Content writing is a format of professional marketing writing used majorly for an online audience. Brands are involved in marketing and the same is with many online businesses but for that they need content.
To establish your presence in the world of digital marketing, you need to have good content on your website. Besides many other important factors responsible for the success of a good digital marketing strategy, content writing holds an important rank.
It is important for all fields related to the digital world. Content writing is the most informative and engaging part of the world of digital marketing.
So, knowing all this, the question arises " What is content writing?"
What is Content Writing?
Content writing is a format of professional marketing writing used majorly for an online audience. Brands are involved in marketing and the same is with many online businesses but for that they need content.
The purpose of the content can be dependent on multiple reasons like increasing the visitors to the website or introducing a new product launch or service available. Content writing needs understanding the audience and to bring out the idea for the product which can attract that type of audience.
Business professionals prefer content writers for creating sales pitches, articles, blogs, web page content, etc.
What is the importance of content writing?
The digital world is highly reliable over quality content. To make a business prosper, content writing can be seen as the bridge between the products and users.
The essence is to deliver the idea of the product or service in an accurate way to which the audience can easily relate and get caught up with. Using quality content writing can benefit your business in the following ways:
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Quality attracts attention
If the information on your website is too long and not engaging, there are maximum chances of a higher bounce back rate. Since a huge amount of data is available over the Internet, the audience is now keen to invest in something which is useful and briefed.
Quality content is well expressed and well researched which therefore holds the capability to create an immersive impact on the visitor right from the very first line of the content.
Good content can increase your sales, help your idea and business to spread faster, increase the website traffic and create a reputation for your brand.
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Strategic content proves more effective
Good content writing embeds the use of backlinks, references, keywords and correct information. If the content is written at random with no particular use of highly searched keywords that are related to your business, there are extremely high chances that the search engine will not list your content in the most preferred search results and your website might get lost like thousand others on the unreachable extent of a search engine result page.
Quality content writing ensures the use of proper keywords and optimising the content with the needs of the SEO techniques to increase the visibility and let that content stand out from the others.
In content writing, it is vital to strategise the purpose of the content, the type of audience it should be focused upon, and how to get the content a better ranking. If all these factors are tracked properly in content writing, the growth is exponential definitely.
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Content is a ladder to the reach the top of Search engines
Search engines like Google, Bing, etc. constantly keep updating their indexing and ranking. They take a record of any content that a large fraction of the audience has found useful and rank it accordingly.
Later also, if there are any modifications in that content, web crawlers again note that down for modifying the ranking. So, if you connect to a good content analyser or good content writer, it will be an easy way to get listed in the top rankings of these highly used search engines.
Content writing is more effective when it results in a bigger lot of people who are responding or reading that content and are finding it relevant. Therefore, it is not wrong to say that content writing is the core ingredient which will be able to get your business good limelight even in the presence of uncountable competition.
What are the different types of content?
Different types of content have different functionalities. In a business, various contents are used at different sections of the sales funnel to promote the idea and enhance customer engagement.
Content writing covers up writing or creating any of these content forms depending on the purpose and on the stage where the business owner is aiming to use it. Some of the most common forms of such content are :
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Email newsletter:
It helps to keep in contact with the customer through their email Ids. Email newsletters can be used to widely spread any offer or new product to old customers who have previously been a part of your customer database.
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Social Media posts:
This type of content helps you to enrich and provoke your idea on social media accounts. There is a humongous population on social media in the present time, so social media content can help you to identify and communicate your business to a community depending on their needs and likes which can be analysed through the same social media accounts.
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Web page copy:
It has multidimensional functionality. Content over a webpage can include a wide range of fields. Web page copy can be a brief introduction on the website about your business idea or the company's growth. It can also be the online description of a new product or service.
It helps the visitors to get a complete insight into what you want them to see through strategic content.
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White papers:
This type of content is relevant in displaying industry-specific information. It helps the client to get an in-depth idea about the evolution of the idea of your product and also the aim of the business.
Whitepapers can be about why your business idea is the perfect product which can solve the client's problem like no other existing solution.
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Product descriptions:
A very common form of content on e-commerce sites because this content introduces the customer to the product. It involves all the features and manufacturing specialities of your products.
Highly known e-commerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, etc. all use product description columns in all of their products to introduce the customers in a better way with the product and let the product seem more fascinating.
What are the right steps for content writing?
Now after all this knowledge, it is important to understand the steps that quality content writing demands. You can follow these steps to write articles for blogs, outsource your content to agencies or freelance.
No matter whatsoever is the work intent of writing is, these are the steps which are followed in every general scenario:
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Pick a unique angle:
Almost everything that you will be writing about is already existing on the Internet. So, the question arises here is why people will be willing to read your content instead of the content which is already available? So, to overcome this it is very important to pick a unique angle for describing any topic, product or service.
Using keywords in the right place and mentioning points which are not present in the existing articles will make your content unique and worth reading.
This needs that you should do proper research to see what keywords are used in that topic and how the presentation is made for the viewers after you are done observing the highest-ranked articles, you can conclude and notice the points that they have missed and the keyword strategy they have used for the SEO purpose.
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Emphasis on Introduction:
Make sure that the article starts with a very engaging tone. This will help you reduce the bounce rate. Generally, visitors only read the first 2-3 lines of any content and if they don't find that interesting, they switch to another article.
To prevent this, it is necessary to focus on the introduction of your content. The content should be unique and highly engaging so that it can provoke the visitors to read the complete content. Make the introduction sound useful and interesting.
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Select visuals carefully:
Using visuals in between the content is another major technique which can be used to enhance customer engagement. Use of photos, charts, and tables which provide useful data in a brief and easily understood way also helps the content to get a better ranking on search engine result pages.
Visuals are more catchy than words, so if you are using a set of precisely attractive and highly informative visuals, it is surely going to help your content get better attention than content that only contains surplus words but no visuals.
It is also necessary not to use vague visuals or unnecessarily stuff the content with visuals.
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Insert CTAs:
Content writing should be done in such a way that it engages the customers about what they are reading is a problem they are facing and this content will also provide the solution to their problem. In this way, you can take care of your business goals by turning potential leads into paying customers.
Use strategies like buttons, pop-ups, and product subscription links in between the content which completely sorts out the problem which has been addressed in the content. Inserting their call to action (CTAs) will lead to the growth of the business and also result in customer engagement and satisfaction.
Some Content writing tools
You need good content writing tools as it helps you improvise content by eliminating writing errors and increasing its readability. It gives you fresh ideas for your content and effortlessly organises it. These tools act as an aid to your content and make your vision better. Following are some best content writing tools available -
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Grammarly
Grammarly is one of the best and most popular content writing tools available. You can literally do so much with its tools and features provided. It helps in correcting your grammatical errors, spellings, punctuations, articles etc with reading time, word count and readability score graph.
There are two versions one is the base which comes for free and the premium version needs a subscription but unlocks many advanced tools.
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Surfer
When your primary focus is to create SEO-friendly content surfer is the best fit for it. The AI editor is designed in a manner that keeps a watch on your keywords, word count, headings and readability.
It enhances your content which will increase your organic traffic and outrank your content in SEO competition. Surfer editor is a part of its toolset which can suspect 500+ errors in just one click.
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ProWritngAid
This is an artificial intelligence powered software which helps you enhance your content by increasing the vocabulary and dismissing all silly grammatical fouls. It strengthens your content by making it clear and improvising which helps in engaging the readers.
It will make your raw content so much more concrete and interactive.
Conclusion
So, these were the most important aspects you need to understand about Content Writing. Taking care of all these points, you are fully ready to begin your work in the field of content writing. It is a never-ending skill or asset in this digital era.
Using content writing in the best way is one sure step for the growth of an individual or an organisation.