Personal.
Meaningful.
Precise.
All words that should describe your website content. Increasingly younger audiences want your website to work for them. They want it to speak to them and be clear and meaningful in ways many of us haven’t bothered with in the past.
As you create and write more content (or have it created and written), you should be focused on the newest demographics in content marketing. You need to appeal to your readers, not coax them in with the tricks and tips from ten years ago.
Content marketing is still king, of course, but like all things, there has been change in the industry. Do you know the best ways to write content for 2018? You should.
Table of Contents
1. Include Voice
Online content isn’t a research paper or an essay. It can and should be informative, but not at the expense of ease of reading and entertainment. The best online content includes a healthy amount of authentic voice. Your voice. Coming through the page.
2. Write About Meaningful Things
Nobody cares about trite topics or vague keyword laden articles. People want to read and engage in things that are relevant in some way. We know that headlines and keywords are important, to be sure that what you’re saying delivers on the implicant promise of that headline.
3. Use Clear and Precise Language
There is a tendency to pad articles and posts with flowery descriptions and impressive vocabulary. Don’t. Using language designed to make you sound smart will backfire and turn readers away. Use precise words to describe and convey what you are telling your audience and avoid telling them the same thing in four different ways using increasingly pretentious words to do it.
4. Keep Your Writing Organized
Online content shouldn’t wander. Tell your readers what you’re going to tell them, lay it for them and then recap as necessary. Bullet points, lists and carefully divided segments of material help readers keep track of what you’re saying and makes material easy to skim as well.
5. Document Sources
Skepticism is growing and sources are becoming increasingly important. We want to know what you must say and we want to know where you go that information. Know how to properly evaluate your sources and link or list those sources in your writing to give instant credibility to what you’re saying.
6. Integrate Your Writing with Other Media
Writing shouldn’t stand alone. Your writing can become scripts, captions, infographics, slideshows and so much more. It’s not all about blog posts and articles. There is so media available it makes sense to synthesize as much of it as possible.
7. Make Social Media a Primary Publishing Platform
If you’ve been publishing articles religiously on your website and blog, hopefully you are being just as diligent about your social media accounts. Post links to what you have on your sites, but also write posts and informative pieces just for the social media platforms. All marketing is good marketing, and good content can go far.
8. Don’t Forget Keywords
We’ve moved away from keyword stuffed articles and strange long-tail keyword-based sentences, but some of the basics of SEO are still alive and well in content creation. Include relevant keywords. Make titles and subtitles searchable. Create solid meta descriptions and be diligent in your phrasing to be sure you’re capturing readers while also capturing a bit of keyword play.
9. Write Something Different
If you’re tired of writing what you’re writing, write something different. It can be a challenge to stay creative over the course of several weeks, month and years as you update blogs and crank out new marketing articles. Take a break from typical articles and investigate other things that people enjoy like infographics and cleverly written (and captioned) videos.
10. Keep Sentences and Paragraphs Short, but Content Long
You want your content to be highly readable, to say something of value and to say plenty of it. That means you need to keep the structure of your writing straightforward. Short sentences create shore paragraphs for easy digestion. But lots of short paragraphs, carefully arranged with nice subheadings, create detailed and informative content. Think short, but write long.
11. Format Content Carefully
Formatting absolutely matters. Your content is increasingly readable when you work with plenty of white space and nice selected font. Choose colors, fonts and sizing for subheadings and headings that not only work well for formatting, but for readers. Don’t crowd your content with ads and pictures and caption boxes if it takes away from readability. Formatting matters.
12. Be Clear on Your Message and Meaning
As you write avoid wandering and jumping from one point to another. You should be able to summarize what your article is about and check out the key messages you’re conveying without having to reread it. If you can’t quickly spout off what you’re writing, how do you expect others to keep up with what they’re reading?
High-quality writing will always be in demand, but knowing the best ways to tweak what you’re writing for your anticipated audience is essential to making content work correctly. Know why you’re writing and what you’re hoping to achieve with your content. Know how to make the latest trends and preferences work for you. And finally, know what works best for your website and your audience, and you’ll be all set.
Matt Hayden
Agree that your authentic voice must come through online. If people can kind of hear you as they read what you’ve written, they feel they know you a little bit. That sense of familiarity will make them more likely to return in future.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Matt,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Yeah, the voice truly connects people and that connection stays and only becomes stronger with time,
thanks,
– Oleg
Lisa P. Sicard
Hi Oleg, great tips! I see so many write with long sentences. I have several contributors and I usually have to edit those lengthy sentences as Yoast tells me they are hard to read.
Being authentic is key to having others trust you too. They won’t buy your products or services unless they do trust you.
Thanks for sharing these tips with us here! Have a wonderful day.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Lisa,
Thank you for the comment,
Yeah, long sentences and paragraphs are no good, they will kill the readership!
The opening has to be the shortest of the para’s because that is the place where either you are going to retain your reader or lose him …
thanks,
– Oleg
Moss Clement
Great article, Oleg. It is a rule of thumb that authenticity makes your content more effective and engaging. In many of my articles, I have stressed the need to be authentic by developing your unique brand voice. This step will help you establish a unique brand identity where your target audience can easily identify you across all channels.
The structure of your article also play an important role as it will contribute to making your content more effective and easy to read.
Thanks for sharing
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Moss,
Thank you for the comment,
Yeah, having one’s true voice is surely a strength that can be leveraged in marketing and brand promotion,
Making content readable is important, people should be able to skim from it – understand easily and quickly too. Small sentences, one leading to the another – after all, the first sentence’s job is to make sure that the reader goes over to the 2nd …
thanks,
– Oleg
Noman Sarwar
Well,
Unique and informative content could be the very first step towards high ranking in search engines. Strong social signals to the recently published content are also useful to make the content appear in top search engine result pages.
By the way thanks for this amazing article.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Noman,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Yeah, unique content is the base on top of which social signals, links and many other factors can add further value,
thanks,
– Oleg
Shabir Hussain
Hi Oleg Kaluger,
Thanks for sharing valuable tips to produce effective content.
Creating a unique and effective content is not very easy. One needs to keep in mind various things including on page and off page SEO. You have covered all of them quite well in this post. It will definitely help me.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Shabir,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Glad to know that you have liked the tips,
Yeah, both on and off pages SEO is very important and while creating content – both needs to be taken care of.
thanks,
– Oleg
Omprakash
Great post! Helpful and easy to understand. Thanks for sharing.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey OmPrakash,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Glad to know that you found the post helpful,
thanks,
– Oleg
Amit Shee
Really great Unique content could be the very first step towards high ranking in search engines. Strong social signals to the recently published content are also useful to make the content appear in top search engine result pages.
Thanks for sharing this amazing article with us.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Amit,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
yeah, great content backed with social signals and links are the best way to move forward in SERPS,
thanks,
– Oleg
Joy Healey
Hi Oleg,
Great tips for writing good content. It’s important to make sure that spelling and grammar are correct too. There are so many free tools available that there really is no excuse for making many mistakes. Everyone makes the occasional error, but use all available methods to keep these to a minimum.
Joy Healey – Blogging After Dark
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Joy,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Always good to hear positive feedback,
Very true, there’s way too many good content tools which should be enough to make sure that people don’t do too many writing mistakes! But then again those occasional oversight is easy to make, we just need to be more careful!
thanks,
– Oleg
Abhilash
Writing & fresh ideas are the most boring things in blogging. Your tips are great by the way but I think we have to create a mind for writing with best content with a new idea or Old idea with a new outlook, either way is great. Thank You
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Abhilash,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Yeah, in a way – they can be boring, especially if they aren’t coming easy!
But with hard work it should finally work,
thanks,
– Oleg
Enstine Muki
Hey Oleg,
I have noticed content with Videos rank better in Google. So I’m putting things together to be able to add video summaries to my blog posts. This will have that entertainment and ranking effect.
Thanks for yet another awesome post
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Enstine,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Good to see you here,
Yeah, that is true and that works for all kinds of embeds like slideshare, or twitter and facebook embeds etc. I guess Google takes it as more resourceful perhaps … and the other metrics like bounce rate etc. will see a positive effect too,
thanks,
– Oleg
Navin Rao
Hi Oleg,
This was wonderful. Content is everything, the content which is expressive and communicating directly with the readers are always get the low bounce rate.
Apart from putting the value, a direction connection always works.
Yes, I do agree keywords are very important and should be placed at the right place so that the overall content is well optimized and at the same time should be readable and flows with the content.
Have a great day ahead!
Navin
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Navin,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Totally agree with you on the engaging content – surely, what communicates also retains!
Yeah, the flow should be natural not forced, if the keywords can do that – it will work!
thanks,
– Oleg
Sanjay choubey
Great article for every digital marketer because if you are not using great contents for your activities, you are not doing the things in effective manner.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Sanjay,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Yeah, totally agree with you, effective content is the base on which one can carry out further marketing and promotional activities
thanks,
– Oleg
Favas
great content and excellent tips,i’m sure that if we follow these 12 steps as a blogger , we won’t suffer from content creating issues. thank you Oleg for sharing this article about content writing and appreciate your hard work.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Favas,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Always happy to hear positive feedback, surely as far as content creation goes – these tips will surely help you to keep a steady supply of content going,
thanks,
– Oleg
Shubham
Hello Oleg,
Great stuff,
This article helps many bloggers and businesses to write great content for their website.
Thanks.
Donna Merrill
Hi Oleg,
All points are so on target! I find that keeping things simple and to the point works so well. No rambling otherwise readers will jump off the page.
I like that you put down to use social media. Once we write a blog post and share it on social media sites, that’s not all we can do. We can do a Facebook Live Stream on bits of the topic that can be done several times a week, all pointing back to the post. We can also get creative and do some Lumen5 videos with music and some text.
-Donna
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Donna,
Thank you for the comment,
Yeah, on point and actionable is my favorite type of content too!
Facebook live is surely one way, twitter chats based on the post’s sub-topics can be another way to spread the post further,
will look into Lumen5 videos, haven’t got into it yet,
thanks,
– Oleg
Sandeep Reddy
Awesome, Just want to thank’s, author Oleg Kaluger for this well-researched article.💖
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Sandeep,
thank you for the comment,
Glad you liked it,
thanks,
– Oleg
Sajid Akhter
Hi Oleg,
Excellent post once again. I agree with you that the content of any website should connect with its visitors. It is important to write in easy to understand language so that your visitors can connect to you and enjoy reading your article. Nobody likes long boring article filled with keywords. One’s article should provide some kind of solution to its visitors in order to be loved and appreciated.
Thank you for this wonderful post. Have a good day. 🙂
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Sajid,
Thank you for the comment,
Content should be readable and scanable – the formatting should spark conversation … this is one way to get the visitors attention. Surely, once the content is actually read, if it ain’t good it won’t be consumed any further! This is way content should be actionable with real solutions to retain the readership …
thanks,
– Oleg
Binod Jha
Hi! Oleg
Content writing is fundamental to blogging which should keep concise and reader points of view. That makes content more engaging and help in branding.
I agree with you on all the points that you mentioned here which are very important.
Thanks! for sharing.
wasim akram
explained very well ofwriting in blogging . Content writing is the most important thing in the field of blogging.
Oleg Kaluger
Hey Wasim,
Welcome to Temok and thank you for the comment,
Yeah, totally agreed with you, content writing is the most important thing in blogging,
thanks,
– Oleg
Sajid Khan
Hi Oleg Kaluger,
Very nice article. Keep it up the good work.
Victor Iheanacho
Hi Oleg
Great content you’ve got there. I totally agree with your first point there. The best way to actually connect with your audience and getting them to stick to your writing is by using authentic voice. It makes them feel more communicated to. That’s one secret i use in my blog posts.
Nice article. Really love it.
Aditya Vikram
Hii Oleg,
Content is considered the king and the asset of every digital marketer and blogger. We need to take special care of content while creating it. I also agree that keeping content organized is essential, We also need to format it properly and making it super easy for the reader.
Anyways, It was a good read. Keep publishing content like this.
Best Regards
Aditya Vikram
muhammad zeeshan
Thank you for this. Really nice piece of work. Creation of backlinks made easy because of you. Thanks!
All the contents you mentioned in post is too good and can be very useful. I will keep it in mind, thanks for sharing the information keep updating, looking forward to more posts. Thanks
Manoj
thanks for sharing this information, its very informative keep sharing….
Rexoxer.
Thanks for this informative post, I loved the way you express feelings with words.
Pradyut Dutta
This article helps many bloggers and businesses to write great content for their website.
Thanks.
Sourav Halder
Great tips for writing good content. Thanks for sharing…
Suvajit Roy
I like your post. It is really useful to me. Thanks for sharing this useful information!
Bidyut Jana
Great post you have here, am impressed… Keep it up
Tom Melan
This article really helped me a lot for writing more effective content.
Ankit Yadav
This article is Well informative keep sharing article like this