I always loved reading and writing. Back in high school, I remember loving the exercises during which we had to write essays on various topics. It gives more space to creativity and opinions. In college, I decided to follow a Literature and Languages program, which basically also allowed me to keep on writing.
Then of course, when you join a Marketing team, there might be a slight amount of chances that you’d have to write content for the blog or email campaigns or social media.
Writing nice content and knowing how to do it take time, practice and learning from mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that you can keep a few tips in mind to improve your writing style.
So here it is: I’m offering you some of the things I learned, not in classroom nor in a book, but from bad blog articles published and premium gated content distributed, among others.
Is there a difference with content marketing?
Whereas content marketing englobes the creation and distribution of content to attract the audience, copywriting focuses on one specific action: get the reader to do something, and that “something” can be purchasing, clicking, liking something, etc.
However, how do you create content without a copy that is worth the reading? You might have a good content to deliver and to offer but if you don’t know how to make it read via a good copy, then it just goes to waste.
In the same way, what do you do with beautiful copy that attracts the attention of the reader if it’s empty and doesn’t bring anything valuable to his knowledge? It’s just waste of good copy.
Copywriting and content marketing are complementary, they both make a good team and aim to reach the same goals, more or less: interest the reader for a specific reason.
🧐 Start with why (Simon Sinek said it too but he’s right). It’s the principle of The Golden Circle.
- Why are you doing what you’re doing: have something to tell, a story to share?
- How does your experience and insight help your reader?
- What are you offering to solve your audience’s problem?
Connect your personal / brand’s story to your audience’s needs and expectations. There, you see the common point? THIS is your story, this is what you should focus on and write about.
The Goal
Your goal when writing is to produce a copy that the reader can rely on, trust, a content that shows your authority, builds relationships, and gets your readers talking, sharing, and eventually, buying the solution you offer.
The Style
Of course, if you write for yourself, then your style is very personal. But when writing to represent of a brand, a company, a service or product, you should adopt a point of view and pay attention to the channel on which you’re writing. All in all, there are two things to keep in mind:
- Build a point of view
- Build a general tone → of course, the tone of voice will be adapted if you then distribute your content on Social Media for instance.
The Content
Your content needs several elements if you want a reader to be attracted by it.
1.The headline → whether a title of an article or the first sentence of a social media post
Your headline is THE first thing that your audience will read. Make sure to say enough about the content of your article/post and make it intriguing to the audience will want to start reading it. Think about the 4 “U”:
Useful - Urgent - Unique - Ultra-Specific
2. A clean grammar
Choosing to adopt a familiar tone of voice doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to write as if you were texting your bestfriend. Don’t use slangs. Writing with acronyms or slangs will reduce the audience you’re planning to target: only a specific audience will be able to decode your content and will appreciate the reading. Reading a content should be a nice experience.
3. Straight to the point sentences
It’s nice to use synonyms and to show a bit of variation in your content but don’t brag too much by using jargon or scientific specific words. Make clear straight to the point sentences, avoid doing too much.
4. A targeted reader
Always keep in mind who you are writing for. Who is the reader, what does he expect, what does he need? Be able to answer this and then, pretend you’re him: if after reading your own content, you don’t feel like it has answered the questions and concerns you had as a reader, then it means that you, as a writer, missed the goal. Make it personal by adding “you” in the content, so the reader will feel that the content is written especially for him.
5. The accessibility
It’s linked with the third element. You write for your persona, you know a lot about them: they certainly don’t want to go through a robotic cold content difficult to understand. You don’t need to say to your reader that you’re their friend but make sure that they know that there is a human behind the screen, it will serve the brand visibility and awareness.
Liked this article? Eager to know more? Let me know.
