When it comes to writing content, you want to make sure you create the best possible pieces for your site and clients. You can look up all the different writing tips and tricks, but there might be one thing you’re missing out on – writing intelligent content.
Intelligent content is the way of the content future, and you need to make sure you are on board with this great method. I am going to take a look at just what intelligent content is, why you need it, and also focus on some great steps to help you achieve the best content this year.
What Does Intelligent Content Mean?
Referring to intelligent content not only refers to how the specific piece of content is written, but also what goes into your content strategy. Intelligent content helps you know whom you are reaching, and it can make the difference when someone clicks on your link on social media, another blog, or from the SERP. A leader in the niche, Ann Rockley, says that intelligent content has a rich structure, and it also keeps everything such as semantics organized. I am going to focus on why you need to have intelligent content for your page, and just how you can get it, easily.
Why Do You Need to Have Intelligent Content?
One of the most important reasons why you need to have intelligent content is because it can be what helps make or break your company’s success. Smart content takes user experience into consideration, which is something you need to focus on when you make your website and any content. A major part of user experience and content is the same, or similar voice, as well as proper research. If you have different content throughout the web that doesn’t have the same voice and that doesn’t match up when it comes to facts, people aren’t going to know if they can trust you. Inconsistency will breed discontent, and you will soon lose your clients and any visitors. Start focusing on creating intelligent content to make sure you have consistency; your clients will greatly appreciate it and you will be immensely happy with the results it produces.
Another reason why intelligent content is important is it is because your clients are able to find what they need quickly, without a lot of hassle. This goes hand-in-hand with user experience. If your clients are able to find what they want and need, quickly and easily, they are more likely to stick around and use your business continually. It will also help you convert visitors into leads, bringing in more customers.
10 Steps to Follow for Incredible and Intelligent Content
Now that you know what intelligent content is and why you need it, I am going to take a look at just how you can achieve it. Intelligent content isn’t very hard to get, and by following a few steps, many of which you should already be doing, you will be able to see some great success. Let’s take a look!
Make Sure Your Content is Well Researched. One of the best ways to make sure your content is written intelligently is to make sure it is well researched. You might know a lot about a certain topic, but it is always wise to do your research and have resources to back you up. Google is not only helpful for people to find your site, but it is also helpful for you to find great research and resources. Look for sites that have high domain authority (you can use Moz’s MozBar to find great sources) and take time to learn. This is definitely important if you are writing about a topic that you do not know too much about. You don’t want to come across as someone who isn’t knowledgeable, so you need to make sure you do tons of research.
Always Have Well Written Content. Another way to get intelligent content is to make sure it is written well. You do not want to have content that is filled with grammatical or spelling errors, or content that sounds stiff and dry. Well-written content is vital to keep readers and convert them into leads, and it is also important when it comes to ranking. Well-written content means that you should be focusing on high-quality content, and we all know how important high-quality content is to the SERPs. A great way to write amazing content is to focus on something you are passionate about; your passion will come across in the writing, which makes it engaging and great.
Make Your Content Industry Specific. Writing about trends is great when you want to stay relevant, but you need to make sure you always write things that are industry specific. You can gain inspiration from the latest movie releases or books, but if it doesn’t relate to your industry, it isn’t going to flow very well with the rest of your content. Make sure that you are always writing about things related to your industry to help set you up as an industry leader and to keep from confusing your clients and visitors. I regularly take inspiration from various trends, but I always make sure that when I write about them, I utilize them to show things pertaining to copywriting, social media or content marketing. Trust me, it is possible!
Use Your Meta Tags to Help Customers Find What They Want. Like I said earlier, intelligent content doesn’t just come down to how well you write a specific piece, but the structure of your content, as well. When you create your content, you need to make sure you are utilizing your meta tags to help bring in people who are specifically looking for a company like yours. It doesn’t work if someone is looking for the top dog food and they accidentally come to your site that is all about construction. That is a bit of an extreme example, but I think you understand where I am coming from. Use your meta tags and industry related keywords to help bring in customers that will want and need to use your company.
Repurpose and Reuse Your Content Throughout the Year. A great way to continually create great, intelligent content for your readers is to repurpose it or create reusable content. You can repurpose content with blogs you’ve created by putting them into infographics, videos, podcasts, and more. This gives you the chance to get more mileage out of one piece, and reach a wider audience base.Another form of reusable content is something that is usually done in technical documentation such as warning labels for products or basic information. The majority of writing, whether technical or marketing, always provides you with content that can be reused or repurposed. Just remember, when you are reusing content online, you need to make sure it isn’t an exact copy because that will trigger Google, which will slap a penalty on your site.
Intelligent Content Should be Adaptable. This is a great example of why you need evergreen content and strategies in your marketing plan. We all know that writing about trendy topics is a great way to bring in clients, but you need content that is adaptable throughout the year to a wide variety of people. When you produce evergreen content, you are achieving this easily. Let’s say you write something and publish it on March 25, 2015 – if it is on a trendy topic, it is going to be irrelevant on March 25, 2016. However, if you write it on an evergreen topic, it will still be important and relevant a year from then.Basically, if you’ve written on “The Dress,” it will be obsolete soon. If you write about the top ways to bathe a cat without a lot of hassle, you’ve created something that can span the years and reach out to a wider audience. You might notice that evergreen content also has a knack for being relatable to more people than something such as “The Dress” or writing about the latest movie release.
Hire an Industry Copywriter. An incredible way to make sure you are getting intelligent content is to hire an industry copywriter. The reason this is a great idea is because you will be able to have someone who always writes well, as well as someone who knows the topic and does excellent research. Hiring an industry copywriter also ensures that you get someone who knows about your specific industry and can write pieces that are well-informed, and intelligent. If you hire a generic writer to write something on legal documentation, you run the risk of it coming across as not researched or as if you do not know what you’re talking about. This can cause a lot of strife for your company because you want to stand out as a leader, not as someone who seems to be questioning everything.
Have a Content Strategy in Place for Your Content Creation. If you don’t take much time to research content and what it takes, you might think you can easily produce content and be done with it. However, this will lead to content that is uninformed, unintelligent, and content that will drive customers away. You need to create a content strategy to make sure you have amazing, smart content that helps converts visits into leads organically, and brings in awesome success. A content strategy takes your web page, social media, and other forms of outreach into consideration, helping you develop a plan to reach out to your audience effectively and drive the best engagement from them. When you do this, you’ll find that you have a lot more success and some very happy clients.
Take Time to Analyze Your Content. Analyzing content takes more than just looking at how many comments you’ve received or if you are getting any engagement on social media. You need to delve deep into your analytics through things such as Google Analytics to see how well your content is doing, as well as seeing if there are any changes you need to make. You can do the basic research that is available to you, or you can hire a content team that can look at it and make sure everything is in working order by doing a content audit. This will help you see what you need to do with your content and help you make any necessary changes.Hiring a team that specializes in this will be great because you will be able to get a full content audit with detailed information. You will also know that the team running the reports are experts in the field of content analysis. Once you analyze, you will be able to improve your site, and get the most out of it with the results you want to see.
Try Out Some Experiments and Track Their Success. Something that will really help your content become intelligent is by simply taking time to try out something new. Experiments are scary because you aren’t ever sure if they will really work or be a miserable failure, but you will find that this is a great way to improve your content. As soon as you implement your experiments, track them and see just how successful they are. If you start to notice that the experiment is failing, then it is time to make a change and try something new. By testing the waters to see the different results you get, you will be able to create intelligent content that is exactly what your clients want and need to see.
Content Intelligence Can Help Further Your Reach!
By following the above steps, you will not only be able to create intelligent content, but you will also be able to create something great for your clients. In fact, focusing on intelligent content and writing for your readers is an amazing way to rank high on the SERP. Start implementing a few of these steps and try out a few new things to see just how well it impacts your company. Which steps do you plan on implementing first? Let me know in the comments!
If you are less interested in the way in which your brain perceives colors and more determined to find out how a picture of a dress had the power to break the Internet and fuel one of the hottest debates of the year, chances are that you are also wondering why #TheDress made history this month.
The dress that managed to go viral online is a chameleonic product in its own right: some think it’s blue and black; others swear it’s actually white and gold (while more than a few debaters label it as an eye sore regardless of its color and end this discussion without any further ado).
#TheDress Debate: What’s The Real Science Here?
The science behind this controversy provides a logical explanation for this weird phenomenon: the human brain has been trained to focus on the actual relationship created between colors, and not just the hues themselves. This hypothesis, introduced by Beau Lotto, a reputable professor of neuroscience from the University College London and cited by BBC in a recent article, allows us to reach the conclusion that people interpret the chromatics of the dress differently simply because they focus on different aspects; some pay more attention to the actual colors of the dress, while others “decode” the hues based on the background light or the shade of their very own computer monitor.
Defining the Color or Virality
Long story short, #TheDress debate made you laugh, made you raise an eyebrow or made you schedule an appointment with a local ophthalmologist. Science may be able to explain why people see this dress in different color combos, but how could one justify the virality of the picture that started and fueled the most ample social media conversation at an incredible speed, becoming the number one trending topic in the United States overnight?
3 Reasons Why #TheDress Became America’s Favorite Conversation Starter
How did this controversial (and in reality, awfully plain) dress manage to simultaneously gather more than 670,000 people on Buzzfeed, convince 900,000 visitors to take a poll and give no less than 10 million people at least one good reason to read the entire post? Here are a few plausible reasons why the blue and black/white and gold dress has succeeded in creating quite a stir worldwide.
We All Like to Paint a Pretty Picture in the Colors of Controversy. We all love mysteries and strange phenomena that defy our logic. Moreover, we appreciate one-of-a-kind topics with a peculiar novelty factor that feeds our curiosity. Undoubtedly, the dress debate has stayed in the public eye for quite some time now due to its ability to bring people together and make them question an otherwise insignificant aspect of their mundane existence.
People Tend to Share Positive Stories. A recent article published by CNN highlights another important reason that somewhat justifies the ever-growing popularity of the chameleonic dress. Readers are always fond of positive stories that make them giggle, laugh or shed a tear (of joy). Tired of shocking “hard news” and the drama associated with their own daily lives, they turn to the simplest forms of entertainment that evoke constructive emotions for a change. Pictures of “the dress” may have made you frown or experience frustration for a few seconds, but at the end of the day they have also given you the opportunity to start a relaxing conversation with your loved ones and get your daily worries off your mind. All in all, this is what viral content actually does: it sits people down, helps them unwind and gives them something to talk about.
The Dress Debate Has All the Main Attributes of a Grand Viral Hit. Unique, unplanned and unpolished, the pictures of the black and blue (or white and gold) dress still have all the elements of a major viral hit. According to Neetzan Zimmerman, the well-known viral content expert, #TheDress defines the concept of Viral Singularity. In other words, it is divisive, dumb and extremely sharable. It responds to the readers’ need for fun, uncomplicated yet somewhat challenging content that would undoubtedly make a great party conversation starter. During the dullest event, instead of chatting about the weather, you could always try to find out how your new interlocutor perceives the colors of this iconic dress.
As Long As It’s Viral, It Doesn’t Really Matter If It’s Black or White
Aside from giving us the impression that we may be colorblind, #TheDress debate has also inspired another moment of revelation: the one in which you realize that crafting viral content is not as difficult as people say it is.
Here are the main ingredients that you should combine to take your story to a whole new level: a fun, uncomplicated piece of information generating positive emotions, a little bit of controversy created around your story and a new perspective that will make your readers question everything they have ever read, heard or spoken.
When you craft content that encourages people to quarrel, take sides and share their (unsolicited) opinion via social networks you are automatically prepping yourself for success, while getting ready to step into the spotlight.
As you well know, 50 Shades of Grey was recently released in theaters amid a bunch of excitement and scandal. It made $93 million in just four days, and its sequels have already been approved.
Whether you’re a fan of this (I admit, risqué) story or not, you have to admit it does have some amazing content marketing power.
Taking some inspiration from the famous book title that has now premiered in worldwide theaters, I’m taking an original, descriptive look at 50 Shades of Content. Do you actually know just how many shades content has? From bold to macabre to natural, there are so many shades out there among the millions of web pages that exist.
Use these content shades to help you identify and create awesome blogs, product descriptions, and more.
A Descriptive List: 50 Shades of Content
Authentic content. When writing content, you always want to make sure it is authentic. This will help make your content powerful, and help engage your reader base. Just write from your heart and what you know, and you will be creating excellent, authentic content. All your content should have a shade of authenticity. Exceptions could be sales targeted/landing pages, where you are trying to sell rather than simply offer authentic advice or wording.
Bold content. Bold content is a great way to catch people’s attention. You can be bold by writing opinion pieces on things within your industry or the latest trends. This is a good content type for emails, home pages, and other busy, targeted areas of text.
Creative content. When you write your content, you need to make sure you are being creative. A great way to gain creative inspiration is to write on the latest trends. For example, I took the opportunity to use 50 Shades of Grey as inspiration for a post that helps you learn about the different aspects of content. Use whatever you want and you can have some incredible, creative content. Blogs are a great outlet for content creativity.
Direct content. If you are telling your readers something important, you always need to make sure you are being as direct as possible. This will help show people that confident, know what you’re talking about, and also help convert them from simple readers to clients. Email content is one of the best “direct” content shade examples.
Engaging content. Engaging content is something that everyone needs. It helps to get your readers and clients involved, which really helps your business be successful. All your content should have a shade of engaging.
Fun content. You want to provide your readers with something of value, but you don’t always have to be super professional. When you write your content, you should always make sure you include something fun to add more life to your blogs. This could be something trendy, like how many businesses brought up “The Dress” on their social media sites. Social media should always have a shade of fun to avoid being boring.
Good content. This is a given when it comes to content – it always needs to be good, or what we refer to as high-quality. Focus on crafting great content pieces all the time. It might seem like it takes too much time to focus on good content, but when you do, you get some great results. Let’s be honest: all your content should be this shade.
Horrible content. Now, this is a shade you absolutely want to avoid. Horrible content is a surefire way to make sure your content fails, losing you many clients and revenue. You need to stay away from horrible content at whatever cost. You don’t want to face the terrible consequences of it. Unfortunately, a lot of it exists on the web. NO content of yours should be this shade.
Inquiring content. This is great when it comes to creating engaging content, especially for social media. Ask your clients and readers questions, and have them provide their answers. You can give silly polls or ask serious questions that can help you tweak your content to be more powerful for your readers. Emails and blogs are good outlets for this content shade.
Joyful content. When you write your content, you should always make sure you have a happy tone to it. It doesn’t always have to be puppy and rainbows, but make things more upbeat for your readers. We get enough negativity with the latest news reports, so give your readers some great, positive content. It can be pretty powerful being one of the bright spots on the Internet. Seasonal blogs and emails are a good way to present this shade.
Knowledgeable Content. You can write content on almost anything, especially with the Internet at your fingertips. However, this can sometimes lead to you writing content that isn’t very knowledgeable. When you write your content, make sure it is on a topic you know or one that you have done a lot of research on.
Lackluster Content. This is yet another form of content you want to avoid. Lackluster content is boring, and many times, unreadable. Make sure you craft fun, engaging content all the time to get the best results from it.
Macabre Content. Now, this could be good or bad, depending on your macabre sense of humor, and your industry. You can write macabre content, just always make sure to stay tasteful, and keep it on the lighter end of macabre humor (Tim Burton is a good example).
Natural Content. Natural content is a great way to rank on the SERP and also helps keep people on your site, reading. You can write natural content by not focusing on keywords and writing about something you have a passion for.
Original Content. Your content not only needs to be knowledgeable, natural, and good, it also needs to be original. Write your own content, on your own ideas and you will easily have great, original content. Of course, you can always gain inspiration from others, just always make sure that when you write it, it is original – completely your own.
Passionate Content. Passionate content is great because it can help you improve your content marketing skills and get your content out to a wider audience. When you write passionately about your industry, you set yourself apart from your competitors and you become a knowledgeable source in your industry.
Quirky Content. This is great for when your industry is one that is incredibly niche, and you have a very specific audience. This form of content could be industry related jokes, or anything that is unique to your industry. Quirky can be great for many businesses, no matter how professional you are.
Risqué Content. Now, this isn’t content that Express Writers writes for clients. However, if you are in a risqué industry, risqué content could be great for you. When you write it, always make sure you comply with Internet rules on any and all warnings you need to give people before they access your site.
Smart Content. Smart content is the best way to ensure you have great, high-quality content for your readers. You should always make sure it is readable, but smart content can help set you up as an industry leader.
Thrilling Content. Thrilling content can be a variety of different types depending on your industry. You can write on things from horror stories to anything else that would be considered thrilling.
Understandable Content. You always need to make sure that when you write content it is easy to understand. Remember that the average reading level in the USA is 7th grade, and many of your readers aren’t going to understand a lot of industry jargon unless you are specifically writing for those in your industry.
Veracious Content. Veracious means speaking or showing the truth so when it comes to content, this means that you need to have truthful content. Always make sure you back up your claims (like I did in point 21) and that you’re representing your company well. If you don’t, you will be found out, and you’ll lose your client base pretty quickly.
Witty Content. This is a great way to create fun content for your clients. You can use humor and be clever with various things, creating something your clients will enjoy. When writing witty content, always make sure you use discretion; you don’t want to offend people with your humor.
Xerotic Content. This isn’t a common word to use, but I wanted to find an “x” word! Xerotic refers to something dry and let me tell you, that isn’t the type of content you want. By following several of the tips I’ve already laid out, you will be able to avoid dry content easily.
Yappy Content. We all know those yappy people who never seem to stop talking; it can get annoying, can’t it? Because of this, you need to make sure that you avoid writing content that doesn’t continually ramble on. Avoid this shade at all costs.
Zesty Content. Zest is great when it comes to food, and it is also great when it comes to content. Add various things to make your content zesty to help yourself standout from others.
Appropriate Content. You might be writing some great content, but you need to make sure that it is not only good, but also appropriate. It needs to fit your industry and business. If it doesn’t, it won’t come across as sincere.
Bookish Content. A great way to get awesome content is to gain inspiration from books. This can be from fantasy, sci-fi, or non-fiction; whichever books you use, you will be able to get some great inspiration, and be relevant all at the same time. This is one of my favorite content shades, since I am a little addicted to reading awesome books.
Captivating Content. Content needs to have a captivating element to it in order to get and keep readers on your site. You can do this by writing news content, telling a story, or just doing something different than you usually do. Captivating content will make sure you are able to retain your readers and turn them into great customers!
Decisive Content. This type of content is great when you want to show that your products or services can get the job done. You can tell people why you stand out from your competitors and why you’re the best choice.
Evergreen Content. You always want content that is trendy and relevant, but you also need to make sure you are producing evergreen content. This will help you continue to get views and clicks on your blogs, even years in the future.
Fishy Content. Again, this is another content shade you want to stay away from. When I refer to “fishy content” I am talking about content that uses keywords to get the SERP bots on the page, or any other black hat SEO tactics that could be detrimental to your site.
Generic Content. When you’re creating content, you need to make sure you stay away from content that is too generic. You always need to add something new to different topics, and make them your own. This makes for original content, that is still useful to people.
Helpful Content. A great way to create amazing content is to use this particular shade of content. People love finding blogs that help them with problems, and by answering their questions, you are showing that you are a source to be trusted and used.
Interesting Content. No matter what your topic is, you need to make sure you write interesting content constantly. It is possible, and you’ll find that interesting content is more likely to be shared and engaged with.
Jolly Content. What do I mean by jolly content? Well, holiday content, of course! When it comes time to do holiday marketing, you should always make sure you have holiday content at the ready. This can be for any holiday, too, not just Christmas.
Kind Content. When you write any content, but especially content on touchy subjects, you should always make sure your content is kind. You don’t have to agree with someone or something, but write about whatever or whoever it is in a kind fashion.
Lifestyle Content. This is a great idea for many niche companies. Sometimes, it can be hard to come up with topics for your industry, but a great idea is to feature lifestyle content that features industry related things. Are you a photographer? Write about lifestyle photography.
Mainstream Content. Each industry, no matter how niche, can always write on something that is mainstream. There will be something that happens that everyone knows about (such as “The Dress,” which I mentioned earlier) that can easily be implemented into a blog post for your client base.
Newsy Content. Writing news content is a great way to come up with great topics, writing on relevant items, and engaging your reader base. Consider writing on news within your industry or how world news relates – this will be a great addition to any blogging campaign.
Observant Content. Another great way to make sure that you create great content is to make sure it is observant. You can do this by answering questions, or making connections between news and your products.
Photograph Content. Content doesn’t just have to be written, you can also create awesome content from different formats, including photos. This could be memes, stock photos, business photos, or infographics.
Repurposed Content. Did you know you can repurpose your content and get more out of it? This is a great way to get more views on great articles, as well as helping you create multiple content formats from one piece of content.
Strong Content. Your content should always be strong. If you follow the various content types I’ve already highlighted, you’ll be well on your way to creating some pretty strong content.
Trendy Content. Evergreen content is vital, but you do need to make sure you write on a few trends. Trendy content can bring in more views, get more social shares, and help convert customers.
Useful Content. Your content always needs to be useful. It can be made useful not only for your clients, but useful content can become a great help to those within your industry. In fact, useful content might be used as a resource by industry leaders, which will really help your business.
Video Content. When you create content, make sure you aren’t just doing written content. Create some great video content to share with your audience. Sharing content on different platforms is a great idea.
Accessible Content. No matter what type of content you are making, make sure it is accessible to your audience. This means that you will share it on social channels, email, and other marketing platforms, as well as writing it to where your audience can easily understand it.
Respectful Content. Whether you are writing serious or humorous content, you need to make sure that you are always writing respectful content. If you aren’t being respectful, this will hurt your reputation significantly. Just like I mentioned, be kind and make sure you are respectful.
Story Content. I briefly mentioned telling stories as a great way to write captivating content, but story content is really something you should consider doing. This will engage your audience and help bring more viewers in and keep them. Tell a story of your business, an event you went to, or anything else you’d like.
50 Shades of Content Creation: Be Inspired, Go Create Your Shade
These are all great content ideas to use, and, of course, there are some that you would like to stay away from. While following these might not make you as successful as the 50 Shades of Grey film, they sure will help you see the success your business deserves and needs! Which of these are you planning on using when you create your content?
We all want to craft content pieces that engage our readers and give them something to talk about. Nonetheless, we are fully aware of the fact that our audiences are constantly bombarded with tons of attractive, informative and palatable content coming from different reputable sources.
In this context, we are desperately looking for the simplest, most concise answer to the following key questions: Why is it so important to work hard to exceed our own content creation efforts on a daily basis? How do we make our writing stand out from the crowd? And most importantly, what are the secret tricks and tips that we could apply to craft eye-catchy, memorable content with a real substance? Let’s find out.
Understanding the Challenges Posed by the Information Age
In 2015, we spend a lot of time filtering our sources of information. A century ago, some of the most well-read people were lucky to assimilate the info provided by 50 books during their entire lifetime. The continuous expansion of the Internet has changed the way in which we communicate and educate ourselves and has also increased our appetite for premium content. According to a recent study cited by The Telegraph, these days the average Joe has the ability and the opportunity to filter and assimilate a large amount of information representing the equivalent of no less than 174 newspapers of fresh data on a day-to-day basis. Our brains act like giant last-generation computers that help us avoid the unessential and scan, skim, memorize and revisit the things that interest us the most. In this context, it becomes obvious that modern readers have become increasingly selective and able to distinguish mediocre writing from the truly useful and engaging written masterpieces put at their disposal. This brings us to the next question on our list: what are the steps that we should take to revamp, beautify and individualize our writing?
10 Ways to Craft Strikingly Beautiful, High-Value Content
Wondering how you could add tiny hooks to your content pieces to make your audience read your written materials first thing in the morning, share them on social media platforms, provide feedback and land on your pages time after time? Here are a few pointers that you should factor in to enhance the practical and aesthetical value of your content without losing a wink of sleep.
Unleash the Power of Quality Storytelling. A good copywriter knows everything about marketing tactics, conversions and sales and makes the most of his exceptional storytelling skills to promote any kind of concept, make it extremely desirable and encourage a certain action. We all love a good story. This is precisely why we read books, watch movies and enjoy the conversation that we get to have with an old friend whom we haven’t seen in ages. Stories relax us and help us break the monotony. Stories lead to more stories and get people talking. Every single page that you create needs to be linked to another to add continuity to your story. In order to touch your readers’ hearts and raise their interest and curiosity you should find the best way to:
Introduce yourself and kindly invite your readers to sit down and enjoy the narrative ride
Get your readers intrigued and build anticipation
Present facts that your audience can actually relate to
Rely on a unique approach that will individualize your writing style
Stir up a mix of powerful emotions and explore your manipulative potential to stimulate your readers to respond to your subtle calls to action
According to Copyblogger, strategic storytelling can help you reach just about any marketing goal that may be on your mind at this point. You just have to figure out what your story really is and how you could wrap it beautifully and serve it to your public while it’s still fresh, compelling and newsworthy.
Create and Publish Shareable Images. High-impact, original images that evoke powerful emotions are a gold mine for copywriters looking for the easiest method to upgrade your content. We are all aware of the fact that a good picture is more meaningful than 1,000 words. What you may not know is that images boost recall 72 hours after a first exposure to web content. According to Brain Rules by John Medina, a relevant image can help you take your content from dull and unremarkable to memorable in a split second.
Craft and Implement Attention-Grabbing 3D Pictures. If you are determined to give your website a quick, inexpensive facelift and turn your content pieces into beautiful masterpieces that your readers won’t be able to ignore, consider adding a few well-chosen 3D images to your pages. According to boostblogtraffic, 3D images enable your prospects to visualize the elements that they could get by signing up, registering or making a purchase. In a world where your content is your only tie with potential buyers seeking products like the ones that you’re selling, 3D photos are the bait that you need to boost your catches.
Incorporate Infographics. We will let you in on a little secret: everybody loves infographics these days. As a matter of fact, as Search Engine Journal points out, the search volumes associated with these elements have witnessed an 800% growth over the last decade, proving that audiences have a huge appetite for neatly organized, information-rich, easy-to-read content. Infographics match this description and represent the handy visual aid that allows you to beautify, personalize and promote your content in the most effective manner, while also making it easier for your readers to assimilate the food for thought that you’re providing.
Use Behind-the-Scene Pictures to Add a Sense of Authenticity to Your Writing. Let’s say that you’ve recently stumbled across some amazing facts that could constitute prime material for your next story. You write your content piece and get ready to publish it. But all the cool kids on your block will ask you: if you didn’t post it on Facebook (Twitter, YouTube and any other popular social networking website), did it really happen? Assuming that you want to craft social media-ready content, what’s the smartest move that you could make to achieve your goal? You can start by making sure that your writing is always accompanied by behind-the-scene pictures that enable you to make yourself (and your brand) recognizable, while building credibility and trust. While we’re definitely not encouraging you to take a selfie every single time you’re interviewing an industry expert for a new blog post, we can assure you that a photo of you working on your written masterpiece in a an appealing place (an elegant café or a picturesque, isolated beach) will help you connect with your readers and boost the aesthetic value of your writing.
Add DIY Videos to Your Content Pieces. Following the same approach, don’t hesitate to post videos that complement your written ideas and basically convey a very simple message: “I’m the author, I’m real, I’m here for you, my readers!” Whether you choose to record Skype interviews or combine text, images and music in simple programs such as Animoto to reach your audience, uncomplicated DIY videos will help you amplify your messages and boost their realness and overall power of seduction.
Master the Golden, Unwritten Rules of Text Editing. Now that you know how to explore the tremendous power of popular visual aids to take your writing a step up, you may want to focus on the actual words that you use when putting pen to paper. Here are a few important text editing rules and guidelines that you should always apply to avoid the contagious yawning effect.
Don’t pad your writing with unnecessary filler words
Stay away from weak verbs and adjectives that impact the pace and quality of your narrative (for instance, instead of using the construction “make it clearer”, which lacks strength, you could replace it with the visceral verb “clarify”, that makes the whole sentence become more concise and express more action.
Make sure verbal colloquialisms and flabby phrases and constructions are not a part of your writing (for instance, don’t write “Due to the fact that proofreading takes time, most writers skip this phase. Instead, write “Because proofreading takes time, most writers skip this phase.”)
Avoid additional embellishments that impact the readability of your text and add very little or no value whatsoever to your readers
Pay attention to punctuation. At some point, you may realize that one missing or misplaced comma could impact the clarity (and quality) of your writing
Rely on a Correct Journalistic Approach. Before actually focusing on the most suitable beautification techniques that you can employ to increase the attractiveness of your writing, make sure you’ve spent enough time tapping the substance of your content piece. In other words, according to Social Media Examiner, before turning your thoughts into words you must get your facts straight, conduct an in-depth research, learn how to earn trust, give credit to all your sources, apply the inverted pyramid pattern (most newsworthy facts at the top, background info and other details towards the bottom) and edit and proofread your texts.
Use the Right Font to Beautify Your Content. Clearly, some of the best content pieces display a perfect balance between form and function. But what does the form actually involve? This concept basically refers to the mix of elements that influence the readability of your text, one way or another. From colors and fonts to layouts, all these factors are extremely important and should be carefully chosen to perfect your writing. You can choose from a wide range of free fonts. The key is to select the one matching your brand, products, vision, tone and approach. For instance, Amatic SC is a cool-looking hand-drawn font that would fit your artistic feel like a glove, reflecting your unconventional approach and original writing style. A Hubspot Blog post presents a list of some of the most effective fonts that you can use to beautify your writing; all you have to do is to embrace the one that makes more sense to you.
Always Write with Your Readers in Mind. The truly beautiful content pieces are the ones that resonate with your audience. Beautiful writing is both catchy and appealing; it has a long shelf life and a high utilitarian value. Therefore, instead of pursuing more or less tangible aesthetic goals, focus on the practicality of your writing: Who are you writing for? What do your readers want to hear from you? How could your writing improve their daily lives and provide timely answers to their questions and concerns? Write with the your audience’s needs, demands and expectations in mind and you will succeed in crafting high-value content that will be considered beautiful in all its aspects by your readers.
Our Perceptions are Varied, But Being Useful Is Universal
Generally speaking, we all have a different perception of beauty, influenced by our personality, background, personal experiences and way of life. Nonetheless, when it comes to writing, we all share similar etalons to measure the attractiveness and usability of a content piece and we won’t settle for anything less than stellar content that informs, educates and entertains at the same time. By ditching useless adornments, using clear everyday language and a tone adapted to your audience, perfecting your storytelling skills and making the most of a broad category of visual aids, you will succeed in individualizing and beautifying your writing style. In-depth research, creativity, a deeper understanding of your audience, an ounce of talent and a manipulative ability to play with different powerful emotions are the main ingredients that allow you to go beyond existing aesthetic canons and craft truly original, outstanding content that will always keep your readers coming back for more. Photo credit: evgenyatamanenko / iStock
Guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic, generate leads, and build brand awareness. From a business perspective, well-chosen guest blogging opportunities can result in a massive amount of positive impact on a site.
Guest blogging gets you noticed by the people who need to notice you. As a brand, guest blogging opportunities allow your company to get their name out there, while at the same time allowing the readers to then experience your content production skills firsthand. When you do guest blogging right, you’ll start to realize the massive return this form of organic content can afford.
3 Ways to Determine Your Guest Content Goals
Before you embark upon the twists and turns of the guest blogging road, you’re going to need to determine what you want to get out of your guest blogging opportunities. Just like every other structured marketing campaign, you need to have an end-game in mind to properly utilize your guesting posts. Ideally, as a guest blogger, you will be seeking to do one or more of the following:
Position yourself as a go-to person in the industry. Guest blogging allows you to share your experience and knowledge, which helps others perceive you as an expert.
Gain exposure for your brand, products, or services. This also helps to generate backlinks that help your SEO campaign immensely.
Drawing an audience. When done correctly, guest blogging can help you gain new readers that can become sales for your site.
For these goals to come to fruition, you need to have a unique mix of skills and execution. Just having an idea isn’t enough to get the most out of your guest posting. You need to become an expert in your field, reading every bit of information you can get your hands on. Once you’ve done that, you need to develop a real and actionable plan for gaining the attention you deserve from your guest blogging efforts.
How to Figure Out What’s a Good Guest Blogging Opportunity and What Isn’t
Most of the major players in the content creation field are open to the idea of having a guest blogger on their site. The tough part can sometimes be being chosen from the crowd. After all, experienced guest bloggers are more likely to get first preference than inexperienced bloggers.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get your foot in the door, though. After all – everyone starts somewhere!
When you’re just starting out, you may have to settle for less prestigious guest blogging opportunities. Although these aren’t as glamorous or far-reaching as the larger blogs, they are no less important in your quest to build a name as a well-known blogger.
That said, it’s well worth your time and energy to learn to differentiate good guest blogging opportunities from bad ones. Here’s how:
What Good Blogging Opportunities Look Like
Good guest blogging opportunities are those that give you a decent amount of coverage for your time investment. Remember, your guest blog should be as well researched (or better!) than your personal or in-house blogging efforts.
For professional guest blogging situations you are going to need to pitch your topic to the owner of the blog to see if it meshes with what they’re trying to achieve. Generally, you and the host can sit down and discuss what they expect and what you can deliver. From there, you may be able to develop a working topic and title before you get writing.
Keep in mind that some guest blogging options will offer less support than others, and this is largely a function of traffic. The most in-demand guest blogging platforms get thousands of submissions each month, and it’s impossible to keep up with them all manually.
That said, these platforms tend to use electronic forms and a team of editors and content managers to get guest blogs up on their sites. This shouldn’t rule a guest blogging platform out for you. Instead, pay attention to things like the professionalism of the staff, the Alexa Rank of the site, and the expedience with which staffers get back to you.
What Bad Guest Blogging Opportunities Look Like
To put it simply: bad guest blogging opportunities are those that don’t give you a lot of coverage or that abuse your work without giving you enough in return. Beware of sites that make it excessively easy to guest blog for them, since they’re among the worst offenders.
While you shouldn’t have to jump through flaming hoops to get your post featured, you should expect there to be a review and quality assurance process. If this doesn’t exist, it’s a likely bet that, not only will your guest post not count for much, but that it will quickly be lost in the sea of low-quality blogs out there.
Keep this in mind: If all you have to do is sign up and post then it’s probably not a very high-quality opportunity. Avoiding these sites is important since they don’t help you attain your guest blogging goals. These are usually the sites that take anything you give to them as a blog post without an actual discussion with the owner or content manager. Again: if you don’t have to talk to a real person or team, it’s probably not a good idea to guest post for them.
Guest Blogging Doesn’t Mean the End of Direct Content Production
Just because you’re getting into guest blogging doesn’t mean that you can stop producing your own original content. If anything, it’s an encouragement to continue with your own direct content. When you finally start to earn customers from a guest blog, you’ll still need to show them that you can back that content up with your own work. That’s why maintaining your own blog and content creation efforts is so important throughout.
Setting up an internal content production schedule helps you to balance your private posting with whatever guest opportunities arise. Guest blogging allows you to create relationships with the audience of the host blog and this can translate into growing your own audience. When you look at it like that, it’s clear that both approaches are essential, and that you can’t afford to compromise either.
In fact, having great content on your own blog is essential to being accepted to a guest blogging platform. Just like you work to boost your credit score before you apply for a mortgage, you need to build up your own body of content before you apply for a guest blogging platform.
That said, spend several months before you start guest blogging publishing your own high-quality content. This way, any publisher who checks your blog for reference will find that you’re a skilled, successful writer with a lot to offer.
How to Start Guest Blogging: 7 Tips
So, now that you know how important guest blogging is, let’s talk about how to do it. Here are seven tips:
1. Start Small
Unless you’ve already got a very well established brand platform, you can’t expect to pitch Neil Patel and get featured. Start small. Platforms like Business.com are fantastic guest blogging opportunities that don’t require you to be an internet superstar to get featured.
While some people see this modest start as a frustration, since things aren’t moving as fast as they’d like, it’s the natural course of things. Start small and build your way up as you progress. Not only does this allow you to build your skills, but it also helps you build your brand as a reputable guest blogger.
2. Find Some Guest Blogging Platforms
The next step is to find a guest blogging platform. If you don’t already have a few possibilities in mind, you’ll need to start with a few simple internet searches. To start, type a simple query into Google: “[your niche] guest blog.” You can also substitute things like “write for us,” “contribute content,” or “get featured.”
This simple search should offer some results. As an alternative, you can look at sites that your competitors or friends are blogging for, and apply there.
3. Pitch Your Guest Post
Once you’ve found a guest platform you want to contribute to, you’ll need to “pitch” your post idea. When you go to guest blog, the first thing you’ll need to do is develop a plan for what you’ll write about. There’s not a reputable guest blog out there that will accept a post without a pitch topic, so it’s well worth spending time on this process.
When you start the pitching process, here are some things you’ll want to consider:
What sort of problems has the blog owner not tackled yet? Can I cover this?
What sort of content is this blog known for? What encourages its readers to read and share posts?
What will be relevant to their readers?
Remember, when you pitch a blog post, you want to write about something that’s within your area of expertise, but also something that is relevant to the blog’s audience. If you write to an audience outside that one, you’re risking your pitch being turned down or your post not being as helpful and informative as it could.
If you incorporate this sort of thinking into your pitch for a topic, you should not have many problems getting featured. Always keep in mind that reading the blog you want to contribute to is the single best way to help you determine a good topic for pitching to the owner.
4. Write Your Post
Once your pitch is accepted and you’ve got the all-clear to start writing, you’ll want to keep one thing in mind throughout: quality. Remember, your purpose here is to appeal to the blog owner’s audience. This isn’t about you. This isn’t about your company, and it’s not about how great your product is. This is incredibly important. If your blog comes off as salesy or self-congratulatory in nature, you’ll place yourself at real risk of being pulled from the platform. Why, you ask? Site owners don’t want to populate their platforms with useless information, and that’s exactly what self-pitching content is.
Instead, seek to be helpful and relevant to the audience in question. Put yourself in their shoes and develop a plan for answering their questions and seeing to their needs. The more you can cater to their desires, the more successful your guest post will be, and the more likely the platform owner will be to feature more of your posts in the future.
Take your time on the writing process. If you rush, your post won’t come out as well as it could have, which is death for a guest blog. Leave yourself plenty of time to edit your post and read it for accuracy and relevance.
5. Be Prepared to Edit as Needed
If you’re writing for an industry magazine or something similar, there’s a decent chance that your pitch post will come back to you with edits. Be prepared for this. While it doesn’t mean that your pitch was garbage, it does mean that you’ll need to add to it to make it fit the organization’s goals.
If you do get a response email from an editor or site owner, and they want some edits, complete these as quickly as possible. Site owners don’t have time to sit around and wait for you, and they want to get content up on their site as quickly as possible. The faster you can complete these edits, the more likely it is you will be that person.
6. Write Your Guest Post Bio
Next, you’ll want to write your guest post bio. Generally, guest posting platforms have some rules for these. These may include character limits and restrictions on the types and number of links you can include.
No matter what the restrictions are (or aren’t), your guest post bio should be short, professional, and to-the-point. Highlight your largest authority metrics and include a link to your website or social media platform of choice (assuming your guest blog platform allows it) so people can find out more about you.
7. Respond To Commenters
Now comes the fun part: responding to your readers. If you’ve written an engaging and exciting guest post, people will respond with comments, input, and questions. As the author, it’s your job to engage with these commenters. Keep in mind that you always want to be professional and avoid pitching yourself or your company in these posts.
The more helpful and relevant you can be to these commenters, the more you’ll help the site owner out (After all – who doesn’t want friendly, relevant, informative people posting on their site?) and the easier it will be to gain future guest posting opportunities.
The Case for Guest Blogging
At the end of the day, guest blogging is one of the best ways to get your name out there and to generate leads and traffic from external blogs. While the path to a successful guest blogging placement can be long, and there are a lot of dead ends, every legitimate opportunity you get is one more step on the road to success.
By defining your goals early and working hard to achieve them, it’s easy to use guest blogging as a method to build your online reputation and broaden your readership. To ensure your guest blogging efforts are as productive as possible, always ask yourself if a guest posting opportunity is helping you achieve your goals.
If it’s not, you’re better off moving on and finding one that will. This helps you to separate good guest posting opportunities from bad ones, and will ensure that your efforts are always going to the most productive platforms out there.
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