content writing tips

3 Advanced Content Writing Tips (Even a Novice Writer Can Utilize)

In this list of content writing tips, you’ll find useful and actionable advice that will improve your content writing. Learn more from WriteForMe.

Content marketing is an amazing way for businesses to connect with customers and clients. But, there are no two ways about it, at the center of content marketing is quality writing.

Writing is a skill people commonly struggle with—which is understandable—it is not always an easy task to write in a way that truly connects with an audience. Luckily, there are ways to spruce up your abilities.

In this article, we will discuss some simple content writing tips to help boost your skills—whether you are an experienced writer or new to the content writing scene.

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Fine Tune Your Content Research Skills—Content Writing Tips #1

In order to create high-quality content, you have to perform quality content research. So you’ll need to know what kind of content is already available before you start writing.

Performing effective content research comes with a number of valuable benefits, including:

  • Improving your content marketing strategy
  • Better understanding what appeals to your target audience
  • Enhancing the brand’s long-term growth

Extensive content research is crucial because you are essentially making yourself an expert on what content is out there. This makes your content much more relevant to readers.

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When done properly, content research will help you identify the specific types of content that you should be producing whether it’s blog posts, white papers, webinars, or videos.

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How to Perform Content Research

There is more to content research than simply conducting a few Google searches. To get the most out of your content research keep these points in mind:

Know and Understand Your Target Audience

In order to perform effective content research, you must understand your target audience so you know who it is you need to reach with your content. Once you have a clear vision of who your target audience is, you can begin to search what kind of content they enjoy, seek out, and engage with.

Learn What Your Competitors Write About

If you are looking to create high-quality content, you will need to learn as much as you can about your competitor’s publishing history. Do they focus on blog posts or video content? How do they tackle certain topics? Do you notice any room for improvement in what they create? How does their content rank?

Answering these questions will help you get a clear picture of the content marketing habits of your competitors. With this information, you can help shape your content marketing strategy in a way that is competitive and resonates with audiences.

Research Related Industry-Specific Keywords

The last of these research-related content writing tips will help you get a handle on what is happening in your industry. By doing some thoughtful Google searches you can find new avenues for further research and generate new topics. And don’t forget the other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing—they might not be as popular but they can provide some novel insights.

Consider searching on Google trends and Quora to learn what people are asking about and searching for.

Always Start With an Outline—Content Writing Tips #2

Next in our list of content writing tips is the importance of outlines. No matter what kind of writing you plan on doing, outlines are a must. They help you plan ahead, organize your thoughts, and make the writing process much smoother.

One important way that outlines help with content writing is that they make it easier to prevent the dreaded missing section. This happens when you have written what you think is a complete article only to read it back after publication and realize that there was so much more you could have said. Outlines provide you with a guide to work from. As long as the outline was well-researched and thoughtfully laid out, you will be on the right path.

Outlines also make collaboration easier. After creating an outline, you can share it with other team members that you are working with. They can add relevant ideas to your outline that you might not have considered. This can ease the burden of content writing when times get busy.

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Creating an Outline

To create a useful outline follow these straightforward steps:

Identify Audience and Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Topic

Before getting started with your outline, make sure you know who the article is for and what the topic is that you will be targeting. Knowing the audience is particularly important because it will shape the writing style you use throughout the piece.

To clearly identify your topic and audience, you might organize the information in a document in a simplified style:

  • Business: Full kitchen remodeling service
  • Audience: Homeowners looking to remodel kitchens
  • SERP Topic: kitchen remodeling service
  • Goal: Create an in-depth article that explains what a customer should look for when remodeling their kitchen.

Gather Information

This step is an extension of previous content writing tips. Once you have the audience, topic, and goal established, begin researching. This research should include information on the product or service that your business (or the business that you are writing copy for) provides. It should also include how and what the top-ranking articles on the subject include in their blog posts.

Craft Headlines

This includes your heading 1 (H1) title and all of the H2 headings and H3 subheadings you intend to include in your outline. These should be based on your research and the points you want to be sure to include on the topic.

Introduction and Conclusion

It is helpful to go ahead and write your introduction and conclusion while you are still in the outline phase of content writing. Intros and conclusions are commanding aspects of a piece of content. The introduction should grab the reader’s attention and concisely lay out what the article will cover. The conclusion quickly summarizes what was discussed in the article and includes a call to action. Having these sections already made will make the rest of the writing process much smoother.

Use Keyword Research as Your Content Roadmap—Content Writing Tips #3

Keywords, also sometimes referred to as search engine optimization keywords (SEO) can be a very extensive, technical tactic that brings more eyes to your writing from search engines. However, at a surface level, keywords can be used to find new ideas for content creation.

The best place to start is by using tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs which allow you to search keywords related to your industry. If you don’t feel comfortable with such an extensive tool just yet, try using one of the many free keyword suggestion services available online.

Once you’ve found a few good keywords, take those words and put them into Google’s Autocomplete feature. By typing just two letters into the box at the bottom of the page, you’ll see suggestions pop up below the text field.

If you’re having trouble coming up with unique topics, check out Buzzsumo. They provide data about trending news stories across different industries. From there, you can filter down to specific categories such as SEO, social media marketing, etc., and then drill down further until you find a niche within each category.

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Additional Keyword Research Tactics

Here are a few more tips that can help with your keyword research:

  • Use Google Trends. It’s one of the easiest ways to figure out what people are searching for. It can help you identify which keywords are more popular at certain times of the year, or which ones have grown in popularity recently. You can also use it to determine which topics your competitors are focusing on.
  • Browse through your favorite blogs in your industry. All of them will have used certain keywords in their headlines, so it’s likely that these are the words that are more popular among readers seeking information on this topic.
  • Make lists of all of your products, services, and regularly used terms. These are all potentially popular keywords, so it’s worth exploring them further.
  • Play around with synonyms and similar phrases. These will help you find variations of your most popular keywords and provide more options for search engines.
  • Use long-tail keywords in your SEO. Long-tail keywords are phrases or questions that are more specific to your industry. They’re frequently used in search results. Long-tail keywords usually convert better, so it’s worth utilizing them in your blog posts.

Final Thoughts About Content Writing Tips

No matter what your prior experience is with writing, these content writing tips can help improve the content you create.

To get started on the right path to creating an awesome piece of content, perform thorough content research. Then, craft a well-planned outline that will help you as you write. Finally, when deciding what subjects will be most relevant and popular in today’s market, use keyword research as a guide.

Partner with WriteForMe For All Your Content Marketing Needs

Our content marketing agency is here to assist you in making sure that all of these content writing tips work together seamlessly for maximum effectiveness! For customized marketing solutions tailored specifically for your company’s objectives and needs, contact WriteForMe at any time.

Learn what WriteForMe can do for your business with a free content marketing playbook!

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Andy Steuer

Andy Steuer

Andy Steuer is the Chief Marketing Officer at WriteForMe. Andy has been CEO, CMO, VP of Product for 8 fast-growing companies in his career. 3 of those companies became Top 10 Internet companies. Content Marketing has always been at the core to differentiate these companies from their competition. You can always schedule a 1 on 1 meeting with Andy by grabbing some time on his calendar here. List articles below that have Andy on the byline on the rest of the page. Here’s my calendar link:https://meetings.hubspot.com/andysteuer » More blog posts by Andy Steuer

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