10 Ways to Keep Creating Captivating Content
Being a content writer myself, thinking of new content strategies and ideas to keep my audience attentive is pretty critical to my job (so thanks for taking an interest fellow readers!). Yet to reel in a continual stream of customers, there is more pressure for businesses to write flourishing content. So here are a few ideas to get your content on a roll! It doesn’t have to be the works of Shakespeare but having some direction to head in is always a good start.
Let’s start with the biggest issue – good quality content. This is your foundation for content writing and there are many ways to achieve this quality writing! You’ve probably heard the general talk of just keep writing endless amounts of content and your audience will follow. Well that is not strictly true anymore. Now that Google’s search algorithms are updating on the regular we too need to start adapting our content strategies to get a good search ranking.
One of the main problems for businesses is the uncertainty of what qualifies as quality content and how do we achieve it?
1. Evergreen Content
Quality content comes hand in hand with Evergreen content, which is writing that never goes out of date and is extremely treasured by marketers. As Syed Balkhi puts it:
There you have it, it’s pretty invaluable stuff!
You’re probably thinking: how do you get this mystical Evergreen Content? Well just to warn you it won’t get results in a hey presto kind of fashion, it does take time. On the Brightside though, it’s also a lot easier to create than you may think. Here’s a very quick crash course:
Firstly think of topics – more specifically – ‘How-To’ posts (pretty much like what I’m doing now for example) these will never run out of virtual shelf life, as audiences will always be looking for these kind of articles.
Create a post in a list format. This breaks down the information for readers, so they can get the information they need, quickly and effectively and can refer to it with ease.
Don’t underestimate the power of Video either! Audience’s respond best to visual (which is why lists are great) and with a large reader population now becoming viewers – it is a great way to get people’s attention.
Quizzes have also proven to be popular and a type of post that your users are more likely to share.
Keep things simple stupid – duh! Writing in Layman’s terms reaches a wider audience and will draw in range of customers to your business.
2. Time it Right
You’ve hired John as your new content writer. He is producing some incredible stuff, keeping things witty and interesting, yet his posts are going out when no one is around to read them. This causes zero engagement, zero feedback and zero new business. Poor John isn’t feeling too great and his writing and you’re fretting about your business. So the best solution is to post your content at the right times. All the social platforms have various times which are ideal. According to Coschedule’s blog, these are some basic peak times:
- Twitter: 12-3pm and 5-6pm
- Facebook: Late into the week 1-4pm
- LinkedIn: 7:30-8:30am and 5-6pm
- Google+: 9-11am
Try not to take this as the complete truth though, as it can the right times to post can depend on who your target market is. A good start is to test the waters. Post a couple of tweets or Facebook posts at different times of the day and see which get the most engagement. Then you can draw up your content plan, schedule your posts and away you go!
3. What did Audiences Respond to Best
Similar to the post times, see which posts your readers liked most then you know what kind of content they’re after. Once you know this you can tailor topics that will inspire and draw in more readers.
4. Get your Content Asking Questions on Social
With Social Media being the largest and easiest way to express an opinion, this is a fantastic way to spark interesting conversation and followers in your direction. Once followers start talking about what you’ve written, it has more potential to go viral and it will draw visitors to your site.
5. No Keyword Stuffing
Before advanced updates, shoving copious amounts of keywords into our content was the thing to do. However, this needs to stop! Writing meta descriptions for example, with a list of key words will not help your chances at a good search ranking but a detailed, well put together sentence will definitely get those search rankings shooting up. Don’t hold back, let it go and the words will flow!
6. Relevancy to User
There is no point writing content for an audience that has no interest in it. So begin to write content related to the industry your business is in. This is a great platform for you to show off your passion, skills and expertise in said field and your enthusiasm will reach and keep potential customers.
In addition, research your posts to your heart’s content to make your writing credible and reliable.
7. Answer Questions with Articles
On the note of researching, most of your blog posts will be helpful tips and tricks for your readers, so keep writing how-to content and search for questions that can lead your discussion.
If you’re struggling to think of questions that need answering, there are a few ways of finding some:
- Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers or Ask Jeeves.
- Comments on your blog posts. If you don’t get many comments then look at competitor’s comments!
- Produce a poll on social media asking followers what their biggest pains are.
8. Longer Posts
You may find this surprising but your readers and search engines both prefer long posts to short ones. Julia McCoy suggests:
You wouldn’t think it could make that much difference – but it does!
If you’re curious about the ins and outs of why longer posts are the bomb, check out Neil Patel’s analysis of testing the difference between the two and seeing what effects it has on SEO.
9. Spice it up with Some Humour
If you think about how many times you’ve scrolled down your Facebook newsfeed to find friends sharing funny videos or articles – that is how you get viral content. Not to kick start the fear factor or anything but without humour, you can tread on dull territory than will send your readers to sleep and not use your source for content again. So keep it interesting, witty and shareable.
10. Keep your Enemies Closer…
What better way to stay in the loop and get some clogs turning than reading your competitors work? Hey, it’s not stealing it’s just getting an idea of what works first hand… by a similar company to yours! This way you can get some content ideas, a layout plan and see what topics worked best for them.
Hope these 10 tips help you through any content catastrophes and get you those search rankings you were hoping for! Good luck!