In part one of this ten part article campaign I suggested that you open four different social marketing accounts. Twitter, Facebook, a blog with WordPress or Blogger and LinkedIn. Hopefully you’ve done that and you’ve had some fun – albeit frustrating at first – playing around on them.
You’ve also had some time to consider why people search online and think about how to apply the epithet of entertainment and information to your own mini campaign online and to what you hope to achieve in the near future. For example, my business in online content writing and management ergo I talk about how to offer information on doing that.
To each of us knowledge is power and I’m sure you too have knowledge to impart by way of a service, product or entertainment. In this podcast/article I said I would talk about content.
Online content is very different to hard media content eg: in magazines or newspapers.
The web is treated differently by the people using it. They ‘surf’ the net seeking information or entertaining sites to while away a bit of time and these people want the information quickly and succinctly. In my dealings with online content writing for clients I’ve quickly realised that my more successful content is that which is short, to the point, in simple language and readily available.
A lot of this is self explanatory but writing online content is a skill that differs from ordinary copywriting.
You need to learn and understand search engine optimisation. Again back to why people search only now it’s a question of against what criteria. You know a lot about the people you want to target with your content. Write it down in a list and then think of the keywords that those people would use to find your niche topic/site. Punch a few of them in on Google and see what they bring you in terms of results. Are you right?
If so, start developing content.
By content development I don’t mean go full speed ahead and litter your blog or site with ads, offers and posts, I mean write a page with a heading that best describes your blog/offering in 65 characters or less. Keep honing down the sentence until you have that character count. Then reword it so that it contains the top three keywords you’ve identified.
Then write a short article on that heading. It doesn’t have to be in perfect English and we’re not too fussy about spelling and grammar right now either. Just bash out 600 words on that topic.
Once you’re done put it in the following format. A heading full of your keywords. An opening paragraph of about 3 lines that lead your reader into the body copy and that contains more of your keywords even repeating the ones you used in your heading. Then divide you long copy into a few, easy to read paragraphs and give each one a sub heading. Finally use a conclusion heading with ‘sign off’ copy i.e. where you sumup and give a call to action or signature.
Now, read through it again and highlight where you’ve used keywords in the headings and body copy. Then ask yourself if you know of any links to other sites or articles you’ve written or intend to write (we’ll come back to this in a minute) and note what they are alongside those words.
Finally read through one more time and ask yourself if your article/post (what they call an article in blogs) is relevant, short, pithy and informative or entertaining. If it isn’t edit it.
When you’re satisfied with your post/article, print it out and then write down ten more headings for that article/post considering how you would expand upon the topic in your heading. Write 2 more.
When you’ve got 3 posts/articles put them in your blog to start with. Try to find a relevant visual to go with your article. You can trawl through Flickr or embed your own video if you prefer. In this way you ensure that you have relevant content that attracts those who you are interested in doing business with.
Decide which day you will insert a new post and write your series of ten ensuring you deliver them to your audience on a regular basis.
For each post/article you put on your blog you need a ‘tweet’ on twitter. For now just put in something like ‘Great article on XYZ (your topic) and the shortlink from your blog article. (Usually found next to the headline and looks like this. http://wp.me/XYZ – 8u or similar)
In the next issue I’ll talk to you about how to automate twitter feed and spread your articles and posts wider using syndication methods and sites. Thank you for following my blog and twitter feeds.
If you need help or information please email me at jane@therightwriter.co.uk or read through the posts on my blog.
