Did you know businesses and consumers often review website content, such as product pages and blogs, before making a purchase? 71% of B2B survey responders said they reviewed blog content during their buying journey.
FINDING THE KEYS TO THE CASTLE
Learning the concepts behind great content writing is like finding the keys to the castle when you begin to write as a blogger or freelance writer. Mastering these skills leads to jobs and referrals to new clients.
Great content is often described as:
- Helpful
- Targeted
- Logical
- Structured
- Easy to digest
The question is, how do you get your content there?
1. Think Critically
What is critical thinking anyway?
You may remember hearing about it from when you were in school or your kids’ teachers on parent night.
In short, it refers to the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment.
As writers, we do this by researching and analyzing a topic to determine how to present this to a reader logically.
Learning this skill opens up many pathways for freelance writers because it enables them to write on any topic.
2. USE ACTIVE VOICE
When you are a new blogger, you hear a lot about active and passive voices and how to use them. Using active voice makes your writing more direct, stronger, and, you guessed it, more active. The subject is something, or it is the thing that does the action of the verb in the sentence.
With the passive voice, the subject is acted upon, usually by another performer of the verb.
- I drank the wine before dinner. (active)
- Before dinner, the wine was drunk by me. (passive)
When you’re uncertain about whether your writing contains too much passive voice or which sentences are passive, there are writing tools. Apps such as Grammarly and the Hemingway App often help identify the overuse of passive voice.
These alone will not make your content writing great, but they help.
3. REMOVE FILLER TEXT AND REDUNDANCY
Sometimes editors will call this fluff. This extra content in an article diminishes the quality and takes it away from being great article content. Generally, editors will return articles with too much filler text and redundancy back to the writer for the removal of fluff and repetitive content (redundancy).
Writing clean content without any fluff is better to impress editors and readers. Learning to differentiate good content from filler comes with practice.
4. INCLUDE INSIGHTS FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Your writing shouldn’t sound like anyone else’s. Finding ways to lift your writing is easy to achieve when you include perspectives there are yours alone. No one else can claim the experiences and knowledge you have. They are unique to you.
These can be opinions, things you’ve learned on the job, or taken from personal experiences.
These little touches help your reader connect with the content in a personal way, and this often brings them back to read other content on the site as they move through their buyer’s journey.
5. ALWAYS ANSWER WHY AND HOW
Great content writing answers the questions readers have on a topic.
Start with a clear idea for your article’s content, from the headline to the conclusion. An outline for your content will also help here.
Why should you create an outline for your content?
One reason is that it helps you write more useful and well-structured content.
Clarifying your content and engaging your readers is simple when you use an outline and answer the typical questions. The who, what, when, why, where & how.
6. DIRECT YOUR ARTICLE TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE; SPEAK TO THEM
An active introduction is an excellent way to write great content and will keep readers engaged longer.
Another technique is to try writing with your specific reader in mind.
For example, if you write about fashion, your target audience will be fashion influencers, artists, teenagers, and similar. If you write about new technology, your target is business professionals, tech professionals, and similar. The style of writing in each case is different.
7. READABILITY SCORE IN GREAT CONTENT WRITING
Great content writing happens when the writing connects with the reader. Writing is communication, and it’s not great when it fails to communicate with the reader.
People need to understand the point you’re trying to convey.
Remember the long-running series Friends? In one episode, Joey writes a recommendation letter for Monica and Chandler. He uses a thesaurus on every word to write it to sound “smarter.” The letter was an epic fail because no one could understand what he was trying to say.
The good news is we can quantify readability. It’s in something called your readability score. Tools such as the Hemingway App help here. They ensure the content of your website connects with the broadest audience possible.
GETTING TO WRITING GREAT CONTENT
You don’t write great content when you’ve just started as a blogger or freelance writer. It takes time to learn the skills and practice. As you continue to write, you improve and eventually get to great content writing.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post; please comment below and come back to read more. Have questions? Ask me.