Content Writing Best Practices for 2019
Updated: Feb 5, 2019
If you want your business to stand out in an information-saturated world, it’s essential that you publish content that’s consistently excellent. Good content writing accomplishes three things:
It gives current and potential customers information they want and need.
Once shared, it promotes your brand as a source of quality content across your customers’ networks.
It earns you higher rankings on Google results pages, since search engines boost visibility for pages that people take the time to read and engage with.
To this end, expect your partner in content writing services to adhere to the industry’s best practices, discussed below.
Know your audience
Who are you writing for? Knowing your target audience means understanding the topics and types of content they would appreciate.
It also means knowing how people read online. You’ve probably heard that holding readers’ attention is challenging. The statistics back it up:
80% of people read headlines, while only 20% read the body (Copyblogger).
55% spend 15 seconds, at most, reading an article (TIME).
59% share an article without reading it at all (Forbes).
While these numbers suggest online readers lack a combination of focus, dedication, and time, they also indicate what online readers want from content: short length, quick points, and a simple read. In other words: readability.
Write for readability
Readability, or the ease with which someone can understand a text, depends on how something is written and presented.
To communicate ideas clearly, content should be written in simple sentences and short paragraphs. Each paragraph should consist of no more than five sentences to make reading and scrolling through it easier on the eyes.
More importantly, content should be organized into subheadings. These enhance readability in several ways:
They break up a series of paragraphs into smaller, digestible blocks of text.
They organize articles into subtopics, improving an article’s flow.
They ensure that people who only scan or skim an article can skip to sections of interest, finding information they need without hassle.
Other formatting tools like lists, bulleted points, pull quotes, boldface, and italics also improve any article’s readability.
Write to provide value
Beyond the requirements of length and format, however, you have to deliver the goods. Content must have value.
Remember the subhead about knowing your audience? One point you should take to heart is that people type queries on search engines, and browse pages and pages of articles, because they seek one or more of these:
Fresh insights and information
Answers to their questions
Explanations or solutions to a problem
This is why tips, how-to guides, and other informational articles are featured in many blogs: they are the kinds of helpful content that people gravitate to and keep coming back for.
Provide what customers want and need, and your content will have value.
Make your content actionable
Valuable content enables people to gain knowledge, then encourages them to do something with it. As a home remodeler, for example, you would publish blog articles on design ideas, not simply to share them, but to inspire people to start renovating their homes.
Yet because content writing is also about branding, it’s not enough to suggest what people can do—your content should invite people to take the next steps with you.
A content creation agency like Bryt Communications can help you craft blogs, copy, articles, and more that meet this and all the hallmarks of quality content. Let us do the writing for you.