practical. Before sharing your thoughts, think how you would like to implement your own advice to your own work. People should be able to implement your advice, if not easily, then at least, in terms of manageability.

Be authentic

When you are authentic and unique, people can easily recognize you. You stand out for your opinions and for your voice. You can be authentic in the manner you write your content, you can be authentic about your ideas, and you can be authentic about how you help people who follow you. Don’t tread the already beaten

How to use subheadings to make your writing more effective

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When you are writing a blog post, a web page, a landing page, or even an email, you use a headline. Then you use headings. Then you use subheadings.

In terms of HTML, your main headline should be <H1>, headings should be <H2> and subheadings should be <H3>, or at least this is a format that I follow when I’m writing content for myself and my clients.

The headline grabs your reader’s attention and headings, and subheadings keep them reading. When they are getting distracted, your subheadings bring them back to your writing. The subheadings tell them why they should read further.

In this Copyblogger post Sonia Simone explains how to use subheadings to break a long piece of content into manageable pieces, separated by many headlines or subheadings. She compares subheadings to the steps in a staircase. Every step takes a person up or down the staircase of your blog post or your web page.

In the subheadings you can capture

Some irresistible facts you don’t want your readers to miss.
Phrases and expressions that spark interest
Underscoring what lies ahead so that the reader is prepared and excited.

Not just for readers, subheadings make even writing easier for you. In fact, as suggested by the author above, before writing the main body text, it is important to organize your thoughts under headings and subheadings and then you can expand them.

Search engine crawlers too find subheadings easier to read and process. If there is a hierarchy of processing the text then the title, the headings and subheadings are processed before the remaining text and hence, if you can capture the entire essence of your web pages and blog posts using subheadings, it also improves your search engine rankings.

5 Tips for Writing Engaging Blog Posts

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5 Tips for Writing Engaging Blog Posts.

Writing an engaging blog post isn’t very easy.

Online readers have really short attention spans. Grabbing their attention, and holding on to it throughout the post is very difficult.

In this post, we are going to be looking at 5 tips that you can keep in mind when writing a blog post to make sure that it is interesting and engaging.

5 Tips for Writing Engaging Blog Posts

1. Do Proper Research

You can’t attract readers if you don’t know what you are talking about.

Take an example.

If someone was to say:

“The world probably has a lot of countries. There may be more than 180 but I’m not sure.”

It would sound horrible. No one would trust it. No one would rely on it and no one would quote it.

On the other hand, if someone was to say:

“The world has 197 countries. From these, 193 are members of the UN.”

It would sound way better. Even if it’s not true, it sounds like it because it’s said with determination and confidence.

And if you want to sound confident and determined, you have to have a proper command on the subject matter. You need to be so learned in your topic that you should be able to state facts and figures related to it without any hesitation.

When you want to write on something, take some time out beforehand and dedicate a session solely to research. Look at reliable articles, research papers and books on your topic.

Always remember to mention statistics and figures, and to link them back to their original source.

2. Focus on Making the Beginning Engaging

In writing, the old adage ‘First impression is the last impression’ holds a very accurate application.

If you manage to create an engaging and interesting introduction, you will be able to hook your readers and get them to read till the end of the post.

This will mean that if you’ve placed any links or sponsored elements in your blog, they will be more likely to appear in front of your readers.

Similarly, you will also increase the chances of your readers to click on any internal links that you may have left in between your content.

Here are some points that you can keep in mind to come up with an engaging introduction:

Discuss the main concept or topic of your content
Don’t dillydally. Get to the point without putting in a lot of fluff
Start with a relatable question
Keep it short and sweet

3. Break Your Content Down in Headings and Sub-Headings

By breaking your content down in headings and sub-headings, you will be able to make it easier to navigate and skip through.

If there is a reader who wants to just read a particular part of your post and not the whole of it, they can easily skip to their desired part and then leave. But, if you don’t add headings and sub-headings, your reader will get annoyed scanning through the content.

Other than that, headings and sub-headings can make your content appear less like a wall of text. And here is something you should know about walls of text.

If someone has written some highly interesting and information content, but without dividing and splitting it properly, it will appear boring to the readers.

But on the other hand, if the content itself is not very informative, but it is properly split up in headings, sub-headings, sections and bullet points, it will look interesting to the readers.

4. Make Sure Your Content is Unique

Plagiarized and copied content is, to be a little dramatic, the bane of reader-engagement. This problem can occur with writers who just take all their information from a single popular source on the internet without diversifying their research.

Plagiarized content, especially if it is taken from a popular source, can stick out to the readers, and it can easily be spotted.

However, there can be a lot of writers who don’t intentionally copy stuff from other sources. But even these types of writers can have trouble with plagiarism by committing it accidentally.

To make sure that there is no plagiarism, of any kind whatsoever, in your content, you should use a plagiarism checker.

Plagiarism checkers usually work by scanning the given text against online sources to see if there are any matches between them. This can help you easily see if there is any accidental duplication in your content from other sources on the internet.

5. Add Visuals and Graphics

There are few things that make written content more engaging than some visuals and graphics.

The logic behind adding visuals and graphics is the same as we discussed in the heading dealing with headings and sub-headings: they stop your content from looking like a giant wall of text.

But, here’s the thing.

While it is commendable and good for your content’s engagement to have images in it, some writers can go a little over-board. They can either start adding images at every other point in the blog post, which can make it impossible to peruse.

Or they can start adding images that have nothing to do with the content at hand.

This sort of excess or irrelevancy in the added visuals can, far from making the content engaging, take away whatever little engagement it may have previously had.

Conclusion

If you are writing for an online audience, you should understand well that your readers will not bother entertaining a dull and boring blog post.

In this post, we looked at some tips and steps that you can follow to make your content look interesting and gripping to your readers.

To sum it up, you should take care to do proper research before sitting down to write your blog post. Having thorough command and knowledge over your subject can make you sound authoritative.

Then, you should work on creating the beginning of the post interesting in order to hook the attention of your readers. You should also break your content up in headings and sub-headings so that it is easier for users to navigate through it.

Uniqueness is also necessary for making your content engaging, so you should be sure to check your final draft for duplication using a plagiarism checker.

And last but not least, you should take care to add visuals and graphics in your content.

5 types of content that I write

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5 types of content that I write

Although I have extensively explained on my website that being a writer I can write on a wide choice of topics and realms, many clients often ask me exactly what I do and what sort of writing I provide professionally.

I have spread my net quite wide in the previous years and I think this has been a mistake. There are many writing activities that are time wasting in terms of generating income. For example, email writing. Most of the clients think of email as number of words but sometimes, more effort is needed in writing a business email than writing a blog post. I’m gradually moving towards the payment model that is based on the effort and expertise rather than merely the number of words.

Broadly, I’m writing content for 5 types of requirements these days. I’m explaining below

1. Blog writing

I love writing blogs because it is mostly linear writing without fluff. It is educational. It is informative. It imparts value.

Although blogging requires research, in most of the cases clients these days send their own outline and sometimes even research material because I charge extra for that. As long as they are paying for my time, I don’t even mind extensive researching.

Although many clients hire me to write “SEO blog posts” I focus more on quality and relevance rather than simply stuffing keywords. This is primarily the reason why I charge slightly more than other content writers who don’t mind simply writing for SEO.

2. Web page writing

This involves writing for the homepage and other pages on the website such as the services page, the company profile, the about us page, or the product descriptions.

Web page writing is quite important, and I charge more than I charge for blog writing. This is where conversion happens. This is where you tell your visitors whether they should do business with you.

Web page writing or website writing is a mix of content writing and copywriting. You inform, educate, but more than that, you sell.

3. Email writing

As I have explained above, I’m shifting the focus to quality rather than the number of words. I like writing emails because I love to communicate. I can write convincingly. I can stick to the point. I can communicate what the client wants to communicate to his or her client or customer. The only precondition is, the client must be able to tell me what he or she exactly wants to communicate.

4. Case studies

A case study is a detailed examination of some problem a customer or client had been facing and how that problem was solved by a service or are product. Detailed method is described, including technologies.

A case study is like a story. You tell about a customer or a client and what problems he or she had been going through. Then how those problems were solved through your effort or through your product. It uses engaging storytelling to weave a narrative around what you offer.

5. Landing pages

Landing pages are very focused. Unlike the usual web page or the blog post page of a website, a landing page has a single objective – to prompt the viewer to take a particular action. This action might be buying a product, or a book, or subscribing to a mailing list.

Landing pages are used for PPC and email marketing campaigns. People are driven to landing pages by promoting the link to them. For example, if you want to draw people through Google AdWords campaigns or Facebook campaigns or even email marketing campaigns, you use a landing page.

Landing page is mostly copywriting.

Other than these five categories, I have also been writing e-books for some clients, but mostly it is blogging, website writing and landing pages.

How to write content for your website without hiring a content writer?

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How to write content for your website without hiring a content writer

I know, such advice isn’t good for my business, but so far I have learnt that people who don’t want to hire a writer won’t hire, and people who do hire a content writer, have a clear idea why they are doing so, and nothing is going to stop them.

Why you need to write content for your website?

Without accessing content, the search engine crawlers cannot figure what your website is about. The search engine crawlers use big data and AI algorithms to make sense of your website. Hence, a few pages and a few blog posts won’t do. They need to access lots of content from your website before they can rank it for the right search terms and keywords. Hence, you need to write lots of content for your website.

Another reason is that your competitors are constantly trying to outdo your content writing efforts. If you publish one blog post, they will gladly publish 10, or if not 10, at least 2-3 blog posts for every single post you publish. Multiply this with 25 competitors that you have and you can imagine how much content is being pumped.

You are constantly catching up. Does it mean it is a no-win game? No. You can outdo your competitors even with less content provided you stick to high quality content. And regularity.

Of course, you also need fresh content to educate your audience and keep people engaged. If you don’t publish fresh content your website becomes stale, and you give no reason to people to come to your website repeatedly. Research has shown that it takes 5-6 visits to the website before people decide to do business with you.

Why do people hire a content writer to regularly publish content?

There are different reasons why people hire a content writer. Some of these reasons are

Lack of time: They don’t have time to write by themselves.
No writing experience: Writing is a skill that needs to be developed. It is time-consuming. It is an entirely different, dedicated profession.
Regularity: For better search engine visibility and user engagement you need to publish content regularly. You need a commitment. It is a separate, stand-alone activity.

How to write and publish fresh content on your website without hiring a content writer

Mind you, in case you don’t want to turn into a full-fledged content writer yourself (leaving your current profession), this is a temporary situation. Maybe you are a startup. Maybe you don’t have enough funds.

The thing is, right now you cannot offer a good compensation to a content writer. But, as your business grows, as your needs to get higher search engine rankings and higher visibility grow, you will need to hire a professional content writer. So the tips shared in this blog post are only for a temporary situation.

Here are a few things you can do to write and publish content on your website without hiring a content writer.

Regularity and quality are important than quantity

This is something that I keep telling my clients repeatedly: don’t get obsessed about how many words you should write. I’m not saying create 15-word posts, but you don’t always have to aim for 1000 words or 1500 words.

Engagement is more important. Hence, if you have got something important to say and you can say in 400 words, just publish 400 words. Make sure that whatever you are saying is relevant, educational and informative.

Use your subject matter expertise

You already have immense knowledge of your field. If you are an accountant, there are many topics and subtopics you are aware of. If you are an engineer or a software designer, there are many aspects of software design you can talk about (just make sure they are fit for your audience and not for other software designers who may not be your target audience).

Sit someday with an Excel sheet and in one column enter all the topics you can think of. You will be surprised to know how many topics you can come up with.

Interview influencers

Everybody likes to share insights. There must be multiple influencers in your industry. Choose a topic and interview a few influencers on that topic. They will get additional exposure and you will have something to write about.

Prepare a list of questions – 10 or so – and then approach a few influencers and ask them to send you the replies. You can interview them live using Skype or phone (or Zoom) or simply ask them to write down the replies to your questions.

An interview is ready-made content. You just have to prepare questions and the remaining content is provided by the interviewees.

Curate content

Content curation saves people lots of time. It requires some research but if you make collecting and preserving interesting content a habit, it won’t take much time.

While you are browsing the Internet, you keep coming across interesting content based on your industry. Instead of simply reading or viewing and then moving on, save those links. Then every week, compile those links into a single blog post. Write a paragraph and then share the link, for every piece of content. Such curated content is also good for your search engine rankings because concentrated amount of information is available under a single link. Google algorithms like such links.

Repurpose your existing content

If you don’t want to hire a content writer, this is another way of writing and publishing content on your own. But this requires you to have some existing content. There may be many pages on your website. Your blog may have a few blog posts.

Above I have talked about content curation. This is a subtopic of a bigger blog post that I’m writing right now. I can also create a separate blog post on the importance of content creation. Content repurposing can be done not just for your own website, but different platforms. You can turn your existing blog post into a newsletter issue. You can rewrite an existing blog post by adding some new information and publishing it on LinkedIn. You can write a smaller version on LinkedIn and then put the link to your existing blog post on your website.

Publish guest blog posts

For this your website or blog needs to cross a certain threshold level. People would like to write for your blog or website if they expect good visibility or some SEO benefit. For that, you should have a decent presence on search engines and the guest blog posters must be impressed enough to approach you to write for your website. This takes initial hard work.

On an average I get 2-3 queries from different guest posters expressing their desire to write on my website. Although for a few months I haven’t been accepting guest posts (in fact, I’m writing this blog post myself, after many months), I am going to leverage this opportunity in the coming months so that I can publish content regularly on my content writing blog.

Conclusion

Provided that you are a prolific writer, and you love to communicate through the written word, you don’t ever need to hire a content writer, otherwise, this is a temporary solution.

Why do you need to ultimately hire a content writer? Regularity. Google and other search engines are constantly crawling the web to find new content. They set up a pattern to crawl certain websites and blogs. This pattern depends on the publishing frequency. If you don’t publish regularly their crawlers don’t crawl and index your website in a timely manner.

Although you cannot outdo your competitors (because every other business that offers something similar to your business is a competitor, and there may be hundreds), you can convince search engines that they can rely on you for consistent supply of high-quality content through persistent publishing.