Photo by Linh Pham on Unsplash
In content marketing, painting the right picture with words – simplicity as in a garden of roses – yields better results. Complex, technical pieces don’t have to be monotonous.
You want your audience to relate to your writing, right? Simplicity is important if you want to reach financial decision-makers not just geeks — especially in small to medium enterprises. More on that later.
If you want a rosy response from blogging technical topics — simplify your content — to make it more popular. Take your readers for a walk in your garden of ideas.
To get the desired rosy response, here are six tips:
1. Easy-to-read format
Studies have shown the average time readers spend on a Web site in the U.S. is about three minutes.
You can increase the average time-spent-reading by users by making your blog easy to read while decreasing your page download time.
Whether it’s a fast-food customer or Web-site user, Americans want convenience. Your headlines should quickly pique the interests of visitors.
Readers love how-to checklists with either bullet points or numbers.
So use a format that allows readers to quickly scan your topic to see if they want to invest time in digesting your content.
Less is more, so use white space to avoid the appearance of clutter.
Take your readers for a walk in your garden of ideas.
2. Images
Readers are often intrigued if they see photos of people. But graphs and charts to illustrate points are appealing, too.
Another technique to consider is the use of images as metaphors. Metaphors will make your topic memorable.
3. Verbiage
It’s too easy to fall into the trap of using mundane, or boring, language. Look for ways to brighten your copy to appeal to the readers’ senses.
If you want readers to buy your ideas, remember all buying decisions are based on emotion. Avoid adverbs and use action words that evoke emotion.
An IT geek often has to get permission to spend money. If you want a tech person to feel comfortable in submitting your ideas to the boss, your points must be easy-to-understand.
Hence, the need for simplicity. So make your ideas universally attractive.
4. Analogies and examples
Like the image of roses, as a metaphor in this post, your copy will be more successful if it’s something with which most businesspeople relate.
Write with colorful examples. Use case studies – readers love succinct authoritative data and to read why other people are successful.
5. Links to additional information
If you do it right, readers will want more information. You can provide it by linking to your other articles.
There are three ways to do it:
— Contextual links within sentences
— Insert headlines in your paragraphs that link to your other pages
— Insert headlines as resource links at the end of your article
The search-engine crawlers will be impressed with your blog, which will improve your site’s ranking. Factors include the using the right keywords for searchers, the time-spent-reading and the number of pages per visitor, as well as the volume of hits and use of bandwidth.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related topics:
Secrets for Attracting, Keeping Readers on Your Blog — Content marketing is a valuable tool, but only if you observe best practices in substance and style – writing the most intriguing headlines and most relevant copy. Attracting readers and keeping them on your blog or site means you must capitalize on your strengths and write for the benefit your Internet readers.
SEO and Other Strategic Tips for a No.1 Rated Blog — To own your blogging niche, you must understand the evolving process — important basics in search engine optimization and other strategies. If you’ve been blogging for awhile, you know success doesn’t keep come automatically. Blogging is arduous work. You must have a strategic blogging goal.
Make Your Blogging, Social Media and PR Work to Attract Fans –Businesspeople have discovered social media is a work in progress. It takes huge amounts of time, not only to implement innovations, but to succeed.
13 Tips to Develop the Best Content for a Top-Rated Blog — Content marketing has become an art form via blogs. Google the term, blog, and you’ll see millions of search results. At last count there were 190 million blogs. So you face serious competition for readers’ eyes. That’s especially true if you want to be known as a go-to informational site in your niche.
“Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.”
-George Singleton
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