There are not many things worse than having to struggle through a poorly written article or blog post. Bad writing is full of useless noise and unorganized ideas. It’s one of the leading business epidemics in the world. A lot of businesses suffer from having their websites littered with poorly written content. This blog post is going to show you 5 of the best content writing tips so that you can guarantee your audience is enjoying their time on your platform.
Simplicity is the Core of Good Content Writing
Simplicity rules supreme in the world of content writing. People have such a short attention span that they need things explained to them in a very simple manner. Most people who are researching online are going to get confused by industry specific terms. For instance, a small retail owner who is looking to create a digital presence for the first time is not going to understand terms like “site hierarchy” or “search engine optimization.”
I’m not saying that those topics are off-limits, but they should not be the first things that a prospect lays their eyes on. Introduce with simplicity and then gradually move onto more complex subjects.
The rule of thumb is to write content in a way that a grade school student can understand.
Frameworks are a Requirement
Without having a framework, it’s going to be extremely difficult to get your writing to flow. It will be cluttered and hard to navigate. So create a framework that consists of the overall ideas you want to present and then fill them with content. Most content creators will use bullet points as the framework and then address each of them while writing.
This is essentially an outline but much more focused on addressing each specific problem that your audience suffers from.
Don’t Underestimate your Title and Description
The next of our content writing tips is to pay close attention to your title and description. When a user performs a search on Google, they are going to be given a list of Titles and a brief description. The technical term for this is the Meta Title and Meta Description. These are often underutilized by companies that do their content editing in-house and as a result, their pages never rank very high.
The title of a blog post headlines the content. It shows the audience exactly what they should expect if they decide to read it. But there are a couple of easy mistakes that tend to get made here. Either the headline is generic or it’s not relevant to the content. Generic titles are overused and chances are that users are going to just skip by them. On the other hand, nothing loses an audience faster than a clickbait title. Clickbait is a title that exaggerates the topic as a way to get people to click on the link. Then the content doesn’t follow through with the promise made by the headline.
The description of a blog post should hook the reader into following through to your blog. It must also serve as a gateway to the content itself. Again, if the description is misleading, then it’s going to alienate those who follow through to your blog.
Edit the Right Way
First and foremost, you should not edit your blog post on the same day as writing it. I encourage you to schedule posts in such a way so that you can have 24 hours between the time of writing and editing.
Most of your editing will consist of cutting away useless content. If a sentence can be removed without affecting the message, then it should be cut.
Finally, I encourage you to read content out loud as you edit. This is one of the quickest ways to pick up on issues. You can even consider recording it as an audio file so that you can also post audio along with your blog posts.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of the topic, writers must be able to develop entertaining content in order to keep their readers engaged. The key to writing top quality content is simplicity. Hopefully, these content writing tips will help you express your point clearly and you can start giving your audience the engaging content they deserve.