BE THE KING OF THE CONTENT JUNGLE
Picture this: you get up on a lazy Saturday morning, make yourself a cup of your favourite brew, maybe a hearty breakfast or just a bowl of cereal. You pick up your smartphone or turn on your laptop to browse Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or whatever your favourite social media platform is. Now, there are tons of posts on your timeline – which are the ones that get your attention? Which images and what text are the ones you click on to read more?
The answer to these questions lie in the effective publishing of relevant content and the development of a proper digital content strategy. There are two key aspects at work here: writing text and/or designing images that go with said text, as well as ensuring that the text and images effectively reaches its intended audience. In other words, did that music, sport or beauty product page you liked or followed post content that attracted your attention enough to click through to its website, services or product information?
Anyone can post content on various social media platforms, but the critical and most important aspect is ensuring that your content not only reaches its targeted audience, but is conveyed in such a manner as to capture the attention of that audience. What will set you apart from your competitors is an effective strategy to implement and distribute your content! More on that at a later stage.
Here are five tips for effective content writing:
- An effective, catchy headline is as important as breathing: research suggests that one has up to ten seconds (yes, only ten!) to catch the attention of your target audience when they read your content. It is thus self-explanatory that an effective, catchy headline will do the job more often than not.
- Use relevant keywords: the search engine optimization of your website is integral to the success of your brand. Using effective and relevant keywords will play an extremely important role here – be sure to identify your keywords and add them to your content, but be careful to not use too many. It can irritate your reader and dilute your content, plus, Google will penalise you for using too many because they might not think your content is king!
- Short, sweet and to the point: you’ve managed to capture the attention of your reader with your catchy headline, but make sure that the rest of the content is to the point and concise enough so that the attention isn’t lost as quickly as it was gained. There are few things more irritating for a consumer of information than realising that the exciting content he/she just clicked on is basically much ado about nothing. Don’t be that guy/girl…
- As fresh as the morning breeze: don’t recycle old content too often. Again, be careful not to recycle old content too often. To ensure your content is king make sure your content are unique. Be original, with fresh copy and don’t be scared to add some humour – making people smile will always be a winner.
- I see, I do: use eye-catching images when writing specific content. Along with an effective headline, striking images will attract the attention of your audience. As with your text, the images must be relevant to your content and the message you want to get across.
Remember your content is king including video, pictures, words or animations