Have you ever written something you were particularly proud of and sent it into the virtual universe to be enjoyed and shared only to be brutally disappointed by its reception? You are not alone in your content marketing struggles.
Moreover, it’s (mostly) not you, it’s the ever-increasing body of knowledge to which those of us with reliable internet have access. There’s so much out there to read and share, that your content needs to check a lot more grammatical, stylistic, and tonal boxes than ever before to even reach and engage potential audiences.
But never fear, here are 11 tried and tested tips, tricks and tools to help you take control (where you can) of spreading your ideas better.
Writing for Content Marketing
Grabbing readers and keeping them engaged requires a balance of great content, layout, and tone.
The Number 1 Rule:
We cannot stress this enough – KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.
If it seems like we’re virtually shouting at you, it’s because we are, politely. There is nothing more important than crafting a blog (or even a social post) that speaks directly to your audience’s needs, wants, or interests.
How do you get to know your audience? You look at data. Sometimes it’s qualitative – talking with your customers, partners, or stakeholders. Sometimes it’s quantitative – reviewing your website analytics, previous post stats, and social post performance. Sometimes is a mix, maybe even a materiality assessment (we’ve got a blog on this).
Whatever way you do it, know that a topic or tone that is not directly designed to appeal to your target audience will nullify any help the rest of these content marketing tricks can give you.
Finding the Perfect Headline:
In the age of clickbait, your headline really matters. Capitalize on the headlines that data tell us captures readers. Lists (like this one), how-to’s, explainers, and specifics relating to our who, what, when, where, and why’s get more clicks.
As an exercise, for the next week, keep in mind the headlines that make you click in your online browsing. Do they have anything in common? If you’re writing for an audience similar to yourself, writing a headline that you’d click is a great place to start.
To take it to the next level – consider if your audience is more ethos (ethical), pathos (emotional), or logos (logical). Are you going for logical intellectuals or emotive impulsives? Tailor your headline to your audience.
To help you define the emotional weight of your headline, try out the EV Score Headline Analyzer. It’s a great tool to check if your headline is doing what you want.
For example, the headline of this article “Content Marketing is Hard, But Here are 11 Ways You Can Build a Better Post” gets a 33% – empathic score. It’s designed to appeal to the common frustration we feel when great blogs don’t get great engagement.
A final headline thought – try and make it less than 70 characters. That will help with google search results.
Get the Grammar Right
Bad grammar is a post-killer. We live in the glorious age of computers, which makes proofing far easier and audiences far less forgiving of mistakes.
We are particularly fond of two proofing tools (both of which have strong free versions!) – Grammarly and Hemingway.
Grammarly:
They’ve got an Office plug-in as well as one to attach to your web browser of choice, making it easy to check content anywhere.
It’s not a perfect tool and will still require you to go through and accept or reject what they’ve flagged. But if you use it right, it can also be a learning resource. With every document, you check you can see if you have tendencies towards using effect instead of affect, if you mix up your oxford commas and so much more.
If you’re invested in leveling up your grammar, you can get a paid membership, it has more granular and tonal suggestions.
Hemingway:
It’s an online site that does a lot of what Grammarly does, but it adds a ‘grade-level’ kicker that can be incredibly informative.
This is where knowing your audience comes in again. Because if you know that you’re trying to talk to a group of PhDs, it’s okay to use more sophisticated language and sentence structure. You don’t need to worry as much about simplifying a grade 10 score.
However, if you’re trying to speak to a broader audience, the best practice is to write for the lowest possible grade level that won’t seem insulting. For most – that’ll be between 6th and 8th grade.
“More than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.” – link
Even if you think your target audience is sophisticated – keep in mind how people use blogs. They often skim. They’ll click away from a blog that’s incredibly dense and complicated to read. For example – we’re writing for a fairly sophisticated audience in this blog, and Hemingway puts it at a 6th-grade reading level. Ideally, that means we’re informing and engaging you, but not overwhelming you with complexity.
When drafting your next idea try not to write like you have something to prove, instead, write like you want people to read and comprehend it. Make it easy for your audience to understand the important and sophisticated topics you’re trying to address.
“Your first goal is to be clear and simple, to write at an eight-grade level, but with ideas that are super-sophisticated.” – Malcolm Gladwell Master Class
Avoid Passive Voice:
This will come up in Hemingway and Grammarly, but it is worth underscoring. Avoid passive voice whenever you can. For a quick primer. According to our favorite dictionary, passive voice is:
…when the subject of the sentence is acted on by the verb. For example, in “The ball was thrown by the pitcher,” the ball (the subject) receives the action of the verb, and was thrown is in the passive voice. The same sentence cast in the active voice would be, “The pitcher threw the ball.”
The grammar checkers will help you identify it. In general, just avoid using a form of the verb ‘to be’ (was, is, are) between your subject and your action second verb. It weakens your language and is ultimately just fluff that distracts.
Length:
Optimal blog length for content marketing gets a little tricky.
There are a few general practices to follow that should help you accomplish any blogging goal.
- Make it longer than 500 words.
- Serious blogging agencies like Hubspot, CoSchedule, and Buffer suggest that effective blogs run anywhere from 1,600 to 2,500 words long.
- Research from these agencies suggests that around 1,500 will get you good sharing results, while above 2,500 will get you good google results.
So, depending on your goals, try and tailor your length.
Layout
You’ve crafted a grammatically perfect, superbly-targeted, and well-researched blog. Now how do you get people to scroll through the whole thing? You use a few tricks that make reading easier.
Photos, Stats, and Graphics:
People like pictures. Always (if appropriate) try to find at least a feature image to kick off your blog. It’ll make social posting easier, and it makes a page more interesting to view. If you can – go for scattered photos (or other visuals) throughout as well.
Elements that break up text help a reader enjoy getting through a post.
Headers:
Use headers. Like photos, stats, or graphics, they help break text blocks. If you can, use at least two header levels (larger header and subheaders). Try not to stack two headers on top of each other. It’s always best to have paragraph text underneath your header.
This blog for example has three header levels and at no point is one sub-header directly underneath the preceding header (sorry we’ve said header so many times, there are few synonyms).
How often should you use them? The rule of thumb is to have no more than 5 blocks of text without a header breaking them up, but if you need to ignore the rule (as we did above) it’s ok.
Paragraphs:
Paragraphs that are too long get visually monotonous, and you start to lose readers. Our recommendation is to make no text box longer than four lines.
They can be as short as one, but really what you want is variety. Try not to just have four paragraphs of four lines. Mix them up, go for one, three, two, then four lines. See how it looks to you.
Tone:
This is a tricky topic. It can be subjective and hard to get right. But there are a couple of general content marketing principles you can follow.
Be Yourself:
Whether you’re writing for a corporation or just a personal blog, you should have a personality. We’re not saying everyone needs to be out there tweeting snappy comments at McDonald’s or flaunting reps like Selena Gomez.
But as a brand, if you have a personality that is consistent across your marketing efforts, you’ll be able to create stronger more engaging content. If you’re interested in a brand exercise, reach out to us, we can help you cultivate who you are.
What is Your Goal?:
We just offered you a clear Call to Action (CTA). We think you should also do so in your writing.
Depending on your topic, you likely want your readers to do something. Maybe it’s reaching out to you, signing up for something, or even just following you on a social channel. Whatever it is, if you create a captivating post, you owe it to yourself to try and help the people engaged by your information to get more of it.
So, do yourself and your readers a favor and end with a clear CTA (consider scattering them throughout as well).
Don’t Get Discouraged
If you go through everything we’ve laid out here and create a great blog, your next job is to promote it.
Follow us for a future blog to help you do that well. But in the meantime, don’t get discouraged if your content marketing still isn’t getting the traction for which you’d hoped. This stuff is hard, and sometimes it takes time to break through. We haven’t even started on SEO, tagging, and other factors that can affect performance.
If you want extra help in the meantime – reach out to us. We’re always happy to chat with people looking to meaningfully grow their voices.
