Time to enjoy the sweet, sweet flavor of chocolate-covered strawberries, write a perfume-scented note to the person you love (if you’re the type that handwrites, like me), and/or receive an abundance of chocolates, roses, and maybe a special date. If you’re single, you might be basking in a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s, a chocolate bar, and a tad of Netflix binge-ing.
Whatever the scenario, love is the name of the game today—if that’s loving on yourself, or your special someone.
We’re taking this opportunity to talk about a topic that’s crucial to your brand this Valentine’s Day (and far beyond):
Building real, authentic customer love for your brand.
Here’s the problem, and why many customers still feel “un-dated” or, worse yet, “broken up with” after they engage with a brand.
The hard truth? Those lackluster exchanges eventually find their rock bottom, and your readers will eventually move on to more vibrant and exciting brand experiences.
To avoid this now is the time to use all the tools in your tool belt to create a brand that your customers can’t help but love for years to come.
Fortunately, it’s easier than you might thing. Heck – you don’t even need a pair of wings!
7 Cupid-Worthy Methods for Making People Fall in Love With Your Brand
Whether you’re a new brand or an established company looking to deepen your relationship with your customers, these seven tips are your Valentine’s Day holiday go-tos.
1. Go Beyond Posting to Social Media, and Engage with Your Fans
It’s not enough to just be present on social media.
After all, anyone can have a profile.
Instead, you have to engage.
What are you giving your customers to fall in love with if you’re not engaging with them? How do you engage? Why should you matter to them? What are you giving them in return?
Now is the time to think outside of the box. Instead of just tweeting once or twice a week, use Twitter to start a Twitter Chat that answers questions around a hot topic in your industry! I did this exact thing when I set out to create a Twitter Chat in January 2016, and #ContentWritingChat was born. It’s been an incredible journey of user engagement, brand awareness, and community growth since then.
Our Twitter Chat has worked wonders for us, especially when it comes to creating brand loyalty. In December of 2016, we asked our participants how long they’d been joining us – the average was “eight months!” That’s some serious longevity—the relationships your brand can build through Twitter with real engagement can last forever.
2. Blog to Win Customer Love
Blogging is a critical component of creating a lovable brand. By developing relevant, in-depth blog content, you can show your clients that you care about them and that the feeling is mutual.
Blogging to win a customer’s eternal love, though, requires that you take it a step further.
Instead of just writing or creating average content (we call that the floating-by blogger syndrome), this type of blogging demands that you focus on answering the biggest questions in your industry with seriously in-depth, long-form content (check out our recent long-form content guide for more information on this topic).
Here’s what you need to do to go a step further with your blogging this Valentine’s Day holiday.
– Find The Top Questions In Your Industry.
There are a few great tools for this. Quora is one of them:
Both platforms are designed to allow you to access customer questions according to industry, keyword, or category, and they can be fantastic resources for finding the top inquires in your industry.
– Look at the Top Posts And Recreate Material Based On The Inspiration You Gain From Them.
The best way to be a blogger your readers fall in love with is to give them what they need. When it comes to their questions, this means being the one who provides insightful, long-form answers that go deeper than the average writer. Take a look at what’s performing well on these top question sites and adjust your content accordingly.
Using KWFinder, it’s easy to locate the content that’s ranking #1 for a phrase when you do a keyword search. Here’s an example of what a search looks like in the dashboard:
On the right, you can see a list of results. For this search, “content marketing,” the top result is Content Marketing Institute’s “What is Content Marketing?”
Using KWFinder or a tool like BuzzSumo, you can find the content that’s ranking #1, and then find a way to create content that is better than the competition.
Look for gaps or weak areas in the material. What did the first author miss? How did he or she fail to meet the needs of customers? Did the readers walk away wanting something? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” you’ve got an avenue to blow that post out of the water.
4. Create a Podcast!
For years, Buffer ran a blog. Eventually, however, they turned it into a podcast called The Science of Social Media. Since they made that decision, they’ve enjoyed massive engagement.
I started my own podcast mid-2016, called The Write Podcast. Designed to echo industry questions and create more in-depth information for our audiences, The Write Podcast has been a fantastic tool for us, and we’ve heard from many listeners how much it’s helped their efforts grow.
Podcasts are working very well today for a few reasons. In addition to the fact that they’re the ultimate on-the-go form of content (you can listen to a podcast at work, at the gym, in the car, etc.), they’re also a very conversational and approachable form of content, which makes it easier for listeners to develop an attachment to your brand.
Worried about how your podcast will do since you’ve never created one? Know the tools you need, and set a goal of doing at least five episodes and then reevaluate. You’ll learn as you go and, while the first few episodes might be a bit rough, it will be, at the very least, a fantastic learning experience that will help put you in closer contact with your customers.
5. Encourage User-Generated Content
User-generated content is hot right now, and it’s only going to get hotter. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, make your love for your customers reciprocal by showing your readers you care about them as much as they care about you. Engage people with your brand by having them add content to your social media profiles or pages.
Run contests, social campaigns, Instagram giveaways, and more. The more you can bring your customers into your online presence, the more lucrative it will be for you! After all, ads based on user-generated content earn a 4x higher click-through rate and a 50% decrease in cost over traditional ads.
What’s more, making user-generated content a central part of your content strategy is a great way to make your brand unique, show off your commitment to your customers, and secure a consistent influx of fresh content for your company.
6. Ask Your Readers What They Think
What do your readers want to see more of? Are they hungry for more tutorials? Do they wish you’d cover content you don’t?
Are they interested in other topics or conversations? You’ll never know until you ask, and reaching out to your customers about these questions is one of the best ways to earn their love and stand out as a customer-centric brand, both now and in the future.
Poll them!
If you’ve never polled your readers before, it’s the first step to creating the type of unique back-and-forth that only the best brands enjoy. To create polls that engage your readers rather than alienating them, follow these tips:
Keep it short. Don’t overwhelm your readers with dozens of options. Keep it short, sweet, and simple. The more to-the-point your poll is, the more helpful the information you gain from your customers is likely to be.
Keep it relevant. Every question on your survey should fulfill your end goal, whatever that is. If you add anything that’s even moderately irrelevant, you risk turning your customers off (a serious Valentine’s Day marketing faux pas) and damaging the helpfulness of your survey.
Keep your rating scales consistent. If you’re asking users to rate certain parts of your site or content, don’t ask them to rate it on a 1-5 basis in one section of the site and a 1-10 basis in another. The more consistent you can be, the more valuable the information your customers will return.
Don’t Ask Leading Questions. If you ask leading questions, you’re not doing much besides shooting yourself in the foot. Give your customers room to speak their peace, but don’t lead the in the direction of any one response.
Thank Respondents! Answering a survey or poll takes some time, and your readers deserve to know you appreciate it. To thank them, give them a bonus in the form of an incentive or discount. You’ll strengthen their relationship to your brand and increase the likelihood that they’ll complete your next survey, as well.
7. Reciprocate When Your Customers Reach Out
All good relationships have to be give-take. If your clients keep giving to you, but you never give anything back, you’re going to lose them. With this in mind, reach out to your customers when they share your content, write on your Facebook timeline, like your Instagram posts, or engage with your Pinterest material. The more seen and heard you can make your readers feel, the better chance you’ll have of making them into lifelong evangelists for your brand. Plus, you make them feel special, which is what Valentine’s day is all about.
Customers + Your Brand = A Match Made in Heaven
Great relationships take time, and you can’t force your customers to fall in love with you overnight. You can, however, take a series of proactive steps to make your brand more appealing and memorable to your clients, and encourage them to stick around for the long-term.
While many marketers assume the only benefit of long-term customer relationships is more sales, it goes a lot deeper than that. While loyal customers are more reliable and easier to sell to, brands with a strong batch of long-term customers also look more trustworthy.
By creating a brand that your readers and customers love and feel loves them back, you can simultaneously secure your success as a company and ensure that you’ll get enough adoration from your customers to make even Cupid jealous!
Finding a good SEO copywriting service is no joke.
In addition to being professional, the service you hire must also be knowledgeable, experienced, and able to turn on a dime to accommodate your needs.
Sound like a tall order? It is! We hear new clients tell us all the time horror stories about their past experiences.
Writers that didn’t pan up to the promises, didn’t even have experience in the industry they swore up and down they did, and deadlines that were left in the dust.
My team, founded on high principles, has been around for six years now. We know a thing or two about values, and what it takes to create content that fulfills every need for clients. We’re here to share today the key elements to look for in an SEO copywriting service that will put the “wheat,” not the chaff, in black and white for you. Keep reading!
Defining SEO Copywriting
SEO copywriting is the marriage of two essential skills: SEO, and copywriting.
While each of these things has existed separately for many years, the focus on bringing them both together has arisen in response to increasingly intelligent search engines and increasingly discerning consumers.
SEO used to be aimed at optimizing content so search engines could find it. This often entailed keyword stuffing, black-hat link building tactics, and spammy content pasted across every page of the site.
Copywriting, on the other hand, used to be aimed only at sales. The copywriters of old were the great salespersons of the web – pitching ideas, pushing products, and doing anything they could to get an early, interested, underwhelmed audience to bite (ah, for those low-volume internet days to return to us again!).
Today, though, both of those things have shifted.
Within the last several years, search engines have gotten smarter, and major names like Google have begun to penalize sites that use the SEO tactics of yesteryear. Today, spammy links, crappy content, and over-stuffed keywords simply don’t fly.
That’s not where it ends, though – Google has also begun to push for better-quality, more user-focused content, and customers have followed suit. Today, readers want quality, informative, relevant content that helps them solve their problems, and Google wants SEO that optimizes for readers just as much as it does for people.
Because of this, SEO copywriting has become an essential service for successful companies near and far. Today, SEO copywriting is critical for businesses that want to target their customers and help to solve problems and relieve pain points with the aid of unique, relevant, and high-quality online content.
Why Hire an SEO Copywriting Service?
Every business needs online content, and that online content needs to be optimized for reader experience and search engine visibility.
With few exceptions, most marketers don’t have the time, expertise, or resources in-house to create this type of content or to optimize the content they’ve already created. Without a centralized plan for improving SEO and crafting great content, things begin to go to pieces. Content comes out disorganized or irrelevant, and SEO falls by the wayside.
This is why it’s so critical for companies who are serious about their success to hire an SEO copywriting service. In addition to helping make SEO and content creation a more cohesive, cooperative process, a good online copywriting service has dozens of additional benefits, as well.
Some of the largest are as follows:
Increased traffic: Right now, 61% of internet users around the world search for products online. Unless you’ve crafted enough targeted, custom content to catch their attention, you’re going to miss out on significant amounts of attention for your site. A good SEO copywriting service can help you identify your customers, and then develop material that speaks directly to them, contributing to increase your site views and help your brand become a household name.
Boosted leads: According to HubSpot, companies with websites ranging between 401-1000 pages earn 6x as many leads as businesses that only have between 51-1000 pages. When you hire an SEO copywriting service, one of the top priorities will likely be to create blog and web page content. As you create blogs, for example, each new blog is an additional page for Google to index. This helps boost your site’s visibility and increases the number of leads your site will draw through organic traffic.
Increased relevance to customers: Today, customers use web content to answer questions and gain new information. When your company creates custom content meant to cater to these purposes, you become more relevant to your consumers, which is good for brand recognition and customer loyalty.
Decreased costs: While inbound marketing is drastically more efficient than traditional, outbound marketing, it’s also significantly less expensive. In fact, HubSpot reports that companies save an average of $20,000 each year by migrating to inbound marketing tactics.
14 Traits of a Worthwhile SEO Copywriting Service
1. Clearly defined boundaries
SEO copywriting services are not SEO-only services, and it’s important to understand that from the get-go.
While a good SEO copywriting service has an extensive understanding of everything that has to do with search algorithms, and likely conducts Google-specific duties like keyword research and on-page optimization, it’s unlikely that an SEO copywriting service will do anything like updating your link profile, for example.
With this in mind, an SEO copywriting service should neither define itself as an SEO company nor should it attempt to tackle the most convoluted aspects of technical algorithms. These jobs are best left for other, more technical firms.
When an SEO copywriting service clearly defines what it is and isn’t, you can bet that the content delivered will be high-quality and that the scope of focus will be narrow enough to provide you with targeted, quality service.
2. A willingness to work with your company’s brand
A professional SEO copywriting service will morph to adapt to your brand. Everything from the company’s voice to their approach should shift depending on your unique target audience and preferred tone.
While this may sound like a tall order, copywriters are chameleons by nature, and altering these things to provide you with a good experience should be natural for the firm you hire.
3. An insistence on perfection
SEO copywriting can be a huge boon for your company, so it’s essential that the SEO copywriting service you hire insists on quality, professionalism, and perfection in everything they do.
The company in question should have a good network of writers, editors, and reviewers in place and should run everything through plagiarism-checking software before submitting it to you. These systems help ensure quality work and will help your business gain online visibility, over time. Want to see what a few faces from a team of 60+ looks like? Check out our About page!
4. Demonstrable SEO copywriting experience
A good SEO copywriting service should be able to point to extensive examples of what it has done in the past. These examples should be high-quality and wide-ranging – running from blog content to white papers and beyond. (We have over 40 content services in our Content Shop!)
Demonstrable experience helps you ascertain the skills of the SEO copywriting service and get an idea for their style and methods before you commit.
5. A wide selection of expert-level knowledge
Expert content is critical for any company that wants to build a sustainable online presence, and a good SEO copywriting service should be able to cater to a variety of expertise and industries. Most professional firms have several professional writers on staff. These writers specialize in industries like marketing, law, and finance. By finding a business that offers writers who specialize in your unique industry, you can ensure expert content for your site and high-quality material for years to come.
6. Outstanding research skills
A great SEO copywriting service will go above and beyond regarding research. Whether the firm is researching one of your products or searching for quality statistics to include in a blog post, excellent research skills are critical.
Look for a documented research method and standards for what separates a good source from a bad one before you hire an SEO copywriting service.
7. Ability to appeal to reader emotions
Great SEO copywriting services know how to use reader emotions to make your content convert. Whether the copywriter is crafting a sense of urgency through limited time offers or inspiring customers to click by warning them about common pitfalls or easy-to-avoid mistakes, a professional SEO copywriting service should be able to use your readers’ emotions to make your content more compelling and actionable.
For best results, look for examples of how they’ve done this in the past. Previous marketing copy is a good source, as is on-page copy created for other companies.
8. An ongoing use of the positive voice
Most marketers don’t realize how much positive voice affects their customers’ mindsets. When a writer says “Don’t make this mistake…” it leaves the reader with a negative feeling. When the author says, “Avoid pitfalls by doing this instead,” the reader’s emotions shift to a positive outlook. Writing in the positive voice makes content more actionable.
Instead of giving the reader a list of what not to do, it provides solid action points that help the reader make positive change. This, in turn, creates more valuable content that can benefit your company. With this in mind, look for an SEO copywriting service that knows how to write in the positive voice.
9. A focus on simplicity in online writing
The best SEO copywriting services take complex concepts and make them easy for your readers to understand. In addition to making your content more accessible, this approach also ensures that you’re not alienating readers through jargon or overly-muddled online material.
Look for an SEO copywriting service that uses short sentences and simple words and pays attention to reading levels when crafting online content.
10. A dedication to specificity
Specificity transforms online content. Instead of saying, “Many customers use search engines,” a good SEO copywriting service will provide statistics that offer information on just how many readers. This, in turn, creates a better experience for the customer and makes content more valuable by making it more informative. Specificity is essential in online content, and it’s critical to find an SEO copywriting service that agrees.
11. A commitment to white-hat strategies
While black-hat SEO firms aren’t the law of the land anymore, they used to be. Today, it’s harder to get away with spammy, black-hat SEO copywriting, but some firms still do it. Unfortunately, this will harm your Google rankings and alienate your customers over time. For best results, find an SEO copywriting service that uses white-hat SEO techniques like guest blogging, consistent posting, keyword research, and quality link building to improve rankings and draw traffic. In addition to being more sustainable, these tactics are better for your site and your readers.
12. Willing, open communication with clients
SEO copywriting is a difficult task, and it’s essential for a good SEO copywriting service to maintain clear and open communication with its customers. If you want a change, an edit, or a different approach, the SEO copywriting service should be willing to oblige, and should help explain any aspects of the process you don’t understand. This builds a positive relationship between your brand and the copywriting service and contributes to high-quality, unique content that benefits both of you.
13. Ability to craft quality CTAs
A good call-to-action (CTA) is essential for actionable content, and a good SEO copywriting service will understand how to write CTAs that don’t alienate your customers. Look for brands that have increased the conversion rates of other companies in the past, and feel free to ask questions about what a good CTA entails. A good SEO copywriting service will have a profound understanding of the topic.
14. Current SEO knowledge
The best practices for SEO change often, and a good SEO copywriting service must have a good grasp on them. This means using the newest tools, understanding Google’s most recent algorithm updates, and being able to adjust their tactics according to new information. Without this knowledge, it’s impossible for an SEO copywriting service to provide to-the-minute offerings.
Finding a Good SEO Copywriting Service Made Simple
While finding a great SEO copywriting service may seem difficult, it’s well worth the time and effort to find a firm that you click with.
In addition to streamlining your content creation and ensuring high-quality material for your site, building a partnership with an SEO copywriting service is a wonderful way to help your brand become more visible online.
In recent years, there’s been some concern that robots will eventually replace human writers.
Automated systems have successfully replaced people in thousands of factory assembly jobs, surgical positions, security posts, and farming positions. Why not writing, as well?
While there’s no doubt that writing has been, and will continue to be, aided by technological advancement, I say it’s unlikely that robots will ever fully replace the human copywriter.
Why?
Robots can’t process a human level of creativity, thinking, and subsequently, writing.
While robots, algorithms, and automated systems may have methods in place to “crawl” and interpret data, they will never understand the distinctly human joy of curling up in front of the fireplace with a cup of tea and a great book.
Think about these scenarios for a moment:
Robots will never know how exciting Tolkien’s world can be, or how a great novel or short story can transport you to another time, place, and headspace.
Robots will never know what it means to read a Content Marketing Institute article that punches you in the gut, that you feel compelled to share so everyone can learn what you just learned (content marketing nerds unite).
Robots can’t ever wipe away their own tears at the last lines of Shakespeare’s dying Romeo, or Mufasa’s passing in the Lion King.
For these reasons, human copywriters will not be replaced anytime soon.
While robots might be capable of incredible things, only we understand how deeply human the act of writing is, and how much heart it takes to produce material that other people want to read.
Why Robots Won’t Replace the Writer: The Raw Power of Human, Conversational Content
You know what else robots are lacking that humans have down pat? The power of conversation. Sure – robots can be programmed to talk, answer questions, and tell jokes, but they’ll never be the conversational natives that humans have always been.
This gives us a serious edge when it comes to copywriting.
If you’ve been working in the digital marketing space for a while, it’s likely that you can think of a few examples of funny, conversational, relatable content you’ve read and enjoyed that features a distinctly human touch.
Here are a few of the brands that come to mind for me when I think of conversational content:
1. Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club is almost always on the top of these lists because the brand has done such an incredible job of making itself approachable, funny, and relatable. There’s no doubt these guys have real, hard-working humans behind their digital content. While there are dozens of examples of how the company does this, check out this screenshot of the “How it Works” portion of their website for a great demonstration:
2. Poo~Pourri
What I love about Poo~Pourri is their genius level of creativity in every bit of copy and marketing material.
If that’s not fun, relatable and conversational, I don’t know what is. We all can give a little belly laugh in the name of joining a “potty” community ready to spritz the bowl and “trap-a-crap” (a product name, not kidding you).
Show me a content scraper, algorithm, or robot that can evoke thathumorous level of creativity.
3. Headspace
Headspace built a meditation app that provides access to fast, accessible meditations for situations ranging from anxiety to anger to general wellbeing. While meditation often feels like a lofty and unapproachable practice, Headspace hits the ball out of the park when it comes to making the pursuit user-friendly and approachable.
One of my favorite examples of their conversational their content is their “How the Headspace App Works Video.” Watch it and then tell me you’re still feeling intimidated about developing a meditative practice:
5 Reasons We Have to LearnConversational Writing
While the brands above are all killing it at conversational writing, the people behind this content didn’t just come in off the streets and start excelling at it. While it’s true that people are conversational natives, writing marketing copy (and everything listed above is marketing copy) that connects with readers requires a set of learned skills.
Most of us are familiar with marketing messages that feel cold, pushy, overly sales-y, or cheap. This material makes us recoil and click “delete” as fast as we can. While a human may have written it, it doesn’t do anything to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
With this in mind, we have to learn conversational writing. Here’s why:
1. School didn’t teach us
If you’re like most people, you remember being told you were too wordy, informal, or grammatically incorrect in your school papers. While this may have made sense when we were learning APA or MLA formatting or constructing a senior thesis in college, it doesn’t hold up in the real world.
Sometimes, approachable marketing writing bends grammar rules. Sometimes it’s less formal than a college essay, and sometimes it pushes the envelope – but that’s okay! In fact, that’s necessary.
While school taught us to abide by hundred-year-old grammar rules, it didn’t teach us how to be approachable and conversational in the material we write.
2. Conversational writing takes relies on the audience
What your audience might find approachable and what my audience might find approachable may well be two separate things. While some aspects of conversational writing carry across all industries and target personas, there’s no doubt that being compelling in marketing copy requires you to know your target audience intimately. If you don’t, you can’t expect to speak directly to them.
3. It takes time to get good at this
While there’s a fine line between being professional and robotic, there’s also a fine line between being conversational and downright rude or unprofessional. Conversational writing, like all things, requires a delicate hand and a certain level of skill. You don’t develop this overnight, and it’s important to give yourself time and space to hone the craft and develop your unique style.
4. Old habits die hard
For some people, breaking out of the box of academic writing and learning to be more conversational and approachable is a severe uphill battle. It’s tough to un-do old teaching, and writing in a conversational and friendly way can feel counterintuitive, at first. This is one of the biggest reasons we must learn to write like this, rather than just expecting it to sprout up overnight.
5. Great writing shouldn’t sound like writing
Take a moment to wrap your mind around this one.
Elmore Leonard once said:
“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
The best sales pitch shouldn’t feel like a sales pitch, and the best marketing writing shouldn’t sound like writing – it should sound like a casual conversation between friends.
10 Impressive Ways to Write More Conversational Content
So, now you know why we must learn to write conversationally. Now, let’s talk about how.
Here are ten smart tips you can put into action right now:
1. Stop trying to be everything to everyone
Imagine this: you’re sitting down at your computer to write your weekly email newsletter. You want it to be exciting, compelling, and valuable for your audience. The tough thing is, though, your email list contains every internet user on the globe – about 3,424,971,237 people.
That’s an impossible task, right? Right. There’s absolutely no way you can appeal to all those people, and you’d be wasting your time trying.
The first step in creating more conversational content is to hone your audience. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, you want to be a very specific something to a very particular set of people.
When you sit down to write your copy, you should be able to pick one individual that’s representative of your target audience and write to that person and only that person. This will make your writing infinitely more approachable and unique.
2. Don’t try to sound casual
Any time you try to show off, things take an immediate turn for the worst. This is as true in sports (ever tried to look cool on a ski hill, only to face plant in front of the large group you were trying to impress?) as it is everywhere else in life. Don’t try to sound casual, or cool, or funny in your writing. Your readers will know immediately that you’re trying to impress them, and you’ll lose interest. Remember: the best writing doesn’t sound like writing. Keep it natural for best results.
3. Talk to people, not at them
Think about how much easier it is to stay engaged with a conversation than a lecture. Now, bring this into your online writing. When you write to people rather than at them, you create room for a two-way exchange, which is much more valuable than a soliloquy.
4. Be yourself
When you read Dollar Shave Club’s web copy, it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to be something they’re not. Instead, you get the distinct idea that the company has a host of funny, cool, witty people on their team – people you’d probably like to get to know. The easiest way to be approachable and conversational in your content is to be yourself. When you’re not trying to fit yourself into someone else’s mold, your voice shines through, and you immediately come off as more authentic.
5. Ask your readers questions
To show your readers you care what they think, ask them questions. Simple things, like their feedback on a recent site redesign or input on a blog post topic are excellent access points and can make you a more accessible brand straight away.
6. Cut the fat
Today, the human attention span is limited. To be precise, it lasts about eight seconds. This doesn’t mean you have to compress all your writing into micro-sized packages, but it does mean you need to slash anything that’s not obviously contributing value. Flabby content doesn’t reflect well on your company, nor does it grab your readers. Trim the fat for more engaging writing.
7. Feel free to bend or break grammar rules
While you want to keep your writing readable (that’s the whole point, after all), it’s okay to break grammar rules here and there. Many of them are antiquated and ill-suited to conversational writing, anyway. For best results, keep it reasonable – use broken sentences here and there, start sentences with “and” or “but” occasionally, and break up your paragraph structure for more impact. While your English teacher of yesteryear might not appreciate the approach, your readers will.
8. Write to a close friend
Lifestyle coach and fitness nut Tim Ferriss is famous for saying he had an awful time writing his books when he was trying to write a book. As soon as he sat down and wrote like he was writing an advice email to a close friend, after a glass of wine, however, his writing changed entirely. Maybe this is why he’s become a multi-time NYT bestseller!
9. Evaluate your process regularly
Like all things associated with writing, creative and conversational copywriting requires regular check-ins. For best results, check in with your results on a regular basis. Are people still responding? If they’re not, consider altering your approach. Being flexible will keep you relatable now and in the future.
10. Keep it simple
Conversational writing is a skill rather than a science. When you keep it simple and avoid the temptation to make it hard and complicated, you’ll automatically increase your chances of success.
Today, audiences want material with a human touch, and it’s conversational, highly-readable content that gets shared and talked about today.
We’ve all heard the saying, “if you want to be interesting, be interested.”
The same goes for writing – “If you want to be read, you have to write to be read!”
If you’re looking for professional copywriters that can nail the art of conversational copywriting, look no further than Express Writers. Contact us today!
To find even a few ounces of gold, you must move mountains of earth.
The same thing goes for writing!
When you sit down at your computer to write (whether it be a blog, page, copy), you tap out thousands of words–only to go back and sift through them all.
You move some here, delete some hundred there, separating and refining them in search of that one valuable nugget, that one shiny sentence that makes the entire process exhilarating, rewarding, and worth it.
Not everyone has the time, patience, or skill to give the writing process the attention it deserves, however – just like not everyone has what it takes to strike it rich as a gold miner.
Because writing well is a craft that takes so much attention and dedication, that only those who are willing to develop those things will earn rewards. The writers who are prepared to move the mountains of earth to find the richest vein, or put their heart into their writing until it turns to pure gold, are the ones who will ultimately succeed.
The Secret of Writing Great Copy & Finding Your Vein of Gold
There’s no shortcut to success, and this is as true with copywriting as it is with gold mining.
Keep reading: I’m going to talk about how to find your “vein of gold” in online copywriting, and why truly great writing is the only type of writing worth doing this year.
To be Great, You’ve Got to be Tough
There’s a thin line between being excellent and being “good enough.”
The great (and awful) thing about the web is that most content creators fall into the latter category.
Hey, that was me, when I just started out in 2011-2012.
I’ve since deleted a boatload of blogs from those days. I wasn’t tough on myself. I didn’t analyze every content piece, stressing over every sentence, perfecting every single H2. I wrote, edited, threw together a graphic, called it a content piece, scheduled it, got it “out.”
Those days are long gone. And I’m so glad.
The content creators that just want to be good enough, which truly means “get content out,” are like miners who refuse to invest in the right equipment, or won’t put in the long, hard hours in the sun.
While this can be terrible for readers, who must slog through tons of mediocre content to reach the great material they deserve, it’s good news for content creators who are willing to go the extra mile. When nearly everything else is sub-par, standing out gets a bit easier.
Remember: if striking gold were easy, everyone would be doing it.
The reason so many people push out low-quality content is that that is infinitely simpler than writing thousands of words, sitting back, and then filtering it all down to that one sentence, that one thought that matters.
At the end of the day, being great means being tough – in your edits of your writing, in your dedication to the craft, in your expectations of yourself, and in your commitment to blowing everything else out of the water. Sure, it’s harder than the alternative, but it’s the only approach that honors how crowded the web already is, and how important it is to add only quality material in the coming years.
How else are you going to strike that vein that offers rewards beyond your wildest dreams?
The Secret of Writing Great Copy: Being Willing to Walk Away from Your Work
It sounds almost crazy, doesn’t it?
“Write 5,000 words and then scrap 2,500 of them.”
That seems like an exercise in futility. It seems like a Sisyphean task.
Remember the gold miner, though? Remember how gold miners often have to move thousands of tons of earth to find a few ounces of gold? If you take mining for its surface value, it seems insane. Until, however, you realize that a few ounces of gold can be worth hundreds of thousands – even millions – of dollars.
Then things start to make sense.
In writing, as in gold mining, there’s no shortcut to success. You’ve got to bow your head to the work and be willing to do some of it in vain. While being great might be true that you’ll slash many of your hard-fought words from each piece you write, think of those words as the tons of earth you have to move to get to the good stuff.
There’s no way around it, and you’re not going to find the material that glitters unless you’re willing to dig. While it can be tempting to think that everything you’ve written is gold, this is just hubris, and it won’t do anything to help you hone your skill.
The Secret of Writing Great Copy: Narrowing Down to Your Best
The gold of your writing is hiding beneath the dirt, and to access it you need to be able to recognize the work involved and commit to it.
While it can be discouraging to write and re-write, the goal is to refine your content until you find the one sentence that matters, the one paragraph that gets your reader in the gut.
Once you find it, start there.
It’s your standard now for the entire piece.
Your lamppost, your guideline.
Make sure everything that follows is just as shiny and inspiring.
Cut everything else out. Trim the fat.
Remove everything that doesn’t bring something new to the table. If it’s just noise, you don’t have a right to publish it, and your readers shouldn’t be forced to wade through it.
An Example of Trimming the Fat
Content Block A
It’s critical to look at everything that is nothing better than “wordy,” and cut, cut, cut that out. Your content must shine. It must be polished, to stand out in a sea of online content that keeps rising every day. Discover in your copy what’s poor, what’s not as good as the rest. Cut out everything that doesn’t matter. Trim the fat.
Content Block B
Cut out everything that doesn’t matter. Trim the fat.
See what I did there?
I narrowed everythingdown in Content A to my two last sentences. That was the heart of my paragraph. The gold. All the other words, which took a while to compose and write, were trashed.
(Also, ironic, eh? I trimmed down to “Trim the fat.” :-P)
Don’t assume that every word you’ve written deserves to be published. That’s like the gold miner saying the dirt covering the gold deserves to stay where it is. With thinking like this, he’d reason himself right out of a job.
Be analytical and real in your approach to your copy. Don’t hold back on pruning to discover your best roots and content health.
Your Job as a Content Creator Comes with Responsibility: Use it Wisely
Today, our job as content creators isn’t simply to push out written material – it’s to create targeted, from-the-heart content that resonates with our readers, that provides something different, and that comes from a place of passion and true belief.
To get to this place, you’ve got to be tough–on yourself.
Develop an eye for excess, and understand that creating your best work often means walking away from much of it.
Remember the gold miner.
At the end of the day, his brow is bent to the earth. He’s sweaty and bronzed from the sun, back turned to the mountains of soil he’s moved to uncover the tiny spot upon which he now focuses. He’s shaking his sifting pan rhythmically back and forth, running water through it like a baptism.
You can call him crazy if you’d like, but that small spot contains riches untold, and he knows exactly what he’s doing.
When you bring this kind of attention, diligence, and commitment to striking gold in your online writing, there’s no way you can go wrong. You’re on your way to great copy, every single time you publish.
Nuggets From The Secret of Writing Great Copy: Finding Your Vein of Gold
Save this slide to your desktop and open it every time you need a reminder of how to find your vein of gold. 😉
Did you know that the average American will spend 42 hours this next year sitting in traffic?
That’s almost two days’ worth of morning commutes, traffic jams, and rush hours spent sitting in the car, waiting for the vehicle in front of you to crawl ahead.
Traffic on the highway and the byway is not the kind we typically enjoy.
On the other hand, when it comes to content development and driving readers to your brand, traffic is the goal. We welcome, and work toward, a steady flow of visitors to our content who will engage with it, tell their friends, and send them over to check it out.
Contrary to what we may have been taught, bringing more traffic to your site is not done by building links or even creating more content. It is accomplished through optimizing for organic search click-through rate, which can lead to a greater ROI. Let’s discuss.
How to Increase ROI On Your Content: First, What is Measurable ROI for Content Marketing?
How does a content marketer even begin to measure ROI (return on investment)? There are a few factors to consider.
First, make an estimate of the outgoing costs for your content marketing; this can include employee pay, distribution costs (if any), and publishing or software use costs.
Next, calculate how much revenue your marketing has brought in.
Here is a simple equation to use when thinking about your return on investment (originally found in The Guardian):
(Revenue Generated – Cost of Content Marketing) / Cost of Content Marketing = ROI.
Another way to look at ROI is by understanding the return versus the investment.
Investment = cost of producing and sourcing content, time spent planning, advertising costs
3 Simple Ways to Boost CTR and Increase ROI on Your Content Marketing
So, what are the best ways to boost organic CTR and increase ROI? And why does it matter? Jump in as I tackle these questions!
1. Create a Catchy, Authentic, Engaging Headline
Clicking through on content is the reason we develop writing pieces in the first place—as writers and marketers, if no one is reading what we produce, what’s the point?
Especially when you consider that most readers quickly scan headlines, and then move on without reading further.
Only about 40% of readers will go beyond the headline in a typical story, which makes it even more important to start with an engaging title to pull the audience in and make them want to stay.
If the goal is to invite readers in, then the headline is the welcome mat and cup of coffee—the message should be, “Come on in and sit down. I have something awesome to tell you”.
What makes a good headline?
Here are 8 key tips to get you started:
1. Start with a rough draft, also called a “working title”
Working titles are specific, focused, and maybe a bit imperfect. Using phrases like “how to” and “x number of ways to” can be a good starting point for creating a focused title. Create an emotional hook by using words that have power behind them.
2. Present the truth
Don’t put facts or promises in a title unless you can back it up with authoritative links and trustworthy statistics. Setting high expectations in the beginning, and then not following through, will disappoint your readers and encourage a sense of distrust.
3. Make it pop
The type of “catch” you use in your title will depend on the audience you are addressing. A lighter topic can be an appropriate setting for witty words and alliteration, while stronger words should be reserved for specific settings.
4. Keep it simple
Everyone’s headline is going to be different in length, but if your goal is to rank well in search, a good guideline is to keep a title under 70 characters. However, research has shown a title with eight words saw a 21% higher click-through rate then average. Headlines that included odd numbers, a hyphen, and a questions mark saw increased engagement.
5. Practice optimization for social and search
It can be challenging to optimize for both search and social, but with a few tweaks, it can be done. With a focus on keywords that are relevant to your audience placed as close as possible to the beginning of the headline, there is a better chance your title will be optimized for both.
6. Break up with keyword-heavy titles
If only four out of ten readers are moving past the headline to absorb content, it makes sense to put thought and time into developing a relevant title. Bogging titles down with keywords takes away the opportunity to create something fantastic and attractive.
Try the free Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule, which will give your headline a score and rate the ability it has to drive traffic, shares, and SEO value. The site can help you strengthen weak parts of your title so you can present your audience with the very best welcome mat/coffee combination.
7. Get in with the “in” crowd
One way to contribute to an increased CTR is by forming your headline from the perspective of one of these personas (Search Engine Journal):
A SEO-focused title might read, “Raising Kids: Getting through the Toddler Years”, while the comedian version could be, “Got Mushy Brain? 3 Tips for Getting Through the Foggy Years of Raising a Toddler!”
8. Invite everyone over for the party
No one wants to be left out, so gathering together all the components of an awesome title is the best way to be the content hostess with the most-est.
Start with the specifics: 4 Ways to…, How to Make…, 5 Brands Who…, 10 Stats That…
Add an emotional hook: Brilliant, Unreal, Must-Follow, Inspiring
Follow with the content description: Infographic, Quotes, Stats, Strategies
End with the subject: Social media, Kids, Marketing, Writing
Examples of Fabulous Headlines:
4 Brilliant Brands Who are Killing it in Social Media
Don’t Waste Time Raising Well-Mannered Kids: 4 Experts Share What Really Works
Although it may be tempting to write 2,000 words on “the perils of raising temper-prone toddlers” and then share it across every available platform, that may not be the best approach for increased ROI.
To avoid killing your ROI, and instead increase ROI on your content, Neil Patel suggest finding 1 to 3 channels where your content will do the very best and sharing across those mediums.
Why be specific? Because audiences on different channels will behave differently from each other. Content that has a lot of engagement on Twitter might not work as well on LinkedIn or Google+.
Deciding where and what to post will take time. It may help to analyze how past content has performed and look at the number of people who engaged by way of visiting, commenting, and sharing.
3. Use descriptive metadata
Metadata on your website includes:
Alt tags (given to images)
Title and meta description (should include keywords)
Search-friendly URL
A descriptive metadata is one SEO factor that is within your creative control, unlike backlinks and off-page factors.
Here is an example of a meta description from Google:
While meta description tags may not be important when it comes to search engine rankings, they play a crucial role in gaining click-throughs from SERPs. That is one reason to include relevant keywords and write it in an engaging way.
When it comes to creating a user-friendly URL, SEMrush suggests keeping the page name to a length of 3-5 words, including relevant keywords, and being descriptive but meaningful. SEMRush
Content, especially across social media channels, is filled with images, which makes the addition of an alt tag that much more important. And since content that includes relevant images gets 94% more views than content without, it’s safe to say visuals are a vital addition to CTRs.
Alt tags offer a simple way for your images to show up in search results, so don’t overlook them.
Putting It All Together to Increase ROI On Your Content
Boosting the click-through rate and return on investment with your content doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. With a bit of research and the right tools, you can create the catchy headlines and descriptive metadata that will have readers flocking to your content quicker than you can say “search engine optimization”.
The key during the content creation process is to draw the right audience in (construct engaging headlines), utilize the best mediums (target specific channels), and give them what they need in their search for answers (write descriptive metadata).
If you have been looking to increase the CTR and ROI with your own content, connect with Express Writers today to find out more about our awesome services!
