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6 min read
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10 tips to create content like a professional.

10 tips to create content like a proffessional

As a business, it’s important to have great content…

There are oodles of online articles alluding to content creation. So why read this one? Well, we’ve shoehorned years of copywriting experience into 10 quick tips used by the professionals every day!

1. Personas

Always write with your audience firmly in mind and to the individual rather than a group. So, if you’re wanting to write a blog for your website, think carefully about who you are ‘talking’ to. If your business sits, for example, within the leisure industry, and you are a personal trainer/tutor of some sort, make sure you know your audience. What lifestyle do they aspire to? What income (and therefore purchasing power) do they have? What is going to interest them? Do they have in-depth knowledge about your subject? These are all things to bear in mind before you start tapping any keys. 

2. What medium are you writing for?

what medium are you writing for

Always have a clear idea of what audience your content creation is aimed for. Writing a blog post will need to be structured differently than the wording for a press release or a leaflet. A blog is going to be more chatty, written (as this article is) almost like the spoken word.

A press release, on the other hand, should be more formulaic. News editors like to cut word length from the bottom of a story, so all your relevant facts and key messages for your press release should sit within the first few paragraphs. 

3. Style

Plan your work so that you don’t repeat yourself and your paragraphs link well. Again, consider your audience as this will affect your writing style - are you talking to business professionals or a layperson?

Be careful with humour. This is a tricky one because we all enjoy reading light-hearted articles, but humour is subjective and what’s funny to you, maybe offensive to others. So pare down your puns. Using alterations (like the one in the last sentence) can work well, but only in small doses!)

4. SEO

SEO

If you are writing to rank organically in search engines, it is vital you choose your keywords carefully and then incorporate them into your text correctly. If you are looking after your own SEO, it’s worth investing in a software package to check and score the readability of your article and SEO optimisation.

At Ketchup Marketing we use, and thoroughly recommend, Yoast (which works with WordPress sites). Yoast is a good starting point with lots of free resources, however, there are lots of alternatives out there to choose from.

5. Keep the reader’s interest

As a society, our attention span for reading articles is diminishing. Our media intake is fed to us in bite-size pieces, encouraging us to flit from story to story, snatching headlines and snippets. On the whole, we don’t tolerate big text blocks anymore (except for in academia or technical specifications).

So, work with the trend - make your marketing materials easy to read. Use a mix of sentence lengths and invest in good headlines. Don’t waffle; keep to the point and write for the reader, not to amuse yourself!

6. Grammar (not the knitting kind!) and spelling

Grammar is more relaxed in much of our written work these days. However, it is still important. If you need help with grammar, or you want to check the structure of your work, there are many software packages that can help. One of our favourites is grammarly.com. So, if, for example, you’re trying to influence your audience, it’s worth reminding yourself of the two grammatical voices we can use (active and passive) and be clear of the impact of each.

7. Bullet points and subheadings

  • Use bullet points and subheadings to break up blocks of paragraphs. 
  • These make articles look lighter and easier to read. 
  • Don’t overuse bullet points or your article will read more like an irritating to-do list!

8. Call to action

For every piece of content, you should have a reason for its creation. It might be to try to persuade someone to buy something or change some part of their behaviour. Whatever your goal, always have a call to action.

What do you want your reader to do? Do you want them to follow links to more information? Buy something? Read another article? Pick up the phone? Send in some photos? There are endless possibilities - just make sure your text makes it crystal clear what the options are, and make it easy for your reader to follow the action through. 

9. Proof and spell check

Always, always, always spell check your content creation. There’s just no excuse not to! If your copy is being published or printed, get another pair of eyes to check over it before it goes into full view. When you’ve written, rewritten and proofed your own copy, you’ll be surprised how you can get ‘blinded’ to your own mistakes. 

10. Be your biggest critic

be your biggest critic

If you get bored proofing your own copy, don’t publish it - it’ll bore others too! If your content is proofread by others, don’t get defensive if they point out areas they would change. Writing is an art - we all approach it differently. Any good copywriter should be flexible enough to adapt and adopt other styles and ways of working. At the end of the day, the company’s reputation is far more important than any single person’s ego!

Good luck and keep in touch...

Here at Ketchup Marketing, our copywriters are happy to review your website content (or other marketing materials) and offer you hints and tips on how you can improve your content. 

You can team this offer, with a FREE Ketchup Marketing audit. We are currently offering SEO, Website and Social Media audits which will equip you with a deeper insight into your own statistics and those of your competitors.