Content Creation Part 9

Creating Compelling Content

In our previous section we looked at the importance of coming up with a good headline or post title. Now, let's turn our attention to guidelines for creating effective WordPress posts.

Your Post Content

When creating posts and articles for your website or blog, we recommend aiming for 500-700 word (4 to 5 paragraphs) if you plan to write your own content. This can be easily done in an hour or so.

Using your blog to post sales and promotional information is fine, but if that's all you ever publish on your site, people may quickly start losing interest in your site and ignoring your posts and announcements (unless, of course, the whole point of your site is to post sales and promotional offers!), especially if you haven't yet established a loyal readership.

Perhaps the greatest copywriting "secret" to creating compelling content that attracts visitors and engages your readers other than creating attention-grabbing post titles, is to focus on the things that your readers are interested in and concerned about, instead of focusing on the things that interest you.

Many businesses stop publishing new content on their site after creating "About Us" pages that describe them and their business, and pages that provide information about the products and services they sell.

You can create "infinite" web content and come up with endless new content ideas if you start focusing on educating and informing your readers about the value that your products and services provide. Go beyond the unique features of your products and services and show your readers how using these will benefit them, present examples and case studies that explain how your products and services can solve their problems, save them money, improve productivity, efficiency, quality of living, etc.

Once you start writing content that educates readers about your business, products and services, go even further beyond this and start providing useful tips, training, and links to other valuable resources in your niche, industry, passion, or field of expertise. Deliver honest product recommendations, reviews and comparisons. Highlight controversial issues to engage your readers, present your position, your principles and values on the subject and encourage further discussion on your site. This will help to establish trust with your readers. They will start seeing you, your business, and your website or blog as an authoritative and time-saving resource.

At the end of your posts or in the closing paragraph, always include a link to your resource box or a "call to action". You want visitors to take an "actionable" step that will help move your business forward.

For example, you could ask visitors to take any of the following action steps after reading your post or article:

• Visit the order page of your website, or e-commerce store
• "Like" or share your post with others and subscribe to your Facebook page
• Watch a video or subscribe to your YouTube channel
• Follow you and share your page on Twitter
• Connect with you on LinkedIn or Google+
• Go to your newsletter sign up page
• Visit the site of a recommended supplier via an affiliate link
• Access additional resources on your website
• Subscribe to your updates list to receive more information or training tips
• Take advantage of a special or limited offer
• Download a FREE report
• etc.

By providing useful content to your readers and delivering massive value on a regular basis, you will position yourself as an expert in your field or industry, build trust and gain a regular, loyal and growing readership. Once authority and trust is established, you will find people responding more positively to your recommendations and your offers.

IN SUMMARY

Use your content to educate your visitors on why they need your products and services and how they can better do business with you.

ACTION STEP

• List all the benefits you can think about your products and services. An easy way to create a benefit is to bring up a feature of your products or services and write the words "you get" in front of whatever you have written. For example, "when you use our product, you get..."
   
• Create a list of all the actions you could ask your visitors to take after reading your content and before leaving your site. Add anything that is missing from your list or that doesn't exist yet into your Marketing Plan (e.g. a YouTube account or newsletter visitors can subscribe to, or a special report they can download.)

We hope you found the above information useful. Keep your eye on your inbox for our next training section, where we'll talk about some of the basic principles of good business web copywriting.

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