Content is Still King These Days

Quick, Tell Your Entire Brand’s Story in 140 Characters or Less

While you’re at it, fill that 140-string of characters with keywords that will make Google stand up and take notice. And don’t forget, your blog is yearning for someone to fill it with compelling copy that will engage readers and encourage them to return often. Better yet, fill your blog with the kind of storytelling that will get readers to become followers and followers to re-post, re-tweet, re-whatever.

If content was king before, now it is the supreme-being of all that is good in online marketing. Yet the word ‘content’ itself is less than fulfilling in describing the greatest need of many marketers, great copywriting.

Now, more than over, the written word in all its deliverable formats must evoke passion and action from the very beginning. Twitter, Facebook and even website home pages are much like a billboard. You have just enough time to display three or four words and capture someone’s attention while your reader is speeding by at 70 miles per hour.

Stop the Eye and Start the Sale

Good luck stopping the eye these days. So what’s a marketer to do? Our first suggestion is to take an inventory of all of your content needs. If you were to list all the places your written words need to be strategic, well-written and integrated you would find an overwhelming need for a better plan to compile content.

With this list of content needs in-hand apply a bottom-up method for creating all of your website, search engine, blog or social media copywriting. First, write your longest form articles or white papers. Typically, articles and white papers are related to new products or services or other significant changes in your business that will drive customers’ interest. With your full story reduced to paper, all facts checked and told in a user-friendly manner, you are ready to adapt.

Next, rewrite your long-form articles or white papers to be more search-engine friendly. Adding search phrases and keywords might make the article a little less likely to win a Pulitzer but it doesn’t matter. This version will be distributed online and not sent directly to customers.  Less likely to be read by a real person, the articles mundane use of repeated words and phrases will be loved by the Google search machine.

Now take your white paper or article and begin to reduce and edit it to fill your remaining needs. A press release is simply an adaptation for style of your original article. Yes, a press release demands a newsworthy angle, but if your white paper was strategically thought out, it’s likely to be of interest to trade journals and other publications.

The same article or white paper now turned into a press release is ready to be re-written again. This time a more casual tone of writing will create the perfect blog post. Simple, clean and ready for anyone to share in the blogosphere.

Lastly, you can spend the next weeks and months extracting tidbits of information and facts from your long dissertation and use them for Twitter, LinkedIn and other very short social media posts. And of course, your link back to the full article will entice your readers to take the time to get the full story.

Yes content is very much king these days but compiling all the content you might need can seem daunting.  Taking this strategic approach can reduce your copywriting costs while making your entire process more efficient and effective.

Need some copywriting love?  We can help.