When starting to work with clients in building a website, what can often take the most time is getting the content together to put on their website pages and then after setting up their social media platforms, advising them on what to write
Here are a few tips to help the content-writing process along gleaned from the pros – journalists:
- Keep It Relevant & Brief At The Start
Summarise the article in the first few paragraphs with the facts first of all. You can then add more detail subsequently.
- Now Add Detail
After the initial summary, now is your chance to go into detail with pictures and quotes to bring it all to life. Readers enjoy being informed, educated and engaged so keep their attention whilst trying to include keywords you want to rank for in your story or website pages.
Think about what questions the reader is likely to have and include the answers to these in your content. Think too about how your content can stand out to engage customers to come back to visit your site/social media page.
- Include Pictures/Videos
The phrase “pictures tell a thousand words” is so relevant and can bring any article to life immediately especially those with a bit of humour as we see daily on Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram etc. People enjoy learning about something they can share with others that might make them laugh.
- Think About Your Audience
Understand who you are targeting and what they are likely going to enjoy reading. You can gather data from your Google Analytics/Facebook Insights and such tools available.
- What Will You Write About?
Think about how interesting you think the story is going to be and how many it is likely to appeal to. What will they like about it, how will you engage them and is it unique? I love this idea of “newsjacking” whereby you blog or tweet about a national story or seasonal event thereby making it your own and customising it for your own story/brand.
Now you can start building up the pages for your website and writing those social media posts and blogs to real your audience in! Good luck!
