That is a cool quote that represents an importance of content marketing. It turned out that content marketing takes a full control over online business and a web life in common. The trouble is that people spend thousands of dollars on commercial and on improving their websites look, and then fail. Why?
The thing is that they forgot about a key tool for a well-done promotion. If you want to attract somebody or sell your products and services on the web, you definitely need to create a catchy content, so, to make a tight friendship with content marketing. Fortunately, we created an experienced guide that will help you to achieve great results!
How to Write Content if You're not a Content Creator?
In the dynamic world of the 21st century, everyone is expected to be the ‘Jack of all trades.’ Growing competition and decreasing client budget is causing event hard-core SEO experts to churn out their exquisite stock of words for delivering engaging website content. Easy as it may sound, the reality is a far cry from being a bed of roses.
Juggling with more than one area of expertise can definitely set your income wheel rolling as you take care of your client’s web content apart from optimising their search engine rankings. But you need to be prepared for roadblocks ahead as you will be entering an entirely new territory of digital marketing.
Why Would You Work So Hard
Money definitely stands out as one of the biggest motivators of all time. But there is also a thing known as ‘good faith’ which triggers developers to explore their writing aptitude. Modern day clients work on a shoe string budget. And this is true in the case of both small as well as big projects which you might bag in your course of work.
Clients might sometimes write the content themselves and let you carry out the remaining work in the backend for making their website rank higher in search engines. But if things go haywire, you might just end up with the responsibility of writing the web content on behalf of your clients.
Instances are also not rare when the client gets ready to provide the content but it doesn’t get past your own set of strict quality guidelines. Such scenarios can be avoided if you clearly communicate your expectation in advance regarding the type of content which is needed to lure in more readers.
The real problem arises as clients tend to allocate a greater share of the budget on web development by neglecting the quality of content. However, they fail to realise that an intuitive website will be of no use if it is filled with plagiarized and boring content. In such cases, you are more likely to suggest supervising it by yourself and end up with the dual responsibilities of web designing and churning out content.
But we believe that when there is will, there is bound to be a way. And that is why, we have come up with an easy guide meant for the non-writers who are on the verge of testing the mightiness of a pen (in our case keyboard).
Things To Do Before Embarking On The Writing Mission
Problem arises when your particular set of expectations fail to meet that of your client’s. This is why it is imperative to have an open discussion with the client before starting with his website content. In this way, you can easily make out what the client is seeking out to cast away all chances of performance gaps.
Once you have gathered all the requisite information, you need to consider the sitemap and general page structure. In this way, you can be significantly benefited during layout creation stage so that you can unleash your fullest productivity.
Steps Of Writing Website Content For The First Time
Whatever be the genre of website your client requires; you need to realise that every website is unique in its own way. The same thought needs to be imbibed while writing content so that you don’t end up duplicating information of peer websites you seek out inspiration from. You can easily deliver a high-grade product by simply following the steps listed down below:
- First comes ‘Hero Text’ which refers to the short and crisp content appearing over the top of your home or landing page. In most cases, it consists of a short write-up, an image and even a Call to Action (CTA). Although this might seem easy, writing the ‘Hero text’ is one of the toughest parts of web content creation. It can serve as a deal maker or breaker as you get just a few words for expressing your thoughts and how your product stands out from its ‘n’ number of competitors. A strong ‘Hero text’ holds the potential of transforming a casual visitor into a dedicated client. For this, you need to keep the content direct and simple so that it appeals to the visitors. You should also try and state about the client, its area of action and reasons behind it choice of work.
- Once you are done with the ‘Hero Text’ it’s time to proceed with the CTA or ‘Call To Action’ which can guide an interested visitor towards the next step of action. An ideal CTA is one which is direct, clear and actionable. In this step, you can either opt for a ‘Button CTA’ or a quick line of text. The former keeps the interface clutter free and re-directs users to a different page on clicking the same. Popular examples of ‘Button CTA’ are ‘Register Now,’ ‘Sign Up For Newsletter’ etc.
- Now is the time to educate your visitors more about the organization with a proper ‘About Us’ page. This is definitely one of the easiest pages to create provided you implement some stellar journalistic tactics. You will have to answer the question of five W’s comprising of who, when, what, why and where. There is no specific word limit but it is always advisable to keep things short and to the point. You can even include a little description regarding the mission and vision, ongoing projects as well as backstory to infuse greater client engagement. Keeping the whole thing within 300-700 words is enough for getting your word across without coming off as too overwhelming.
- You might have seen all good websites having an entire different section on client testimonials. This can serve as an important marketing tool for driving in organic traffic and increasing the conversion rate. Testimonials also serve as a social proof which can trigger potential customers to try out your product and service. In most cases, testimonials are secured from existent customers and next undergo proofreading for being complemented with proper images and headings and displayed in a visually appealing way.
- There is no point in writing a stellar web content if your potential customers fail to contact you. And for this, it is imperative to come up with a good ‘Contact Us’ page. Providing more details like working hours and alternative contact methods such as email or social media pages can make the entire thing a lot more customer friendly.
- Last but not the least comes Privacy Policy which serves as an integral part of every website. However, you won’t be required to test your writing aptitude in this case as you can roll-forward it easily from competitor sites by just providing specific information about your organisation.
Do’s & Don’ts While Writing Web Content
- Do right goal based content so that your target consumers feel convinced about buying a particular product.
- Do use friendly terms which makes your potential readers feel at ease while browsing through your content.
- Do use headers, numbered lists and bullet points to make your text more legible.
- Do make sure that each paragraph does not contain more than one idea.
- Do look after the display metrics of your web content so that viewers can easily find the information they are looking for.
- Do review the content once you are done writing the same to keep it free from all probabilities of error.
- Do proper keyword research so that you can implement the same in your web content. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to gain further insights on the trending keywords.
- Do make it a point to use ‘first person’ as much as possible as that you can make your readers feel more connected with your text.
- Do increase the visual appeal of your website by using videos or images in the place of boring old texts.
- Do play around various text formatting options like bold, italics, capital, underlined, shadowed, embossed etc.
- Don’t use images which might entangle you in a copyright fiasco.
- Don’t use extremely long sentences. Rather try to keep it crisp and to the point.
- Don’t use filler content to achieve your target word limit as this will cause your viewers to get bored easily.
- Don’t forget to strike the right balance between both promotional as well as non-promotional content so that your work doesn’t come off as pure spam to viewers.
- Don’t use an anchor text without any context. Rather try to unleash your fullest creativity.
- Last but not the least, never ever plagiarize your content as that will simply get you nowhere. You might take inspiration from various sources, but try and blend in your own ideas to come up with something unique.
Final Thoughts
We hope you found our tutorial helpful. If you ever face such a situation, make sure you do not panic. Writing content is no rocket science and can be easily manageable with a bit of forward thinking and language vocabulary. You also need to understand that potential clients can arrive absolutely anywhere in your website. Thus, it is necessary to work for overall betterment rather than just focusing on bits and pieces. All of your pages need to have a call to action so that your readers don’t feel clueless while browsing through the same.
This piece is provided by Shyami from Techigem. Shyami Goyal is a tech enthusiast and blogger. He writes about technology, apps, WordPress and a variety of other topics.
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- Hubspot. Join the game.
- One post in a month - learn how to get value.
- Good Branding. (Beats Celebrity secret)
- Old Spice - smart content marketing.
- Quality over quantity. (The secret of Rolex).
- Uniqueness around your products. Whole Foods lifestyle.
- An emotional connection between a client and a product. (Coca-Cola secret).
- Total transparency. (Buffer secret).
- Shareable snippets of content. (Lana del Rey’s secret).
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- Key statements to remember.
Stay Tuned!
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