Content has become a major part of marketing in recent years. The growth of social media and the role of search engines as sources have both highlighted content as essential to your marketing strategy. High-quality content can introduce your organization to new audiences through social sharing and can persuade your audience that your product is the right choice for them.
But with content being so important, how do you write compelling content? Here are my 5 tips:
- Tell a story: One of the big challenges of content writing is that there is so much content available – really, a lot! This makes it harder to stand out than it was five years ago. However, content that tells an interesting story is always captivating. If it portrays someone in a similar situation as the audience, it becomes even more engaging because it makes the reader think, ‘hey, that could be me!’
- Bounce your ideas: I am lucky enough to have friends from all walks of life, and the broader the people I ask, the more interesting the content ideas become. However, you should also bear in mind the needs of your audience. By all means take a risk with your content, just don’t go too mad!
- Share your story: I write predominantly about digital marketing, and as I do it for a living, often my blogs are inspired by a challenge or opportunity that I have experienced over the week. Sharing this story and why it is important is a really good way of engaging people in your content, because if you’re facing a challenge, it’s likely that someone else is too – and think how cool it would be to find a blog which helps you with your challenge.
- Take a break: Changing your scenery can have a really positive effect on your creativity. Go for a 5 minute walk outside the office, turn the radio on, check out a different website to the one you work on – all of these are handy to get creative juices flowing and for stimulating new ideas. I use all of these methods and seriously, they work!
- Number it: I have come to use this a lot, and I normally look for this in other blog posts too. If, like I have for this blog post, you let people know how many tips / examples / points you are going to give them, they know how long a post will be and whether they have the time to read the whole post, or just skim read it.
There are countless tips for compelling content, but do you have a particular favourite that you would like to share? Leave a comment and let me know!
Image via marketingsavant.com