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20 Secrets To Create Content Your Ideal Customers Will Love

Great content attracts and converts. Here are 20 tips to ensure your content is simple, clear, and compelling to your audience.

By now you realize many old school outbound marketing tactics don’t work. Today’s consumers hold all of the power. Chasing people down and begging them to buy is a waste of time and money. They want to find you—and your main job is to be found.

You need to switch from an outbound approach to an inbound one. That means sharing content—articles, blog posts, white papers, newsletters, social media content—and plenty of it.

“When your content is consistently helpful, relevant, and compelling, people will connect with you and your business,” says Justin Champion, author of Inbound Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing Content Marketing the Inbound Way. “They’ll come to trust you, and from there you can convert them to leads and close them into customers.”

To get to this point, of course, you must create content that’s engaging and persuasive enough to pull readers in and keep them hooked. That’s easier said than done. In his new book, Champion—HubSpot Academy’s content marketing professor—offers a wealth of information to help you get started.

Here, excerpted from the book, are 20 ways to write more effective content.

 

1. Start with an attention-grabbing headline

This is one of the best ways to improve the performance of your content. Great headlines are specific, make a promise, and prompt the reader to read the piece now. For example, try the how-to format (“How to Use Excel: 14 Excel Tips, Tricks, and Shortcuts”) or the list format (“30 Call-to-Action Examples You Can’t Help But Click”) or the negative-angle format (“Why You Should Never Email a Proposal”).

 

2. Ensure the tone is relevant

Ask yourself if it should be serious, fun and personable, uplifting, quirky, humorous, or authoritative. Simple, a company reinventing online banking, has a blog on finance and money. The writing is human, inspiring, and warm, which perfectly aligns with its goal of taking the frustration and difficulty out of dealing with a bank.

 

3. Educate the reader

Your content should be designed with a purpose to teach your audiences to do something better. This is why it’s crucial to create a detailed buyer persona; it helps you better understand the challenges your ideal customer faces, their pain points, how they learn, and their goals.

 

4. Add to the conversation, don’t rehash it

To cut through the clutter, your content should add something new, be of higher quality or more comprehensive than what already exists, answer all the reader’s questions about the subject, and include the most recent and relevant data for support. Before you write, research what already exists on the subject and ask yourself, What’s missing?

 

5. Write the way people search

What words do people actually use to search and communicate? If your target audience searches for financial planning rather than wealth management, you’ll naturally want to use the former in your headline and content. Use keyword research to guide you, but always default to what sounds natural and interesting to your audience.

 

Beginners Guide to Content Creation
Photo: © iana_kolesnikova, YFS Magazine

 

6. Settle on one core idea

A clear piece of writing should have one main idea, and everything else should tie back to it. Identify the main object and how the reader will benefit, and add it to the top of your draft.

 

7. Support your brand messaging, values, and strategy

In every piece of content you create and distribute, think carefully about the words you use, the tone, the subject matter, and the details you provide. Every aspect should reinforce the reader’s view of who your brand is and why they should want to know you better.

 

8. Give content a relevant call to action

You might ask readers to share the content or leave a comment, to subscribe to your newsletter, or to download a related piece of content to take with them. This encourages people to interact with your brand. Ask for it directly and make the conversion process as seamless as possible.

 

9. Edit content for poor grammar

The final stage of writing—the editing process—is often rushed. Take time to refine your content pieces. This will ensure that you correct any errors that could damage your credibility and the trust you’ve built with the reader.

 

10. Use contractions

Contractions help you sound more conversational and more human in your writing, so be sure to change worlds like “do not” to “don’t” and “would not” to “wouldn’t.”

 

Photo: © SolisImages, YFS Magazine

 

11. Write with simple language

Don’t write: The proliferation of social and digital channels has created a catalyst whereby a shift in the production methods by marketers is required to connect with the audience. Instead, write: The increase in the number of social and digital channels now requires marketers to create content that’s not only platform specific but also appeals to the unique audience and their behaviors on that platform.

 

12. Use an active voice

Passive voice makes your writing seem flat and boring. Here’s an example of passive voice: The campaign was launched by the marketer. Here’s the same sentence written with active voice: The marketer launched a new campaign. See the difference?

 

13. Be clear and concise

This is the ultimate goal of editing—to refine the words until the point of each section, paragraph, and sentence is clear. Be relentless in removing extra words, irrelevant ideas and rants, and obvious details.

 

14. Use short sentences and paragraphs

Break up long, dense sentences and paragraphs whenever possible. This makes your content easier to read and comprehend. Breaks in paragraphs create space around the writing to give readers’ eyes a rest. These breaks, along with varying the structure and lengths of your sentences, create a rhythm that is more pleasing to read.

 

15. Cut fluffy words

Words like “very,” “really,” “actually,” “just,” “incredibly,” and “in order to” add nothing to your sentences. Also be careful of relying on adverbs—words ending in -ly—to describe an action, or including too many adjectives in your work. These mistakes all make for overly long, complex, and weak sentences. Run your writing through a tool like Grammarly or the Hemingway Editor to see if you can cut words or further simplify your language.

 

Photo: © puhhha, YFS Magazine

 

16. Adhere to a style guide

Whether it’s AP Style, the Chicago Manual of Style, or an internal style guide, use a standard set of rules to create consistency in all your communications—from your product copy to emails to ebooks to advertising. Anyone who writes on behalf of your company should know how to handle punctuation, grammar, voice and tone, industry-specific terms, common mistakes, and any brand-specific guidelines.

 

17. Use you and your in your writing

This helps you sound more conversational. Instead of writing like you’re creating something for an “audience,” write like you’re addressing your favorite customer or ideal reader and you want to bring them into a discussion. This simple tweak prevents you from sounding like you’re writing an instruction manual.

 

18. Avoid jargon and use acronyms sparingly

Jargon plagues the business and marketing worlds with words like ideation, paradigm, uplevel, holistic, disruptive, and so on. Remember that not everyone understands the jargon or acronyms you rely on. Spell out acronyms at least once and try to avoid littering your content with abbreviations.

 

19. Don’t be snarky

Critical and sarcastic writing has its place, but for most businesses, this type of tone comes off negatively. Be confident and showcase your expertise, but above all, be friendly and straightforward. Sarcasm can make you look petty.

 

20. Finally, use spell-check

It’s always a good idea to double-check for spelling mistakes. Even small errors can have a negative impact on readers’ perception of your brand.

 

“Words are the currency of the web, and that’s not changing anytime soon,” concludes Champion. “These skills will help your words cut through the noise and stand out, minus the legwork and headache of chasing down customers. If you can sharpen your writing so it speaks clearly to your intended audience, you’ll get their attention, earn their trust, and, finally, win their business.”

 

Justin Champion is the author of Inbound Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing Content Marketing the Inbound Way. He has been a digital marketer for nine years, working with clients like Majestic Athletic, Wrangler Jeans, and Pendleton Whisky. Justin works as HubSpot Academy’s content marketing professor and is the creator of HubSpot Academy’s Content Marketing Certification, which is a globally recognized course. Justin is a digital nomad—a full-time remote worker who lives and works from the road in his Airstream and DIYed truck camper. Follow him and his journeys on Instagram at @wildwewander.

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