Three top tips to help you write AWESOME content!

You may have heard the famous term “content is king” banded around. It is talked about a lot, and it's not hard to understand why when you consider that pretty much anything you do online is based around it. So, as my first blog post about content writing I thought I’d offer some tips that can help you create awesome blogs, articles, tweets and more to help you really engage customers and prospects.

1. Write for your audience!

You'll be amazed at how often this point is missed. I've seen countless blog posts with no real direction or angle. You'll tailor your direct marketing campaigns to a certain audience, so you should be doing it with your content as well. Are most of your customers male? Then perhaps consider blogging about the weekend's football. Where are the majority of your audience based? Perhaps lots of your customers work in London banking firms, in which case it might benefit you to post about the latest news in Canary Wharf. You'll be amazed at how making your content relevant to your punters will increase response rates and improve customer engagement.

2. Be a human!

Try not to be too corporate. A blog offers up a unique opportunity to give your company a face and a personality. Your audience are humans, and they would like to think they are engaging with humans as well. Write as if you would speak to people, it will really help give your writing personality. Have a sense of humour. People like to get a “bit of you” when they read your content, it will help them understand you and like you enough to click that “follow” button! It's OK to make the odd mistake, your audience will appreciate the fact you aren't a robot – if customers wanted to read a corporate blog they could just read your company's press releases.

3. Write exciting headlines!

So you've decided what your blog post is going to be about, you have a topic and plenty of ideas to pour into it. You now need to convey the entire post in a single headline, which can be a pretty daunting task! The easiest and most common way is to stick to tabloid style list headlines “Top 5 ways to...” or “The 6 biggest mistakes when”. There is a reason why so many write such headlines, and it is because they are easy to digest, are catchy and illustrates the main point of the article very concisely. To quote Steve Jobs; “they just work”. When you consider where your blog posts will be surfacing (other blogs, Digg, Reddit, search engines etc.) you need your headline to stand out and give the reader a reason to click on it, so try to think of something that peaks curiosity and gets those punters clicking! It is also a good idea to try and capture the audience in the first 2 sentences of your post. Just like your headline, try to convey your entire article in your introduction whilst keeping it short and sweet. You want people to read your entire post, not just the first 2 sentences. If you've read all the way down to here, then I've done a good job in keeping YOUR interest so far ;-)

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