10+ Game-Changing Content Writing Tips
The digital age is a golden era of content writing. Today, more than ever, written words are consumed by millions every minute and second. As people scroll through mobile or desktop content, they barely notice the majority of messages, promotions, and visuals that appear on the screen. This is why your content writing should be exceptional in every sense of the word. But before we dive deeper into content creating and content marketing, let’s start from the very beginning.
What Is Content Writing?
Content writing is more than traditional marketing writing. It’s the process of planning, crafting, and editing content for digital marketing needs. It includes versatile content formats such as blog posts, video scripts, podcast scripts, landing pages, email newsletters, white papers, and social media posts. Basically, every piece of written content you see online represents some sort of content writing. Since famous brands and companies invest millions in their online marketing, you’re probably aware of how powerful content marketing is. In a nutshell, content marketing is based on creating and distributing relevant, original, and professional content that can attract clients, grow sales, and keep people interested in certain brands/products. The right content will help your customers solve potential issues and keep them engaged. With all this in mind, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of marketers are using content marketing no matter which niche they operate in. If you want to master your content writing craft and strengthen brand awareness try to incorporate these content writing tips into your writing process. But, before everything else, make sure you use all the essential plugins for writers, since they make a real difference.
Content Marketing Tips for Newbies and Professionals
Whether you are an experienced content creator or a complete beginner, knowing a thing or two about best content practices can only boost the quality of your work. Have a look at our favorite content writing tips that can truly transform your writing process.
- Keyword Search Comes First
- Avoid Keyword Stuffing
- Calls to Action (CTAs) Messages
- Always Hyperlink to Your Sources
- Emotion is Everlasting
- Keep Things Simple
- Chop it up
- Don’t Forget SEO Best Practices
- Grammar Matters
- More Editing
- Provide Added Value
- Multimedia Content Rocks
- Adapt Your Writing to Different Platforms
- Don’t Forget Quotes
- Content Writing Courses are Always a Good Idea
- Keep Your Content Fresh
Keywords – the holy grail of content writing. In short, keywords and phrases are terms that people enter into search engines to find sites, articles, or products. Before you start to write an article, you need to do a detailed keyword search to create SEO-ready content. When you know what Google finds relevant, you’re more likely to craft content that will rank better. Thus, your content will get a chance to stand out and attract readers or potential customers. Careful, detailed keyword research is the core of any successful content story. So, if you want to beat competitors on search engines, do keyword research before you start working on your next piece of content. We recommend you to use Google Keyword Planner, the best solution for keyword research, or Ahrefs – one of the best SEO tools on the market.
Keywords have their purpose, but it’s all for nothing when you sacrifice the quality of your content for their density. Valuable, high-quality content with a reasonable amount of keywords will rank much better than texts with poor content where keywords dominate. When every other word in your article is a keyword, your content may seem staged, untrustworthy, and fake. Use synonyms to avoid keyword stuffing. Synonyms are recognized by search engines as related words, which is a sign of content quality. Don’t forget that you create content for humans in the first place, not for the search engines. Plus, search engines are more advanced than ever. You don’t have to overdo your keyword strategy, use grammatically incorrect phrases and variations just because they are popular among users. Find the balance between content quality and SEO requirements for the best result.
Calls to action messages are a powerful sale tool. If your content aims to grow sales or increase traffic, don’t forget to use CTA messages when your content allows. This kind of message should be used carefully, in certain parts of your article/content only. When you use too many CTA messages you’re in danger of sounding aggressive. For this reason, make sure your content is well balanced, rich in valuable information, and ready to encourage action but not at all costs. Also, pay special attention to CTA button design since each detail matters.
To keep your content relevant, always hyperlink to the sources where readers can read more about a certain topic. For instance, if you quote someone or talk about numbers and statistics, always name the source. By linking your content to sites where some facts originally appear, you will grow the list of your backlinks. And, as you may know, having relevant backlinks is a good thing for your SEO. Of course, make sure you link only to relevant websites/sources. Linking to irrelevant sites and poor sources can damage your article and impact your SEO negatively.
No matter what kind of content you work on, don’t forget this: every good story has an emotional impact. When you focus on facts only or promoting at all costs, people may lose interest in reading. So, make sure your articles, newsletters, video scripts have the potential to evoke emotions. As a result, people will trust your brand more and decide to make a purchase easier.
Writing for the web requires talents, experience, and knowledge. In other words, if you want results, you need more than a good writing style. One of our favorite content writing tips is to keep things simple. This applies to your sentence structure, word choice, and overall style. If your sentences are too long or there are too many unknown words, people will lose interest. Also, keep your tone of voice light, punchy and fun. For this manner, limit the use of passive voice. Your style should encourage action not scare people.
As we already said, using keywords in web writing is essential for good results. But the SEO story doesn’t end with this. From your URL, H1/H2/H3 headers, and meta descriptions to alt tags – you should adapt every segment of your content to your SEO strategy. Of course, don’t forget to include backlinks. Yoast plugin and RankMath together with other SEO plugins can help you do this with ease. These powerful tools allow you to improve your content so it meets SEO requirements. As a result, your text will rank better and reach more people. Yoast is a great choice for complete SEO beginners since it covers SEO essentials.
Nothing can ruin a good impression like poor grammar. That’s why double-checking is mandatory. Whenever you have doubts, use tools that control words, grammar, and spelling. Grammarly and Hemingway are most famous for a reason. In just a few clicks you can ‘proofread’ your text and correct mistakes. This is especially important if you write in a foreign language. Hemingway is great if you need feedback on content structure and sentence formatting.
After you fix the basic mistakes, make sure somebody edits your writing. This will prevent potential mistakes since the second set of eyes always sees what you may miss out on. In an ideal scenario, you will collaborate with an experienced editor with exceptional writing and language skills. But, if you have to edit your writing by yourself, put your text away until you rest your eyes. This will give you a new perspective and help you edit with attention to detail.
During just one day, we see endless amounts of content. From social media posts, YouTube videos to newsletters and articles – we are bombarded with content that often has no value to us. If you want to make sure your content will get noticed, always offer value to readers. That can be anything from practical tips, exclusive insights to free ebooks, templates, or webinars. If you want to get something in return, sometimes you need to give things away first.
Multimedia content should be part of your content writing. When you incorporate images, videos, graphs, or any other multimedia content into your text, your readers will be able to enjoy a more interactive reading experience. This is especially important in very long texts where readers need stronger focus to finish reading successfully. If you have your original content, this would be even cooler. For instance, if you make videos about your products or service, or you run a podcast that covers certain subjects, feel free to include this in your blog articles. This is a win-win situation – your text will be more relevant, plus your video traffic will rise.
Writing for different platforms requires flexibility. If you want your content to perform well on Linkedin or email, you need to adapt your writing style and content to different audiences and their needs. Plus, writing a newsletter isn’t the same as writing a blog post. To ensure your content will perform successfully, learn about each platform where your content will appear. Different platforms require different content length, tone of voice, and call to actions. Also, the topics you cover via versatile platforms vary. So, one of the best content writing tips you can get is to be flexible and open to innovation.
When you’re not an expert on a topic, but still want to provide relevant, insightful content, use quotes. The original testimonies, statements, and quotes are great tools for keeping readers interested in the topic, especially in longer articles. However, quotes work great in shorter content forms as well. Use them to illustrate different opinions on one topic or when you want to make a powerful conclusion.
Our list of the best content writing tips wouldn’t be complete without content writing courses. As this industry constantly involves, keeping up with the latest trends and best practices is a must. If you’re just stepping into the content creating field or you want to make a career switch, you will be happy to hear that there are many free and very affordable courses you can check out. Udemy and Coursera are well known for their amazing content writing courses for anyone who wants to start from the stretch. However, if you want to take your skills to the next level, Masterclass is a place to be.
Once you publish your content and it starts its journey, don’t just forget it. The regular updates of content, hyperlinks and multimedia will keep it stay fresh and relevant, as time passes. New products, trends, and industry changes should be followed, so keep your content up to date.
Let’s Wrap It Up
The growing demand for content writers is a good opportunity for turning your passion for writing into a lucrative job. But, if you already operate in this field, you can always level up your skills to catch the eye of powerful clients. In both cases, content writing tips that bring results can help you achieve your goals easier. We hope the selection of our favorite content writing tips will lead you to well-paid projects and amazing collaborations.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
