Tag Archives: Content Writing

Well, I have never said that Content Is King

I’m not writing this to dispute anybody’s claim whether content is king or not because it is just a way of telling someone how important it is. I may have mentioned it in the passing that yes, content is king, that is, marketing doesn’t exist without content, but it isn’t just content that gets things going.

Content is like fuel. Without this fuel, you cannot run the engine of your business, that’s an established fact. Now, it is up to you what sort of fuel you want to use. You can use low quality or high-quality fuel. You can use fuel that wears your machinery down or creates lots of pollution. Or you can use good quality fuel that gives you better mileage.

Are you wondering why I’m comparing content with fuel rather than with King? No reason at all actually, I could have compared it to anything, as long as it is important. The whole point is, it’s not just content that matters. Your content needs to be backed up with:

High-quality
Regularity
Relevance
Distribution
Engagement
Publishing platform

The old saying, “build it and they will come” no longer works because there is so much of everything. So after building it, you need to get people to it. “It” in this case is your content. It is given that you need to write and publish high-quality content. Low quality content neither works with search engines nor with human readers.

Regularity is very important because millions of pages are being created everyday and and some of them are exceptionally well-written. You are constantly getting competition. Besides, search engines as well as people love new content. For instance, if I want to know what’s the latest happening in the field of content writing, I would rather check out something that is a few months old rather than something that was written back in 2011 (this is February 2014). When you post regularly it gives people a reason to visit your website or blog repeatedly (even the search engine crawlers visit your website with greater frequency if it is constantly updated).

Relevance in the context of content writing means you need to offer something people can actually use and benefit from. There is no use creating content that exists just for the sake of existence. It needs to solve a purpose.

How do people access your content? If your content exists in isolation then again, you’re just wasting your time. Content is published to make an impact and that impact can only be made if people actually make contact with your content. So you need to distribute your content. You need to use all available channels to you including social networking websites, blogs and online forums.

Engagement, although is a new buzzword, it has existed since the time immemorial. Engagement basically means two-way communication. You talk to people, and then people talk back to you, and then you talk back to people and engagement begins to happen. Without constant engagement it is difficult for people to remember you, and remember you for the right reasons.

You need to choose your publishing platform carefully because once you have chosen it, you will be spending lots of time writing and publishing content for it. For instance, it is a critical choice whether you publish a blog under your own domain name or you decide to use a third-party platforms such as Tumblr. Businesses these days are also using LinkedIn as well as Google Plus to publish long blog posts and articles. The only problem with choosing third-party platforms is that your content doesn’t belong to you. It will be sending all the traffic to those websites and then some of the traffic will come to your website. On the other hand, if you publish your blog under your own domain name than all the traffic will come to you. The benefit of using a third-party platform that is well established is that you can start getting traffic to your content from day one. Finally, the decision is yours.

These qualities and attributes collectively make your content the King. Without these attributes your content is just another piece of information aimlessly lolling around in the limitless wilderness of the Internet.

How to find your content writing voice

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It isn’t just about website content, no matter what you are writing, you need to have a unique “voice”. What might that be? It is sort of a signature tune. When you hear a signature tune you can immediately recognize which song or movie it belongs to. Something similar happens with writing. When you read something, you should be able to make out who is writing this. In Hindi film music (mostly Bollywood) I can immediately recognize music composed by Naushad, RD Buran and the greatest among all, Madan Mohan. Among writers, I think I can recognize Garcia and to an extent also Charles Dickens.

Of course when it comes to content writing what it basically means is – having your own voice – expressing yourself in a language that you normally use when you talk to people. It gives you a natural flow and it also helps you make a connection with your readers.

Here is what you can do to find your content writing voice:

Don’t try to impress, at least not always: Trying to impress people can be cute sometimes, but it may stop you from remaining focused on your central message. Always remember that it’s the message that you intend to communicate that’s important and then, the impact that you make. Don’t use superfluous words and phraseology that is not only difficult to pronounce (verbally as well as mentally) but also difficult to comprehend – this breaks the flow and the person may leave your website altogether.
Avoid writing with search engine optimization in your mind: I’m not saying totally ignore the guidelines provided by search engine companies, but don’t bog yourself down with how many keywords you should use, what should be the frequency and such. I cover this aspect in this blog post titled Are you still creating content for machines?
Address the core issues faced by your prospective customers and clients: You need to empathise with them. You need to understand why they are coming to your website or your blog? What do they seek? Remember that nobody comes to your website or blog simply for the heck of it. They may stumble into your content unintentionally but if that is the case, they will leave within a couple of seconds. So provide answers in a clear, convincing manner.
Talk to your readers: This is something that I have already mentioned above but it deserves to be repeated as a separate point. Use conversational writing as much as possible. It doesn’t mean you have to incorporate the F*** word every second sentence (amazingly some people can do this beautifully) but talk in a manner as if you are talking to a friend, a colleague or even your own kid (I sincerely hope you don’t use the F*** word with your kid and if you do, shame on you).
Don’t try to suppress your natural style: Sometimes we feel that there are certain words or certain expressions that we use a lot but this should not be expressed in writing. “You know?”, “Yeah, right”, “precisely”, may seem annoying but if you can naturally fit the day-to-day expressions they can become a part of your writing, rendering unique voice to you.

Why is it important to find your content writing voice?

There are many reasons. The most important reason is that you are able to connect better when you write in a natural manner as if you are speaking to people. A holistic reason is that every person in this world is unique and we all have our unique ways of expressing ourselves. In order to stand out, you need to be unique (this sounds hackneyed, I know) and a great way of being unique is using your own writing voice rather than copying someone else. Just imagine, millions of webpages and blog posts are being added every day; how do people recognize you if you sound like everybody else?

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The difference between long form and short form content

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Long form vs. short form content

Long form content is generally more than 2500 words and short form content is around 800-1000 words.
Long form content is descriptive, authoritative and well researched and short form content is brief and normally, doesn’t cover the topic in its entirety.
Long form content takes effort and time whereas short form content can be published in quick successions.

Do I recommend long form content or short form content?

A healthy mix of both. There is a reason.

As mentioned in the above bulleted list, long form content takes time and effort. Below I am going to explain what are the overwhelming advantages of publishing long form content on an ongoing basis, but you should maintain a balance between publishing longer pieces of content and shorter content pieces so that you have authoritative content as well as regular content.

Of course, if you have a dedicated team of multiple content writers you can publish many long form blog posts and web pages even in a single day, but if you have just one content writer (or if you write yourself) it may take a few days, even a week, to write a descriptive, well-researched, authoritative long form blog post.

Irrespective of their great benefits, one of the drawbacks of solely focusing on long form blog posts and web pages is that the frequency of publishing may be curtailed.

This is why I suggest maintaining a balance. While your longer blog post is being created, for regular updates, keep on publishing short content so that the search engine crawlers crawl your website or blog regularly.

What if you need to make a choice? Long form blog posts, without a doubt.

He’s a good infographic on the importance of publishing longform content. As usual, when I link to external infographics I just post the topmost portion and then link to the original image, and I’m doing the same here.

Infographic link on the importance of longform content

Why you cannot ignore long form content if you’re serious about improving your SEO?

If you bet highly on your search engine rankings then you must be doing lots of reading on what sort of content ranks higher on search engines, and if you prefer to keep yourself abreast with the latest, you must have come across a term called “long form content”.

Google it seems, loves longish, research-based articles and blog posts, possibly spanning multiple pages. This is called long form content.

Such content, presumably, takes lots of effort and time to come into existence, and hence, by the virtue of being difficult to create, earns ranking points from Google.

Aside from multi-page blog posts and articles, other examples of long form content are

E-books
FAQs
White papers and case studies
Interviews
Reviews
Conference or webinars scripts

Short form content on the other hand consists of blog posts, articles and web pages that are less than or equal to 1000 words. You can also have case studies, interviews, reviews and FAQs that a less than 1000 words – it basically depends on what you have to say.

Do people even read long form content? Or do they prefer short form content?

As a content writer who writes engaging content that helps my clients improve their conversion rate, I say it with difficulty that it isn’t always necessary that people read your long form content. At least not in a single reading.

They may bookmark your blog post or web page for later reading.

Having said that, it differs from business to business. B2B customers and clients are known to read a lot because a lot is at stake. For example, if you are about to spend thousands of dollars on a product or a service, the least you can do is spend a couple of hours reading about that product or service or one of its features.

What are the benefits of publishing long form content?

Long form content improves your SEO

Of course, the immediate benefit of publishing long form content is that it immediately begins to improve your search engine rankings.

There is a SerpIQ study that showed that longer blog posts enjoy higher search engine rankings compared to shorter blog posts.

Longer blog posts get higher search engine rankings

Why does long form content improve your SEO?

It’s very logical. What is Google looking for when it ranks content? High-quality content that provides all the information a search engine user is looking for.

Do you think Google just randomly ranks blog posts, web pages and articles? No. Everything is very methodical and even mathematical.

Although it takes many factors into account before it decides to rank a particular link higher, one of the most important aspects is the usefulness of your content. Most important: does it have the information the user is looking for?

Please note: if this blog post appears to end abruptly, I would like to let you know that I’m currently updating it.

What’s newsjacking and how to use it for your business

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It is the age of content (there I go with the cliché) and if your business isn’t producing enough content it is probably being beaten by another business which is producing enough content. And it isn’t just about enough content, your content needs to be highly compelling, interesting, entertaining and useful.

How do you come up with content with such attributes on a regular basis? You cannot keep on writing tutorials and informative articles and blog posts all the time because sooner or later either you will run out of topics or your audience will get bored – it’s only so much they can learn. So how do you go on producing content without sounding trite? You leverage newsjacking.

News is happening all around you. Something new is always happening. New products are being launched, there is a new scandal in Hollywood or Bollywood (the Indian film industry, primarily Hindi), a new cure for an age-old disease is showing promising results, new services are being introduced, algorithmic changes are happening at Google and other search engines, a new “cute cat” or “laughing baby” video is going viral, some fight has broken up somewhere, an international economic conference is going on somewhere else, and so on. Thousands of things are happening in the world. Newsjacking means piggybacking on that news in order to create content for your own business. You will need to be smart, perceptive and of course, creative. Once you develop a knack for it, you will find it quite easy.

A real-world example of newsjacking

As we live in the times of relentless content publishing will also live in the times of cyclones, extreme climatic conditions and storms. Suppose there is a major cyclone building up and during the initial built-up you can easily make out that it is going to be a big news. As a food chain business how can you generate content surrounding this alarming news?

You can make arrangements for free food and shelter in your various strategically shortlisted outlets during the cyclone, publish a blog post explaining the arrangements that you have made and then promote this blog post as much as possible. You can also create multiple blog posts on how to stock food and keep it from spoiling during such emergencies. You can post recipes that can be prepared with little effort. You can write about foods that give energy and nutrition for a long time. You can also prepare a list of foods that give the body warmth during a blizzard or such happening. Once you start writing, you will notice there is lots of stuff you can write about.

The right way of using newsjacking

The relevance of any news is in its timeliness. Establish a system that you can receive relevant news on time so that you can start preparing content preferably before it becomes big news. The first benefit is that you will be publishing something unique and the second benefit is, since there will be a dearth of links, more and more people will be linking to you as a reference rather than mainstream news agencies.