Content writing refers to planning, research, writing, and editing content for marketing purposes. With content, businesses can attract the target audience, build positive connections, and finally lure them into the sales funnel.
87% of marketers leverage content to guide their target audience through various stages of the buyer’s journey. Each stage consists of a different content format, from awareness of the brand to purchase decisions.
Content is King and you should Crown it with best SEO practices.
Since numerous companies are fighting for audience attention and with just an 8 seconds attention span, it’s challenging for a brand to cut through the clutter and reach potential customers.
From putting up a status on Facebook, drafting an email to a client, or writing a company blog, everything you do is a form of content writing. Let’s discuss the major types of content writing and how they impact the target audience.
The Various Types of Content Writing
Content writing consists of different writing styles that serve a unique purpose to promote the brand diversely.
Here are some of the content types that we will be discussing:
- Web content
- Blogging
- Social media
- Advertising and sales copy
- Newsletter
- Website Content: Have you ever build a house? The foundation of that house is website content for your brand. The content on the homepage, about us page, and contact us page, everything is build to create your online presence. Without the relevant content, the readers cannot relate to your company and will not buy anything. This type of writing is also known as Copywriting.
- Blog writing: Since the web content is the foundation, blogs are the structure – the rooms of your home. The primary goal of blogs is to create awareness among the users about the brand, build SEO, and help a company develop trust with the audience. There are several popular blog post formats like how-to posts, listicles, guides, and promotional posts.
- Social Media: Consider social media as a supporting player. A company has to use multiple social media platforms to attract different types of audiences to their brand. When people want to know about a brand, they search for their social media presence. If the brand is active on social media, it means they can be easily trusted.
- Advertising And Sales Copy: To attract users’ attention, you need to create engaging advertising sales and marketing copy for your brand. The goal of an ad is to portray your brand’s unique features. It can be a boosted Facebook post or a promoted tweet.
- Email: Still the most underrated form of content writing that gives maximum leads for a business. From promotional emails to awareness emails and accountment emails, every form of content must be carefully crafted to serve a specific purpose.
- Newsletter: To create awareness of the brand and develop a bond with customers – a newsletter is used to post company news, updates, and promotions on new products.
Now you are familiar with the types of content writing, let’s move towards where to begin your content writing journey.
Where To Begin & How To Create Engaging Content?
Just like every other field, content writing improves with practice. If you plan to become a content writer, you must begin by choosing a niche. A topic that interests you the most. Do some research and see what other people have written about it. And finally, start writing with your unique style on that topic.
When you start with something that you know, it gets easy to write on that topic. To begin with, you can either create an account on WordPress or Medium, where you will be uploading your content for the people to see.
Here are some tips for creating content that’ll wow your audience for sure:
- Begin with a goal in mind: Before you create content, know the purpose of that content. What are you willing to achieve with that content?
- Create Enticing Headlines: The purpose of a headline is to attract an audience to your content. Show how and why the content is helpful for them.
- Study The Hook Technique: With only 8 seconds to grab the attention of your audience, you need to hook the audience with the hook technique. A method where you create engaging intros to attract your audience.
- Make It Scannable: Mostly, people will just scan your content, and if they find anything interesting, they will read the rest of the content. Create subheads, bullets, and leave space between paragraphs to make the content readable.
- Add Value: You are not just creating content for the sake of filling pages on your website. The idea behind creating content is to give value to your reader. And when you give enough value to the reader, there is a good chance that the user will trust and buy something from you.
- Use powerful visuals: Images, videos, charts, and infographics can engage the readers more than just text.
- Choose A Unique Angle: There is already so much content present on the internet. To beat the crowd, you need to find a unique angle for your content and show why your content is worth reading?
- Use Storytelling: The fastest way to engage users is to use the power of storytelling. Inspire, motivate, touch people emotionally with enticing storytelling. Use real-life stories or create fictional stories to engage users.
- Data Makes Content Autenthic: To gain authority, you need to provide solid data with your content. Include reports, studies, and experiments regarding your topic.
- Don’t Forget The CTA: Call to action button is designed to force action from the user. No matter what type of content you create, if there is no CTA, then the user will leave without taking any action.
- Keep An Eye On Metrics: What is working and what is not? You will know this by keeping an eye on the metrics of your website. The visits, shares, and engagement that particular content has created will help you make better content in the future.
- Avoid Spelling mistakes: When creating great content, remember the importance of grammar and spelling for readership and trust; this is just as important.
How SEO Writing Will Improve Your Sales?
SEO content writing is a subcategory of blog writing. Here writing content aims to develop brand presence around a specific set of keywords.
When a company plans on writing SEO content, it means they are trying to target customers with a set of keywords related to their service. Whenever a potential customer searches for those keywords, the relevant content will show up in Google search results.
It is noted that 93% of online activities begin with searches. And if your brand doesn’t show up on the first page of Google, there is a chance that 75% of the users will not even bother to browse the second page.
When you write relevant content on your blog and your website, there is a chance that after some time, people will start considering you as an authority in your niche. When this happens, there is a fair chance that potential users will read your content before they plan to do business with you.
Here are three tips for creating SEO optimized content:
- Target Multiple Keywords: Users don’t always search the web with one keyword. Before creating content using a tool like Ahrefs to know the searches for that keyword. When you create content that users are searching for, you’ll appear on top of search results.
- Use Quora To Find Topics: You need to find what people are searching for on the internet. A platform like Quora will help you find the relevant topics that people are already searching for or want answers to. Pick these topics and create blog posts around them.
- Read Others And Create Your Version: Google is always searching for content relevant to the audience. Read what others have said about the topic and create a version to add your view about that topic.
How Can Pakistani Entrepreneurs Leverage Content Writing To Attract Global Traffic?
Content writing has no boundaries. If you are a startup willing to scale your business to a global audience, content writing can quickly help you attract the right traffic to your website.
In the past few years, Pakistani business owners have understood the power of regional pages or local SEO. Regional pages are landing pages designed for specific countries or states of that country. For instance, if you want to target customers in New York, you need to create a landing page specific to New York.
To attract traffic from California creating a landing page that is targeted towards customers in California. If you choose the right keywords and write content relevant to a particular region, then you’ll be able to attract traffic from that country.
Another way to target a global audience is to do guest blog posts on country-specific websites. For example, if you are willing to attract traffic from Dubai, you need to find websites with UAE traffic. Posting guest posts on those websites will help you get traffic from a specific country.
Why Choose A Professional Company For Content Writing?
Just like website design & development, content writing is something that requires an expert. Investing in content writing can help you increase sales and build trust among the customers.
When you hire a professional content writing company, it will create a solid brand reputation and awareness of your brand. When people are aware of your brand, it will increase your chances of developing a bond of trust among those people.
Indeed, you can write content for your website or a blog post. But when a professional write the same copy for your brand, it will give your brand a lot of website traffic, create engagement, and you might be able to land your first customer.
Closing Thoughts
Content writing is the foundation of your brand. It can either make or break your brand reputation. Use content writing to create awareness, improve the rank of your website, and build authority in the market.
The goal of content is to engage the reader and entice them to do business with you. The key is to give value to the reader and keep it consistent so that the user will always come back for more.