Content writing is a crucial part of every digital marketing strategy. It educates the customers and helps them to make a buying decision.
Content marketing is one of the most successful techniques that professional marketers use to create brand awareness and reach a larger audience. Notably, content marketing can increase brand awareness by at least 37%.
At least 60% of B2C marketers have set a documented content strategy. Also, 86% of the most successful companies and organizations have employed a team or someone that is in charge of their content marketing strategy. The stats on digital marketing also show the significance of content writing in marketing campaigns.
What is Content Writing?
Content writing is the practice of preparing value-added content pieces that educate the readers, improves branding, solve the confusion, and pulls the prospective customers towards the end of the buying funnel.
The most common types of content include podcasts, video scripts, press releases, articles, blog posts, and web pages.
Different types of content have unique formats of writing, and content writers must always equip themselves with the techniques of writing to ensure they come up with outstanding content for digital marketing.
Content writing is a dream job for most people. Ideally, professional B2B and B2C marketers work closely with content marketers to come up with the best digital marketing strategy.
For one to become a most-sought content writer, they must be ready to put in more effort into the work. Every content writer must have some research skills to ensure their content is original and high quality.
The essence of content writing is to provide reliable information to a target audience. Therefore, before writing anything, professional content writers must research widely to provide their audience with valid information.
Since every form of content has a unique style of writing, a content writer must, therefore, equip themselves with the different styles to come up with opinionated content. Additionally, the content must be engaging enough to capture the audience’s attention.
Types of Content Writing
If you are looking forward to choosing the right type of content writing that you can invest in for your marketing campaign, you don’t have to look anywhere. Below are some of the most common types of content writing that you can venture:
- Ghostwriting: in this type of content writing, you hire someone to write you quality content, pay them, and retain the copyright over the content. In this type of writing, both the writer and the person hiring them benefits.
- Press Release Writing: A press release is the most common type of content writing that most companies use to create brand awareness. If your company is launching a new product or you intend to announce some latest development in company management, you can come up with a press release and publish it in a magazine or newspaper to connect with your target audience. You can also publish a press release on different social media platforms to drive more traffic to your website.
- Business Writing: This is a form of writing that professionals in a business or company use for internal communication. Examples of business writing include internal memos, official email, and reports.
- Research Paper Writing: It is a special type of content writing that requires you to have a deep understanding of the subject you want to write. Before you can publish your research paper on a journal, it has to be evaluated by a Ph.D. holder.
- SEO Copywriting: In this type of content writing, you are simply creating content that can help websites rank at the top of SERP and drive more traffic. You have to include some keywords and internal links on the content to make it SEO-friendly before you can publish it on the internet. If you feel like you have a lack of creativity, there is always an option of hiring writers, strategists and consultants specialized in SEO content writing services who work together to develop engaging articles that will inspire the customers and readers.
- Social Media Writing: In this form of content writing, you come up with content that you can post on social media platforms to educate and inform your target audience. The objective of social media writing is to create content that can initiate a conversation so that the audience can engage with your brand by liking and commenting on the post.
- Technical Writing: It’s about coming up with detail-oriented content like FAQ about products and instruction manuals. To create technical content, a writer must have in-depth knowledge of the subject.
The Benefits Of Content Writing For Business
- Content writing, especially blog writing offers several advantages that give life to already existing content. A business can hire a content writer to add more content on its web pages, making them look entirely new.
- It drives more traffic to a website. When you opt for SEO content writing, you are increasing the website ranking on search engines. Potential customers can easily notice your website on SERP and click on it.
- It improves the conversion rate. Content writing includes a strong Call To Action (CTA) that can increase your conversion rate.
- It gives your brand a voice. When you publish great content on your company website, prospects that visit your website can learn more about how it feels like to work with your company. This helps you to maintain a persona across channels and establishes your brand in the market.
- It gives your company a marketing foundation. You can use content writing to market your products and services to a larger audience and position your brand before potential customers on different social media platforms.
- Content writing makes your website look impressive to visitors. It creates the first impression to visitors and potential leads that your company is worth their attention. This way, you increase your conversions.
- It offers your visitors a reason to come back. Content works as a lead generation tool because when you post regular and informative content on your website, you can easily retain your visitors. This way, you get customers to give you repeat business, which has a positive impact on your marketing ROI.
How To Start Content Writing
If you are looking forward to becoming a paid content writer, you should be aware of some hacks that can make your journey a bit smoother. Here is your guide to starting content writing.
Research And Research
The first step to start content writing is to sharpen your research skills. For instance, if you intend to write a blog post for your company, you should first research on a catchy topic, then find out more about the topic.
Content writing is all about creating informative and quality content for your audience. By reaching a lot, you can easily create highly informative content, and that is what helps you increase conversions.
Come up with a plan of how you are going to write the content. Arrange your ideas and have a formula for writing. Also, you should have a reference page where you can obtain the information you want to include in the content you come up with.
Related: 7 Types of Content Every Content Writer Must Avoid Writing
Find Your Writing Style
Different types of content writing require unique writing styles. For instance, the technique that you will use to write a press release is different from that of writing a blog post. Also, sometimes, your writing styles will depend on your personality; all you have to do is come up with your unique writing styles so that your audience can relate to your content.
Avoid Mixing Ideas
If you have a topic to write about, it is vital that you stick to that. Of course, you can write something related to the topic, but you want to avoid unnecessary fluff that will only make your writing less informative.
Mixing ideas in a single content piece reduces the flow, making it a bit challenging for the reader to understand. For instance, if you are writing about social media marketing, you should not dive into traditional forms of marketing. However, you can mention the connection between the two forms of marketing just to make your point clear.
Creativity Is The Key
Creativity comes first if you want to come up with informative, engaging, and highly converting content. The rule of thumb here is that you should only create content that has not been published anywhere. Create a unique topic and search for unique and original content.
Always give your content a new look if you are going to gather ideas from different sources. Be creative and ensure the content you come up with is not a copy of any content that is already published online.
10 Best Examples Of Content Writing
Blog Post
Most companies are using blog posts to reach out to customers and showcase their brand to a broader audience. Since most people apply SEO writing when creating blog posts, it is possible to use blog posts to improve your website ranking and build networking opportunities.
If you intend to build a long-term track record or inform your audience about your products and services, a blog post gives you the platform to do that.
Additionally, you are not limited to the number of words you can use in a blog post as long as you make it informative and engaging. Your audience will always read to the last word if you keep your blog post highly interactive.
You can write different types of blog content like how-to blogs, best practices, tips, checklists, collaborations, company news, Q&A, interviews, and research. Whichever type of blog post you opt for, you must ensure it’s highly informative. Be sure to use an email marketing software like SendinBlue or similar ones to setup email collection for your blogs. Once your blog posts start getting traffic, you’d want these people to keep coming back to your blog. And if you collect their email addresses, you can inform them whenever you post a new article.
White Papers
White papers are more effective if you want to solidify your brand reputation as a subject matter expert (SME). If you want to offer an expert opinion on a subject that requires you to write a long content piece, you must learn how to write a white paper. An example of a white paper is an e-book or an e-catalog.
An e-catalog gives a complete description of all the products and services your company is offering to give your customers all the information they may be looking for about your brand.
Customer Success Stories
Writing and publishing customer success stories on your website is another efficient way of showcasing your company’s performance. Your website visitors are more likely to build trust with your brand if they get the chance to read your customer success stories.
If you want to publish customer success stories, you can ask your customers for feedback on your products and service. Ask them for a go-ahead to publish their feedback, and if possible, include their photos on the posts.
Case Studies
Case studies are not just useful for long-term search engine optimization, but also useful if you want to come up with content that influences customers to buy.
Writing case studies and publishing them on your website helps you to prove to customers that the products and services you are offering actually give results.
Write case studies if you intend to showcase the hidden qualities of your brand and highlight the unique attributes of your products that make you different from your competitors. You can begin by having a customer testimonial at the front then backing it up with a valid case study on your best selling product.
Product Descriptions And User Guides
Coming up with on-site product demos and guides is another unique way of showing your customers how they can use your products. You can include all the keyword phrases that you need on the user guides, thereby improving how your website ranks on search engines.
Another tip you can apply when you create product descriptions is uploading the video on social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook, then linking it back to your website.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Adding a FAQ page on your website can help you inform your customers more about the products you are offering and even increase their potential to buy. Try to answer all the common questions that customers can have about the products and services you are offering so that they get a clear picture of how it feels to buy your products. FAQ reduce the number of the routine question you get from customers.
When you create a FAQ section on your pages, you must ensure the questions cover all major attributes of your products and services. Keep updating the FAQ to make it more relevant to target customers.
Below is an example of how Microsoft is using FAQ to help customers access information faster without having to scroll through their website.
Awards
The only way to remind your customers that your brand is a trusted one in the industry is by showcasing your awards and achievements on your website. Publish any proof of achievements on your website and display all trust badges that acknowledge your awards.
Video
At least 54% of customers want to see more video content from a brand they are loyal.
Video content can increase interactivity and customer retention significantly. You can come up with a how-to video explaining how customers can use your products.
Also, having a testimonial video from a customer is a great way of showing customers that your products and services are legitimate. Always include a CTA at the end of the video to ask viewers to take the next step, which is to buy your products or subscribe to your services.
Images
Images are some of the most used types of visual content. Just like videos, images help the customer to have a clear view of what your brand looks like to in the real world.
An image is worth a thousand words, and that means you can use them to communicate a lot of details to the target audience in just seconds. You can create original images showing your products and services in action to persuade customers to buy your products. Pinterest, Pixels, Flickr, and Photobucket are some sources of images you can use on your content to create a visual impression to your audience.
Photo: How WooCommerce is mixing images and written content to showcase its products and persuade visitors to take action.
Memes
Memes are some of the easiest content you can create and post on social media platforms. You can come up with something you believe will inspire or amuse your target audience and include it on a meme. In most cases, a meme will include an image with a brief text illustration.
They are mostly designed to create humor and spur a conversation on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Below is an example of how Coca-Cola, a soft drink company, is using memes on Twitter to engage customers and start a conversation with its target audience.
Best Tools for Content Writing
Ideaflip
Coming up with an idea of what you should write in any content can take you a lot of time. Ideaflip makes it hassle-free for you to brainstorm and come up with ideas.
It is one of the best tools you can lay your hand on if you want to manage and develop your unique content writing ideas. It has a simple and minimal user interface, which makes it the best choice for any beginner in content writing.
Copywritely
Copywritely is an all-in-one content optimization software that comes with several useful tools that help you optimize your content. You can do various tasks using Copywritely like:
- Checking content for plagiarism.
- Finding spelling and grammatical errors.
- You can check your page for Flesch Kincaid test for readability score.
- You can detect and fix keyword stuffing in your content.
- Rewrite your content and find out words that can be replaced.
- You can convert words to minutes and pages.
Wunderlist
Wunderlist is one of the best tools you can use to plan your blogging. Use it to organize your blogging and tackle different tasks more comfortably.
This tool can provide you with multiple ideas of what content you should create for your audience. It also gives you some insights into how you can create the content.
You can use Wunderlist to change your emails into a to-do-list and move the folders between different folders. It also makes it fast to share the lists across different platforms and print them on click of a button.
Related: Top Benefits Of Blogging
Twitter Trending Topics
If you want to target organic traffic that comes when people discuss the trending topics, you should not hesitate to use Twitter Trending Topics.
It is a section of your Twitter homepage that provides you the latest information about trending topics.
You can read some of the most trending topics, and hashtags then come up with a topic you believe will improve readership and have many people commenting and liking your post.
Reddit is another useful tool that you can use to find topics that most people are discussing online. It gives you the option to discuss or join the conversation on any burning topics. You can also join Reddit if you are looking for expert advice on a topic you don’t have any clue.
As a content writer, you can use this tool to find out which topics get the most response from readers so that you create content that addresses such topics.
Copyscape
When creating content to publish on your website, you must ensure it is original and grammatically correct. Copyscape is one of those tools that you can use to test if your content is original to avoid being penalized by search engines. If you want to test if the content you are about to publish on your website is unique, then you should hesitate to use this tool.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most effective tools that you can use to create SEO friendly content for your website. It comes with a complete dashboard with all the essential tools you need to keep all your valuable topics on the radar.
With this tool, you can track if the content you create is ranking well on SERPs or performs better in organic search.
Ahrefs makes it easier to spy on what topics your competitors are writing so that you come up with unique content to beat the competition.
Related: How to rank in Google (Ranking Factors)
Promo Meme Maker
Promo Meme Maker is another tool that you can count on if you want to create the best memes to post on your social media platforms.
Promo meme maker is equipped with a user-friendly dashboard so you can create professional-looking memes quickly and easily.
The tool provides you hundreds of images that you can caption on humor text and create the most engaging memes for your target audience.
If you are good at cracking jokes, then this is the best tool you can use to create some funny memes in a click of the button.
Feedly
Feedly is one of those tools that you can use to update yourself on the current trending topics to write. The tool gives you the platform to come up with your unique feeds by following authoritative websites, blog sites, and YouTube channels.
You can use it to set a keyword alert to find out who is searching or talking about your brand on different social media platforms.
Calmly Writer
Calmly Writer gives you the right environment to write your content without any distractions. It has a simple interface that makes it easy and more comfortable to use.
The tool enables you to concentrate on nothing else but writing. This way, you save a lot of time that you would waste when using other tools like Ms. Word.
You can use the tool to insert subheadings, links, and quotes on the content. It helps you get all your ideas on a single screen so that you focus more on creating the best pieces.
Grammarly
Probably, Grammarly should be one of the best spelling and grammar checker tools that you can find around. This tool makes it easier for you to increase the readability score for your content.
It identifies all typos in your content and suggests the right sentence formats that make your content readable.
Hemingway
Whether you are a near-native speaker or a major in English, you shouldn’t forget to use Hemingway to check the readability score of your blog posts and web pages. This tool is the best you can get around for testing clarity in content.
It identifies all passive voices and helps you eliminate complex phrases and excess adverbs in the content. Also, you can use it to tweak the content and export the file in Html or markdown format.
Conclusion
Content writing involves a lot. If you want to build a career in content writing or you just want to have some basic insights for creating quality content for your marketing campaign, you must learn the different techniques and styles in content writing.
In this article, I have shared the different types of content writing and tools that you can use to make your content writing a piece of cake.
