The 7 Secrets of Highly Effective Content

Content writing can be difficult.

Sometimes, writing content that will be read, liked and shared by your readers can be a tough nut to crack.

But you know the worse part?

No one really cares how much time you put in to create that content. The best your reader cares about is how the content can benefit them. And you can’t blame anyone.

Of course, content marketing sucks. I bet you’ve said this beneath your breath. But regardless, the benefit of content marketing cannot be ignored.

No, I’m not saying that because it’s cliché. Having a firsthand experience of the overwhelming effect of great content writing on businesses over these past 7 years has completely changed my perception about the place of content marketing in business.

Writing 10,000-20,000 words of content every single month has made me realize how hard it can be to create a piece of content that flies.

And the pains of trial and errors over past years have opened my eyes to the secrets of highly effective content, which is what I am about to share with you in the following paragraphs.

But, before you read these, I want you to realize that this is not just something you’ve read all over and again. It’s a personal experience.

Alright, let’s dig in.

Goal Oriented

The first major element of a highly effective content is that it is goal oriented.

What this means is that for you to write an effective content, you have to identify the goal you want to achieve using that content or the specific reason why you want to write it before getting started.

Doing this keeps you streamlined so much so that you get to write your content in such a way that leads you to actually achieve that goal.

Another thing you have to note is that for your goal to be very effective then it has to be measurable. So, you don’t just create the goals, from time to time, you have to measure your effectiveness at achieving them, in line with your content.

Written for a Specific Audience

A highly effective content is a piece of content written for a very specific audience. That’s one of the top secrets no one told us when we got started.

As an amateur content writer, you would assume your target audience is the entire world. Or that the larger your audience, the better your impact will be.

This is the mistakes a lot of content marketers have had to make over the years. And I was not an exception.

But, here is what it is. It is not correct that targeting the whole 7 billion or so people around the world will bring in more readers to your content.

I mean this is how it should be. But unfortunately, it is not. People are interested in different things. And to get your target right, you need to exclusively target people who are interested in what you write about.

That’s your target market.

A highly effective content is not written to an audience that is large and spread across the world. It is written for a specific audience that is particularly interested in reading up that content or looking for the solution it offers.

So, for your content to fall into this category, you have to identify your audience. Find out who they are, their location, specific needs etc. before you think of writing your content.

Also, you need to identify the stage your audience is at the lead funnel. Find out, for this particular content, is my audience at the awareness, interest, decision or action stage?

Knowing this will help you to still streamline your content to be able to meet their needs more exclusively.

Addresses a Specific Need

Another element of highly effective content is that it is very relatable to your target audience because it addresses their needs, specifically.

It is not enough that you’re targeting a specific audience with your content, to write the kind of content that will interest your audience; you have to be able to identify and provide solutions to their needs, using your content.

And you can start by using either or all of the following strategies below:

• Your audience’s search history. You can use the popular keywords tool like Semrush, Wordstream etc, to understand your audience’s search interest, using the keywords that relates to them.
• Search pattern or interest. With tools like Google Trends, Ahref, you can find out the search pattern or interest using the volume of search to understand the changing interest of your target audience.
• Studying competing content writers. You can head over to established content writers in your niche, have a view of topics they are writing about, their trending topics, audience’s engagements and response to their content etc. these feedback will give you an idea on what’s working with your audience

Remember, your average reader lands on your blog because they have a need which your content can fix. And if they perceive you can’t fix this need, they will certainly scroll away, never to return.

So, your entire duty as a content writer is to be focused on identifying and solving the needs of your audience whenever you write a piece of content.

Well Optimized for Search Visibility

A highly effective content is the content that uses the right keywords and SEO strategies to get better visibility.

You might think it’s all good and done after you identify and fix the needs of your audience but beyond creating great content, you need visibility, if you want to get readers. This is very important.

And the first step to get the right visibility is to optimize your content for search engine visibility by making use of the right keywords and putting in place all optimization strategies throughout your content.

Starting with your main title, the subtitles and meta tags, be sure you have the right keywords positioned in a way that will drive in better visibility for your content.

To understand the right keywords that work with your audience, you can use the ideas listed out in step two above and you’ll be able to identify the proper keywords to use.

You can also learn more about search engine optimization using this guide here.

Consistent and Timely

Consistency, value and timeliness are some other important elements of a highly effective content that cannot be ignored.

For your content to be very effective, you have to be consistent at creating additional value to your audience, in a timely manner.

A lot of aspiring content writers are of the opinion that they might show up at any time to write a piece of content and have it all read but no, it doesn’t work that way.

Just like in other niches, there’s always a peak and off peak hours/days for content writing. Peak hours are those hours where you’re at your best or when the largest number of your audience is available and ready to read your content.

Creating your content consistently at these peak hours could get you the best results for your effort. It can also create a level of consistency in the minds of your audience that they will always get to read your content when they show up at that period.

Beyond your content calendar, consistency also extends to branding, voice and content type and styles.

There should be a level of consistency noticed throughout your content, be it in your tone of voice, the branding, style or even the themes you write about.

This creates some synchronicity that can be easily identified with your brand, across all platforms.

Has a clear CTA

Without a clear call to action (CTA), your content is as good as useless. In fact, you can’t get a highly effective content without creating a clear call to action.

Okay let’s be a little kind. Unless you’re writing as a hobby, without a clear CTA, your whole effort as content writer is largely defeated.

This is where a lot of content writers have stayed. And specifically, in my early days as a content writer, I’d stayed at this point as long as I can remember before I could get to realize that I needed to have a call to action or make an offer, using my content.

Because, after reading your content, your customer doesn’t get to know the next step to take since you don’t have a CTA.

Now, get this clearly, I’m not saying your reader will always take up the action specified in your CTA at all times, what I’m saying is that you need a call to action that tells your reader exactly what to do after they read your content.

Of course, your CTA does not have to be about buying your product or services; it could be about simple things like liking your post, commenting or sharing with friends.

And you can have as many CTAs as possible in a piece of content. But whenever you do, be sure your CTA meets up with your goal and it also exists to serve your audience, based on their needs.

Robust Marketing & Promotion Strategy

A highly effective content is not just one that’s written and left on the blog or social media, it is one that’s written, shared and promoted across other platforms.

Most amateur content writers have the erroneous belief that all they need is to create great content, post it on their platforms and move on.

No, it doesn’t work that way. Beyond writing and posting content, you need to promote and share it across other platforms where more readers can get to see it.

In fact, besides writing, you need a clear marketing strategy. This includes strategies that will get you more views, drive better traffic and create more visibility for your content.

The following are the three core strategies you must include as part of your marketing strategies:

• Social Media Sharing: Sharing and posting snippets and links to content on your own social media handles and other social platforms with a good number of your target audience.
• Guest Blogging: Posting and sharing your content and ideas on other authority platforms.
• Link Building: Consciously engaging in active link building strategies to further boost your content ranking and drive search engine visibility.

Backed with other strategies, these three can give you a major boost as you set out to create content that will transform your business.

Conclusion

Even though content writing can be very hard sometimes, the rewards make it unavoidable for serious businesses, whether big or small.

And frankly, it doesn’t matter the stage you’re in right now, using the tools and strategies shared in this guide, you can begin the journey to write a highly effective content that will transform your audience and your business.

So, do you want to create a highly effective content even faster? Get on our content training and mentorship programs where you’ll get to learn the nuts and bolts of content marketing pick up secret recipes and get deeply rooted in creating content that stands out.

Now that you know how to create a highly effective content, do you have any question? Shoot it in. Or let me ask you; what’s your biggest challenge, when it comes to content marketing?