as originally published on LinkedIn, August 15, 2019…
As a writer of online, content marketing copy, I’m often asked if I know SEO, social media, content strategy and how to do keyword research, write stories and capture brand voice.
(The answer to all of those is ‘Yes,’ by the way…)
While each one of these is important to a company’s content marketing efforts, as a writer, I see them as no different to writing than punctuation, spelling, and grammar. They’re essential details to consider and part of the writing process but not the top priority.
The top priority is, and always will be, the person you are writing for.
As such, content marketing that gets bogged down in the details over-complicates the effort and loses sight of its singular purpose – to develop a relationship with another human being.
It’s All About Relationship
At its core, what is the purpose of writing?
It’s to build a relationship.
· A story develops a relationship between the storyteller and audience members. If it’s a great story, a relationship even develops between the audience and the characters in the story.
· A post-purchase autoresponder email affirms the purchase and confirms or sets expectations for delivery. Even if the relationship is purely transactional, the writing is still there to reinforce the relationship created by the transaction.
· Blog articles written for SEO may seek to boost page ranking, but they will fail if they don’t create an ongoing readership, aka relationship with an audience. Even Google says as much.
Marketing content, of course, aims to create a relationship with the target audience from the first ad to upsell. Even legal contracts (drab as their language can be) have the sole purpose of establishing expectations and responsibilities of a relationship.
For the writer to write well then, the focus must always be on the relationship, which means writing for another human being.
Your Content is Your Half of the Conversation
What you write is your half of the conversation with a person. And that’s another element that the writer and marketer must consider. You aren’t writing for an audience. You’re writing for one person; only individuals consume content.
The other person’s part of the conversation is their use of your content unless it’s social media or an article on which they can like and comment. At first, it might seem one-sided, but we know it’s not. Here again, we can thank Google for metrics like bounce rate and time on page. Each of these tells you how well you’re engaged.
The less a page bounces and the higher the on-page time, the better it has connected. It’s not simply about having interesting content though. It’s about having content that inspires a reader to make you a part of their life.
Here’s another way to think of it…
Have you ever been involved in a boring conversation with another person, in-person? Afterward, did you want to seek out a conversation with that individual again? Probably not.
Content that loses its focus on its #1 priority of relationship building by getting “distracted” with details will fall flat. Like spelling, grammar, and punctuation, you can add in and edit for those details once you’ve crafted an exceptional piece of content.
And that’s the key. Your half of the conversation must be the half the other person wants.
The challenge for the writer is to deliver it. Like spelling, punctuation and grammar, you need SEO, keywords and more to get it delivered. But they’re supporting actors. If the content’s good, they’ll naturally fall into place.
For Consistently Great Content, Here’s What to Do…
Work backward.
Before you write, think about the purpose of the content. Why is your reader going to read it and what do they expect you to offer them at the end of it, aka what action should it inspire?
Start there and you’ll have taken the first step to understand your reader’s interests, expectations, and desires – all that you need to build a strong relationship. When you do, you’ll also find all the elements of your content marketing falls into place and the entire effort becomes much, much simpler.