- July 30, 2022
10 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important For Business & Marketing
Nigel is a Technical SEO Specialist at a Digital Marketing Agency based in Singapore. He also dabbles in freelance SEO content writing and is an avid language learner.
The importance of content writing in digital marketing is undeniable, and content is still king 👑
Content writing is a core component of inbound marketing, which accounts for three times more leads generated than outbound marketing. If your business has yet to invest in content writing, you should really start now.
But what are the specific benefits of content writing? Let’s delve right in, shall we?
What is content writing, and what types of content are there?
Content writing is the process of planning, writing and then editing text content for a variety of digital marketing activities. Unlike copywriting, a key nuance between the two is that brand content writing is more focused on longer-form content. Also, unlike copywriting, a large bulk of content writing is done for educational purposes instead of solely focusing on persuasion and conversion.
Some examples of pieces created by content writing include landing pages, blog articles, thought leadership content, long-form guides and reports.
Why is content important: 10 Benefits of content writing
1. Helps your web pages show up in search engines
The relevance of content writing in SEO cannot be denied.
Content writing forms the basis of any great SEO strategy. In order to get your web page to rank well on search engines, you’ll first need to have good content on these pages.
Google takes into account content quality as one of the many factors when it comes to ranking pages on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines, after all, are corporate entities. This means that they would want to provide the best search results that best answer their users’ queries.
And for businesses, this means that quality content writing is needed to improve the odds of your web pages ranking well on SERPs.
An article written by one of our freelance writers not only managed to rank first for the keyword “side hustle singapore”, but even scored a featured snippet in which Google highlights the key points of the articles for searchers. At the time of writing, this article was attracting 888 monthly visitors on average.
2. Reach out to new audiences and grow your brand awareness
And in that regard, the more web pages from your site you get to the first page of Google, the more likely you are to reach out to unintended online audiences. But how does that work?
A key factor when it comes to a good content writing strategy is that you should write content for your target personas instead of just your customers. Creating personas gives you a better idea of the various pain points they are experiencing and which ones are those you can solve. This gives you a better idea as to what type of content pieces you should be writing.
Let’s say, for example, you run a company that developed an appointment scheduling software. If a paint point of a customer persona is the inability to streamline the virtual meeting scheduling process, then a potential topic you can write an article on is “How to run effective virtual meetings?”
That way, instead of just reaching out to people who are aware of your brand and the product or service you provide, you are reaching out to a more generic audience who share a similar paint point that your company can solve.
3. Helps your audience understand your product or service better
Good content writing goes a long way in helping your audience better understand your product or service.
Good content writers are well equipped with the best blog content writing frameworks that can help break down complex and more technical concepts into easily digestible bits. This skill is especially important in more technical sectors such as SaaS (software as a service), banking, or health and fitness.
If you are a SaaS company, for example, there’s a good chance that your audience probably will not understand the technology behind your product.
How many people out there do you actually understand that call tracking software utilizes dynamic number insertion (DNI) to attribute inbound sales calls to ads? 🤔 And how many people actually understand how DNI works? 🤔
If you’re in the SaaS business, it’d be great if you hire writers who have experience explaining technical concepts to laymen. Otherwise, you can engage a SaaS blog content writing company to aid you in your blog content development.
4. Highlights how your product or service stands out from your competitors
Good content writing also enables your brand to stand out among the sea of competitors.
For every product or service out there, there are probably many businesses that provide generally the same thing. Uber isn’t the only ride-booking platform. Workstream isn’t the only part-time employee hiring software. And Calendly isn’t the only appointment scheduling software.
The good thing is, that not all products and services have the same roadmap. They don’t all focus on building the same features at the same time. Nor do they customize their services the same way at the same time. Good content writers know how to seize this opportunity and use this information to help your brand stand out.
For instance, I wrote this software comparison piece for Novocall. In it, I compared the competitors of cloud contact management software, Five9.
While Novocall does not have as robust a suite of contact management features as Five9 at the point of writing, he made sure to highlight Novocall’s strength – its other features.
5. Establish your brand as an authority in your niche
The more content you publish about topics in your niche, the more trust you build as an authority and opinion leader in the field.
Ahrefs does a fantastic job by publishing many long-form how-to guides on the various SEO processes. And in these blog posts, they highlight how their product can perform the various SEO activities well.
This helps improve your audience’s trust in your brand and establish yourself as an expert in the industry.
6. Improves conversion rates
As you build your SEO-driven blog and develop your reputation as an authority in the field, your conversion rates will naturally start increasing. Here’s why.
A good blog content strategy will include a content calendar of blog posts that are mapped to target audiences at all three stages of the marketing funnel. This would mean that if done right and well, your SEO blog content strategy should cover a good number of topics with bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) conversion intent.
And if you’ve become recognized as a reputable authority in your space, people are also more likely to have the impression that your product or service is the best in the space for what you do.
7. Improves audience engagement with your brand
Well-written and engaging content tends to get shared over social media compared to bland ones.
If your blog post comes with images, graphs and charts, or an infographic, the odds of it being shared around are pretty high. In fact, posts with infographics are three times more likely to get shared via social media than regular blog posts.
While social media engagement has no direct impact on SEO, user engagement metrics such as click-through rates and dwell time are indicators of your website health and content quality. And these have an impact on SEO rankings.
8. Earn backlinks organically
As we’ve already established, good content has a higher probability of ranking well on the first page of SERP.
And when you start showing up on the top spots on Google, people are going to start linking to your article organically because, firstly, it’s well-written. And secondly, it’s convenient. In fact, 25% of all searchers click on the top ranking page. So imagine how many people will use the top ranking page as a reference in their own articles and will link to them.
This, in turn, helps boost your pages’ SEO rankings as the number of external links is known to be one of the most powerful ranking factors.
9. Customer retention
Writing content need not necessarily focus on topics that help build brand awareness and convert leads. You can also create content to help your current pool of customers.
When a product becomes very developed and well-known, more and more people will have questions about how to use it effectively. Take HubSpot, for example. If you Google “how to create an email campaign with HubSpot”, you’ll find that there are many guides written about this topic.
Guides on how to use your product can serve as a great addition to your arsenal of customer success tools. Having these detailed guides for your customers can really go a long way in providing good customer service.
10. Co-marketing
Unlike writing branded content, this is a unique function of content writing. Some types of content are written for the sake of co-marketing each others’ businesses.
For example, two companies might record podcasts or interviews to promote thought leadership. The recording is then transcribed into a blog post and shared with the readership of the companies’ blogs.
One such company that does this well is Novocall. Check out their archive of interviews with various entrepreneurs to see how they do this.
10) Be sincere
Especially when chasing prospects and clients online, one main point of differentiation only you can make would be your personality.
There’s no real formula for how sincerity can be conveyed through a screen, or even in real life, but to just be sincere.
Sincere people can feel and receive sincerity as well as express it. Be sincere, and you might also find yourself manifesting better clients into your life – which is always a bonus!
Are you now convinced why content marketing is important for business and marketing?
And there you have it! The 10 reasons why content writing is important.
Didn’t expect it to have that much an impact on business now, did you? When conceptualized and executed well, a good content marketing strategy can become your primary source of inbound leads and sales.
A good content marketing strategy essentially helps you create a cycle that ranks your web pages well, which then helps it pick up backlinks more easily, which then leads to further improvement in rankings. Amazing, isn’t it 😉
To learn more about content writing, check out this awesome blog for writers!
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