Tag Archives: original content writing

How to write original content for content marketing

Getting original content writing ideas

One of the biggest problems faced by people wanting to use content marketing as their main marketing tool, is writing and producing original content.

Original content in itself doesn’t help you much unless it really resonates with your audience – audience that will eventually do business with you.

So, for successful content marketing, you need original content, and also relevant content.

For the sake of brevity, in this blog post when I talk about writing original content, I also mean writing relevant content (this goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway).

Writing and publishing original content shouldn’t seem like a big challenge. You just need to have a strong desire to communicate to your visitors.

For this, you really need to know what you want to talk about.

Have a clearly-defined objective for your content marketing

This is one of the best ways of writing original content. If you have a clearly-defined objective for your content marketing, every piece of content has a meaning.

What do you want to achieve with your content marketing?

You want to grow your business with content marketing

Of course, you’re going to say that you want to grow your business. You want to attract more customers and clients.

That is the end result.

Customers and clients don’t come to you just because you are open for business.

Rains don’t come because they have to water your farms. They come when the clouds reach a region where the temperature is lower and clouds can turn into water.

Many factors collectively work to bring people to your business, make them trust you and then make them become your paying customers and clients.

Content marketing is for these factors. People becoming your customers and clients is just a by-product of these factors coming together to act together.

For companies like Amazon and Apple, it is loyalty and brand presence. People want to buy an iPhone because they want to associate with the brand (aside from the fact that iPhones are awesome).

Recently I purchased a OnePlus mobile phone because one, my sister-in-law is a travel blogger and she has been quite happy with the pictures that she clicks with her OnePlus. And two, the company has built a community around its brand, just the way Apple has been able to.

I needed a mobile phone with a good camera, and many people vouch for its camera on YouTube and various blogs.

I haven’t bought their phone just because they have a phone or even because they have a quality phone (many mobile phone companies have quality phones); I have bought because directly or indirectly, so many people have told me that buying their mobile phone is a good deal. I’ve discovered, it actually is, but that’s another story.

Through their content marketing, OnePlus has attracted people who are looking for a mobile phone with more than average-quality camera. Of course, they’re not lying, the camera is actually good, but then again, as I said, there are many mobile phones with equally good cameras.

The difference is, the company has seeded lots of content that primarily focuses on its good quality camera. This is the audience they have been drawing to their brand.

Interestingly, when I went to buy the phone from a local electronics showroom, the sales man very forcibly tried to sell me an LG mobile phone which, he claimed, has a better camera and in fact, at that moment, it did look to be better than the OnePlus model that I had gone to purchase, but I had read nothing about the LG model. In fact, I rarely come across blog posts and YouTube videos on LG Mobile phones, so, I had no information. At one point, I got so exasperated that I told the salesman that I was going to go back without buying any phone, only then he backed down.

You can find numerous blog posts and YouTube videos where people compare the OnePlus camera with the camera of Google Pixel, iPhone, and many other phones, and then conclude that the OnePlus camera is the best.

So, maybe that was their objective.

For writing original content, it is very important to have a well-defined objective for your content marketing. The moment you have an objective, you can have a long list of topics you want to cover whether you want to write blog posts or create videos.

Provide solutions to problems people actually face, for original content writing

Whenever people access your content, make sure that they learn something that they cannot learn somewhere else.

Of course, the Internet brims with quality content but when you try to solve the problem according to your point of view, you introduce a unique perspective. Your unique perspective will be hard to find on other websites and platforms.

Write content with your unique perspective

Developing your own style also helps. Even if the topics that you are covering have been covered by pretty much everyone, you can always write about topics in your own unique style.

Maybe you are humorous. Cynical. Sarcastic. Scholarly.

Never think that a particular writing style is unacceptable (I’m not suggesting you hurt people’s feelings). But definitely develop your own style.

Focus on quality and not quantity

Publishing a well-written, original piece of content in a week is much better than publishing five pieces of mediocre content in a week.

Focus on quality content writing

When you focus on quantity, when you are in a hurry to cover as many keywords as possible, you lose your focus.

Remember that your objective is not to cover every possible keyword combination.

Your purpose is to provide valuable, engaging content that helps people. It should solve a purpose. People should go back after having taken something.

Solving a purpose is also important for improving your search engine rankings. If people don’t find your content useful, they will immediately leave your website or blog, and this in turn increases your bounce rate, signaling to Google that your website doesn’t have useful content and hence, your rankings should be reduced.

Research other blogs and websites and see what’s missing

I’m not suggesting that you nit-pick. Remember that your audience is unique and hence, its needs too are unique that are perhaps, being ignored by other publishers.

Find something that is missing in other blog posts and videos

Try to find out something useful that is not being covered by your competitors, and then write about it.

Put your energies into doing research for original content writing

Research is something not many are good at. For some, it’s very hard work. For some, even if hard work is fine, it is difficult to find the right data and insight.

Do research for original content writing

Research takes time. This is why, don’t be in a hurry to publish a blog post or an article.

Sure, on many content marketing blogs you read that you must have a publishing calendar and once your have it, you must make sure you stick to it.

Sticking to a content publishing calendar makes sense if you have a big content marketing team and different team members can contribute to different aspects of your content.

But if you are a small business, even if it takes an extra week or two to finish a research-packed blog post or an ebook, don’t rush.

Yes, I repeatedly recommend that you should publish content regularly, but what I mean is, keep publishing content, one topic after another, but don’t insist that if you have decided that you are going to post a blog post on Monday then no matter, what you are going to post it on Monday (unless it is time-critical).

If you want to use good research data, it’s ok if Monday becomes Tuesday and Tuesday becomes Wednesday, really.

Rewrite already written content in your own language

Yes, there is nothing wrong in that. As long as you’re not plagiarizing, there is nothing wrong in rewriting existing content and then adding your own take to it. Remember that everything should be original. Not even a single sentence or paragraph should match that of the original blog post or article.

You can rewrite existing content

Why is it fine to rewrite already published content?

I don’t recommend that you do it all the time because then, you will never be able to come up with your own content. This is just to keep the muscles of your content marketing moving. Publishing something is always better than publishing nothing.

When you are rewriting great blog posts, suddenly ideas begin to hit you and you will be surprised to know that you yourself are getting some ideas to write about.

Maintain an ideas repository for original content writing

Ideas come at odd times and when they come, you should be able to save them, preserve them.

Save and organize when new content writing ideas come

These days I’m using OneNote from Microsoft. Surprisingly, it is better than Evernote. But you can also use Google Keep.

The basic idea is, you must have a place where you can quickly jot down writing ideas. Make sure that it is easier to retrieve the ideas when you need them and this is why I recommend something like OneNote.

In OneNote you can create a notebook (something like, content marketing), and then within the notebook you can create sections (something like, the medium you would like to cover – blog, guest blogging, social media) and then within a section, you can create pages (blog topics and research material).

But ultimately it depends on what you are comfortable in. You can also use a conventional notepad. You can also use a recording app on your mobile phone.

Just make sure whenever an idea comes to you, you are able to save it.

Use content aggregators to get original content writing ideas

For example, I use Google Alerts to get alerts in my inbox when content on content marketing appears on the web.

I also use Medium, Twitter and Flipboard to get content writing ideas. The LinkedIn newsletter is also very useful. Although I’m not as regular as I would like to be, these are very good sources and even spending 10 minutes can give you lots of original content writing ideas.

When you talk of originality, I’m not much concerned about search engine rankings because rankings are very unpredictable. Lots of lousy content still comes up in search results even after many algorithm updates.

Here is another link on A guide to creating amazing content: 5 tips to crafting useful content, from Search Engine Journal.

Contrary to what I have written above, this blog post from Search Journal recommends that you put your energies into focusing on SEO cornerstone content – writing blog posts and articles that give you ranking #1 in SERPs for your chosen keywords.

What is cornerstone content? Something like the “ultimate guide”. It is very comprehensive. It covers the topic represented by your main keyword. It is long lasting. It is going to get you targeted traffic for a very long time.

For my own, this blog post, I haven’t focused much on the SEO aspect of writing original content because improving your search engine rankings should be a long-term strategy, and not something that is to be achieved by writing lots of poor quality articles and blog posts.

The value of the original content is its ability to help you build your readership and consequently, loyalty. When people like your content, they want to do business with you. Even if they don’t want to do business with you, if you want them to promote your content, they readily do it because they have been benefiting from it, and in that process, they help you build your brand presence, which gets you business.

How not to be repetitive when regularly writing content for your blog

Why you need to publish content regularly on your blog?

In an ideal world, you shouldn’t have to. In an ideal world, you cover all your important topics and then you focus on your work.

In reality, a continuous tussle is going on. All your competitors want to gain an edge over you.

If you have better search engine rankings, they want to rank higher than you.

If you have better web presence, they want to have better web presence than you.

If you engage more on social media, they want to engage more.

Your competitors are not just competing with you – knowingly and unknowingly – they are also competing with themselves, and in the process, even when they don’t intend to, they’re creating hurdles for you.

You constantly need to overcome these hurdles.

You may have to overcome more hurdles or less hurdles, depending on how much competition you face and how aggressive your competitors are.

To continuously get targeted traffic to your website, you need to maintain your search engine visibility and these days you also need to maintain a presence on social media and social networking websites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

If you don’t publish regularly, you lose your search engine rankings, people stop noticing your website, and there is no original content to post on social media and social networking websites. There is no content for email marketing.

Regularly writing content: how not to be repetitive

There are two major downsides of being repetitive when writing content for your blog or website regularly:

Your visitors begin to feel you have got nothing new to say.
The search engines either conclude that you are publishing duplicate content, or your rankings for your keywords begin to get diluted through your own repetitive content.

You face the following problems, consequently:

You need to publish regularly.
You need to come up with original ideas each time you publish.

Listed below are a few things you can do to regularly come up with original ideas and avoid being repetitive.

Do regular brainstorming

Writing content for your website or a blog on an ongoing basis is a serious business. After all, you intend to generate business, right?

Just as you draw up a business plan, you need to regularly brainstorm on what you’re going to write about (or what your content writer is going to write about).

Surprisingly, I have worked with many clients who think that topics are just magically going to crop up.

Just to prove how important it is to regularly come up with right content writing ideas, I charge extra from my clients whenever they insist that I should come up with my own content writing ideas for their website.

Normally, I insist that they give me the ideas because I know that it can be a big drag.

Anyway, coming up with great, relevant and meaningful content writing ideas is a serious exercise, and you will need to brainstorm regularly. You will need to assign separate time.

Maintain an ideas repository

Sometimes ideas do crop up magically, so you need to capture them as soon as they appear, otherwise, like a tiny magical fairy, they’re going to disappear.

Maintain an ideas repository. It can be an Excel sheet. It can simply be a text file. Google Docs document. Voice recordings on your phone. A conventional notepad. Anything. Something that is always nearby, and you don’t have to waste time trying to locate it.

For many years I used Evernote to capture ideas. Then I stopped using Evernote and switched to OneNote.

But I also save drafts with just a title and a few words, within the WordPress dashboard. The main point is, when an idea strikes, save it.

No need to get too bogged down by longform content

Longform content – blog posts and web pages having more than 2000-3000 words – is good. It gives you a competitive edge because not everyone can publish longform content on an ongoing basis.

But, the idea of writing 2000-3000 words can be daunting. It can also stultify your creativity because instead of focusing on the topic, you are worried about how to stretch it beyond 2000 words.

Sometimes, if you can manage just 300-400 words, don’t lose use sleep over it. Remember that publishing something is always better than publishing nothing. If there is an interesting idea and you cannot stretch it beyond 2000 words, don’t worry about it, just publish it as it is.

Give new angles to old issues

The possibilities are infinite in this world. Just when you begin to think that every story that could have been written, has been written, there is a new chart buster or a New York bestseller.

I have observed that everyone these days wants to educate. So, web design agencies want to publish content that teaches you how to design websites. Mobile app development companies want you to know how to develop killer mobile apps. Financial consulting companies want to teach you how to manage your finances well.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it, but when you solely focus on educating your visitors in a “10 ways you can…” format, you are bound to run out of topics.

Focus on stories instead. Every story is unique in itself. Tell people how you solve individual problems.

For example, explain in a blog post how as a web design company you helped a business promote its brand on the web through a unique web design approach.

As an accounting firm, explain how you helped a business get out of a financial mess that seemed insurmountable before you took over.

You don’t always have to have solved real-world problems yourself. You can solve a hypothetical problem. You can give your own take on a problem solved by someone else.

Maybe you read some news about a business house and you can write about how the problem the business house is facing could have been solved with your service.

Cover recent studies and reports

People love data. They get impressed when you tell that so many people are doing so many things in so many ways in these many days during such and such hours.

Since people love data, bigger agencies are constantly gathering information and then tabulating it for presenting it graphically in an awe-inspiring manner.

For example, this study on HubSpot reveals that businesses and companies that publish 16+ blog posts every month get 3.5 times more traffic than businesses publishing 0-4 blog posts per month.

Though, this is common sense – more content means more traffic – but a study that reveals exact numbers is more convincing and reassuring.

Similarly, every month there are 4-5 studies by different companies and agencies in your niche and you can use these studies to create data-packed blog posts.

One day, you will be publishing your own studies and people will be linking to your studies to create blog posts and articles.

Talk to people for fresh content writing ideas

You can also “crowdsource” your need for fresh content writing ideas by regularly interacting with people wherever the opportunity exists.

You can spend time on online forums.

You can participate and go through Quora discussion threads.

You can encourage people to leave comments on your blog, asking them what they would like to read about.

You can interact with people on Twitter and Facebook.

Whatever platform you prefer, interact with people to get fresh content writing ideas.

Use social media to get new topics

Social media is all about content. I have mentioned Twitter and Facebook above, and even Quora, but you don’t always have to interact with people. You can simply observe conversations and note down what people are talking about in your niche.

Sometimes you can find interesting ideas on YouTube. Many people don’t prefer to write, they would rather make a quick video. Topics that you don’t find on Google, sometimes you find them on YouTube.

Doing image search is also a good way of coming across good content writing ideas. In images, people use phrases and expressions that they don’t use in the text. You can get a completely new take on a subject.

Infographics. These days many companies publish infographics. You can pick any of the subtopics and write complete blog posts around them.

Read books, white papers and case studies

In-depth knowledge in your field can be gained by reading books, white papers and case studies.

Every new chapter in a book, every new heading or subheading, can give you a new content writing idea.

Even if you don’t get a single idea from a book, it will create a fertile ground and trigger your creativity that will in return, help you come up with original content writing ideas.

In whichever field you are, reading books anyway helps you grow intellectually. Even if you don’t plan on writing blog posts, reading books is a good habit to develop.

Use blog topic idea generators

Personally, I’m not a very big fan of online blog topic idea generators, but they can at least kickstart the creative process sometimes. They can give you a nudge towards the right direction.

When you use these topic idea generators, you simply submit your main phrase and then they churn out 5-10 topics you can work on.

Some good blog topic idea generators are

There are many more blog topic idea generators. BuzzSumo above easily comes in the most expensive category but it also gives you many more tools.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, regularly publishing high-quality content is simply unavoidable. Even if you think that it is needless to publish content regularly, your competitors don’t think so.

Sooner or later, every business realizes that it needs to have a sustainable content writing and content marketing strategy. Some realize its sooner, and some take their own good time, incurring lots of losses in the process.

So, once you have decided that you need to publish content regularly, you need to set in motion a process that supplies you with fresh content writing ideas on an ongoing basis.

In the beginning you may face some problems, but as you get used to regularly publishing content to promote your business, you will be surprised how fast you come across new ideas.