Content writing: Everything you need to know in 2023

Introduction

You don’t have to be a professional writer to ensure your business creates content that inspire, educate, entertain and inform your audience.

In a report by A1, 35% of customers make purchase decisions after reading content that provides valuable information about a product/service.

Infact my client acquisition process is content writing –the same has got my articles featured on well –known publications and got me showing up on Google for the right reasons.

Let’s build you a business that attracts the right people and generate sales. Read on!

What is business content writing?

Simply put, business content writing is writing for businesses and involves a thorough consideration of the business goals and audience persona.

When creating your buyer persona consider factors such as;

Demographics: Your ideal audience age, gender, race, income, educational level, ethnicity, marital status etc.
Geography: This refers to your ideal audience city, state and country
Psychographic: Includes factors such as attitudes, values, opinions, interests, personality and lifestyle
Behaviour: includes factors such as loyalty status, purchasing patterns.

Understanding your audience gives you context to how your content should sound, where and when to distribute it.

TONE	CHANNEL	TYPES OF CONTENT
Witty	Website	Videos
Formal	Linkedln	Podcast
Casual	Pinterest	Press release
Fun and entertaining	Facebook	Infographic
Helpful and instructive	Instagram	UGC
Creative	Tiktok	Blog posts
Provocative	Youtube	Newsletters

Business goals and what to do.

Every business exists with an objective and yours is no different –here are common business goals for most startups and how to achieve them.

Increase organic visits- focus on high volume keyword with low competition
Convert readers into leads- focus on middle and bottom of the funnel content
Backlink for faster ranking: focus on building quality backlinks through guest posts, press releases, quality content and white-label SEO.

What is content writing?

Content writing is the process of planning, researching, writing, editing and publishing content for the purpose of marketing.

Content can include blog posts, podcasts, videos, E-books, social media copy, Ads, captions and more

A person that helps brands create content is known as a content writer, they help you build your digital footprint the right way.

Types of content

I’ve listed 41 types below

A podcast

2. Customer research

3. Digital illustrations

4. Infographics

5. Animated explainer videos

6. Animated shorts

7. Ad creative

8. Live videos

9. TikTok content

10. Memes

11. Animated case studies

12. Web-based games

13. Interactive ads

14. Short films

15. Twitter threads

16. LinkedIn carousel decks

17. Free calculators/tools

18. Songs

19 . Education hubs

20. Original research

21. Product onboarding videos

22. Audible versions of your written content

23. Slide decks

24. Webinars

25. Commercials

26. Billboards

27. Vlogs/BTS

28. Checklists

29. A branded art style

30. Brand characters/ mascots

31. A fictional world (with storylines) for your brand characters to occupy

32. Ebooks/reports designed like comic books, graphic novels, or anything other than ebooks/reports

33. A YouTube show (e.g. Riddle, what if, Kurzgesagt – In A Nutshell, etc)

34. GIForagraphics

35. Social proof

36. Native content

37. AR/VR experiences

38. Free mobile/ web apps

39. Custom brand tunes

40. Video memes

41. An animated movie

Types of content writing

SEO writing: This is the use of specific keywords to get your content to rank on search engines. This types of content has been misunderstood over the years, as writers/businesses only focused their content on what they think Google want –search optimized content is however content that address human queries.
Ghostwriting: This is writing without credit, usually there is an agreement between you and the writer, you have ownership over the articles while compensating for the skill gap in your organization.
Copywriting: Copywriting is the use of content for immediate sales.
Technical writing: This involves taking a deep- dive into technical concepts and explaining it to your customers in the simplest forms.
Email marketing: This involves nurturing and building a audience through relevant and useful information. In most cases businesses use gated content to capture leads.

What is the main purpose of content writing?

While there are general purposes of content writing such as:

Lead generation
Sales
Traffic
Customer loyalty

It is important that you define what each of these means to your business so that you can track your content marketing effort.

Content writing services

The content industry is worth $15B and will likely be over $40B by 2027.

More, than ever before there is an increase in trained experts who you can hire on your in-house team, agency, or freelancers who would make sure that you write content that fulfills your business goals.

Why is content writing important for startups?

In the state of marketing report collated by Hubspot, 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. This shocking figure further demonstrates the importance of content for startups.

You are probably skeptical about what marketing methods work and which is worth your resource, for one content writing is reasonable as content marketing cost 62% less than paid ads.

It helps you build a community, reputation, and loyal customers while it might take some time before you see tremendous progress content marketing is the eighth wonder of the world (compound interest) it builds upon itself, and you will be amazed at how much you can achieve in six to twelve months. A crucial part of this success is having a strategy.

How content writing can grow your business?

Brand awareness and recognition: Consistently creating content helps you reach a wider audience who does not know anything about your brand.
Build a sustainable customer journey: With content writing comes a focus on appropriate communication, when you begin to create content you put into thought the likely messaging to share with prospects and customers at the awareness, consideration, purchase and post-purchase phase of the customer cycle.
Support Google E.E.A .T: Putting out thought-leadership content within your industry supports Google experience-expertise-Authority and trust update. Which helps you rank higher on search engines.
Increase traffic and conversion: Writing search-optimized articles with users in mind will not only get you to the top of Google, but it will also get you customers. It’s all about the EYEBALLS👀

9 Benefits of content writing for startups

If the purpose of content writing is to generate traffic, well it converts that traffic into customers itself.

Boost Seo
Improves the quality of your existing content
Helps build brand awareness
Help you develop your brand voice
Differentiation
Testing and iteration
Organic shares
Backlinks
Lead generation

How should you structure your content writing strategy

Choose clear over clever
Create valuable and relatable content, when there are too many filters people can almost know
Have a posting frequency: The algorithm seems to favour consistency, not to be mistaken with intensity. Consistency is simply doing the same thing over and over again. Want to post on Mondays at 9 am? Do it.
Start with 2-3 channels: When you spread too thin, not only do you lose focus your result wouldn’t be as it should be. If you are a small team focus on two platforms where your audience hangout. You don’t have to be everywhere.
Publish: If you handle your socials, I’m sure you’ve had a handful of imposter days. The good news? No, one cares as much as you think they do. You are over-judging yourself.
Distribute: Share, share, and share. Your content wouldn’t distribute itself.
Repurpose: It is arduous to create for all your socials, truth is you won’t always feel like it every day. So, create on one platform and adapt to the others.

Advantage	Disadvantage
Cost-effective	Time-consuming
Brand awareness	Requires a lot of creativity and skills
Brand loyalty	Difficulty in finding ideas
Building Authority	Strategy
Increase traffic and conversion

Conclusion

Content writing is a viable investment for startups and small businesses.

Content writing has changed my life over the last year and that of my clients as people now respond to their offers and understand their business better.

People buy stories and relations, not products and services, if you cannot build that relationship with your prospect, they will not know, like, and trust you and you need all of that to remain in business.