We have been hearing it several times - quality content is king. But what does it take to write truly amazing content? For starters, plenty of dedication, effort and time are important. As a writer you also need to understand what you are going to address in your content, as you have to relate well with your audience. Apart from all this, let us discuss some important aspects that will help you to write really amazing content.
- Identify your audience - you have to start off by focusing on who will be reading your content segment your audience in different categories, such as the customers, the sharers, the bloggers and the influencers. Separating the readers in such categories will enable you to target each one of them better. Next, you have to engage in what is often referred to as audience profiling. This means that you should use social tools so as to gain valuable insights about your audience's preferences, interests, likes and dislikes.
- Outreaching to your audience - you have to reach out to your current as well as new audience. This can be done in various ways, such as by becoming an active member of relevant communities, including blogs, forums, social groups as well as offline opportunities, such as conferences, meetings and lectures. By doing so you will be connecting with your audience and this will enable you to ask them what it is that they want to see content-wise.
- Developing ideas for your content - you need to find inspiration before starting to write. An industry research will help you to discover what worked, and what did not work, in the past. Research top content relevant to your line of business, and make use of social monitoring tools so as to stay on top of any industry updates. Make it a point to analyse key influencers too. Collect this information so as to identify the top topics. Another good method is to identify any problems which people are trying to solve, and address them with your content. So try to identify main issues in your industry, listen to what people are yearning to know or solve, and address them with your writing.
- Validate your ideas to weed out the bad ones - narrow down your ideas so as to choose the very best. This will also enable you to align your goals so as to stay on track.
- Creating the content - there are all sorts of content you can create. Written content includes blog posts, guest features, newsletters, interviews, and FAQs. Headlines are a key part of good content writing but make sure that they are short and shareable. Do your best to entice the readers with interesting information, statistics and facts. If you prefer to create visual or interactive content rather than written, there are all sorts of options you can opt for, including infographics, illustrations, memes, videos and apps.
- Proofing your work - before publication it is crucial to proof your work. This will help to maximize the readability of your content, help you make any editing, and remove any errors in spelling, grammar or punctuation.
- Publishing the content - you can try to secure a guest spot or on other external sources. You can also opt for internal publishing such as on your own site or blog.