How to write inspirational content for your website
21 May 2019Adding content to your website regularly is vital for Google rankings. Gone are the days of paying someone to sit in a dark room and add SEO code to your website to trick Google into thinking it should rank your website higher. Now it’s all about content. New content. Engaging content. And that can be tough. So here’s some tips for staying inspired yourself and inspiring others to actually read what you’re putting out there.
Always be on the lookout for great content.
When you’re online, out and about, reading a magazine…whatever, notice what engages you. Notice especially what gets lots of likes on your Facebook feed and Instagram feed and whether you can use similar words or ideas for your content. Generally, posts that are conversational, personal or helpful are the ones that generate more response. Always be looking for a topic that will help you converse with your target audience.
Write several pages / blogs at once.
Getting into the flow of writing often takes a little time, but once you’re ‘there’ you may as well write a little extra so you can add it at a later stage. Writing two or three blogs should be much easier than writing one a week, or sporadically and is a little better for the soul.
Know your own creative style.
Some of us are better at being creative in the mornings, some of us later on. Everyone has a slightly different creative rhythm and it’s good to try and work with that, rather than ‘force’ yourself to be creative when you’re really not feeling it. You can also boost your creativity by adding in little associative rituals. Some find certain types of music help them write, others find being outside or in a coffee shop helps get the creative brain working. Many people find that handwriting their content is infinitely better than typing. Apparently,
Structure your writing.
It’s surprisingly easy to witter on about your chosen subject for ages and then realise that you’ve gone off on a complete tangent and need to start again. Very frustrating, yet easy to avoid. Set a structure and stick to it using bullet points. What subjects and headers will help your audience best? Those bullet points can then be used as sub headings to break up the page and make it easier to read.
Know your target audience.
This is a tad bit tricky without some market research, but you can often shortcut this stage by focusing on one or two of your favourite clients and thinking about who they are, what they respond to and what they buy most. From there, you can often extrapolate the best ideas that they will like. If this stage is where you struggle most then you might want to click here to find out more about finding your ideal client with our free marketing session.
Give valuable information.
We all worry about giving too many company secrets away. There’s a fine line between giving away helpful tips and making yourself redundant. This blog is a perfect example. I’m giving away a lot of information for free. Some of it is already available in other places, on other websites, some of the tips are my own. I’m adding a lot of valuable information for people who do currently have the time to write their own content, with the idea that possibly, later on, they will become wonderfully busy and successful and come to use for their content writing. Or a percentage of the people reading this will already be too busy and successful to write their own content and possibly starting to look for someone to help them (if that’s you then we can help with writing copy and blogs. Find out more.
You’ll have your own rules about what information is vital that you keep to yourself and what will help your clients and potential clients most. The more helpful or interesting you can be, the better.
Use calls to action.
A call to action is an opportunity for people to buy from you or engage with you. It might not be a sale, it might be a free download that you’re offering in exchange for an email address (make sure you’re staying GDPR compliant!) or a competition, or offer. Calls to action give your reader a clear sign that you are open for business, you want to help them and tell them explicitly what the next stage is.
Yes, you might think it’s obvious, but to your customer, it may not be. Especially if they’ve come to your site via a Google search and have not seen your homepage.
Creating content isn’t always easy, so if you struggle, don’t be too hard on yourself. Give yourself a little extra time and maybe do some brain storming in a different environment to get that creative right side of the brain working!