Wondering how to go about writing great content? Following a simple process can make light(er) work of selling to your audience.  Here’s how I set about putting together a piece of content for my clients. I hope you find it a helpful tool when developing your own copy.

Research

At its most basic, I need to combine two key things in my content for a client - what their audience wants, and what my client is offering.  I’ll assume that you already have your market research done, based on Google Analytics, newsletter subscription demographics, etc.  I’m talking about how to angle the content towards those you already know are in your obtainable market.   

Surprisingly, this is where many small business owners and sole traders fall down being their own sales, marketing and delivery experts.  Get out of your business head, and be the client when you're setting this up.  What are their interests? How would they want to be spoken to? What barriers do they have to buying your product or service and how do you address them? Build what you have to say into what they want to hear.

Decide on your Keywords

Your keywords are of course vital for SEO, but also create the pillars that your content stands upon.  Decide on these once you have researched the specific needs of your audience, and put them at the top of your writing space in red to alert you to them as you write and ensure they are all included.  (YOAST does this for you if you’re writing a blog post so I sometimes use this even when writing for print)

Set your Call to Action

Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want people to do, then build around that call to action with the content. Use it like a keyword and ensure that each paragraph relates to this end point.

Choose your Headers

Just like writing a story, your content should have flow - a clear beginning, middle and end.  Choosing your headers at the start creates a brief ’storyboard’ which can help you place important information in the right sections.  Subheaders will also help you to ensure that the story flows within each section.  If you are writing for the web, ensure that your headers are relevant to your key- and focus phrases for SEO purposes.

Build the Story

Once you have all your ducks in a row, you can get on with the meat in the middle!  Now that you have your keywords, your audience triggers, and a call to action, you simply have to build around these with your content.  I say simply, but of course, it's not always an easy task! (See tips on getting your content flowing)  However, with most of the work done, you now have a clear path of how the content should flow, and what it must contain, and that makes the task much easier.

Reduce, Remove and Edit, Edit, Edit!

Once you have written the final draft, make some cursory changes and put it away for a while. Where time allows, I will almost always leave the content until the next morning, and read it with a fresh pair of eyes. Delete your fillers, like 'however', etc, and start your sentences with a bang. Reduce passive phrases like 'this was created' which can be vague and lack impact. Remove clunky words.  By this I mean, anything which you feel might need further explanation or which the general public would be unsure of.  If it draws attention to itself unnecessarily, bin it! Your final piece should be powerful, coherent and relevant to your reader using this simple process.  So get cracking writing great content that sells to your audience!