The 7 Dos And Don’ts Of Content Writing

Content writing isn’t an exact science. While it’s a widely preferred career or freelance choice, it’s still quite tricky to do right. Writing blogs and articles is not exactly an easy task even if it looks like it. You have to come up with content day-in, day-out while following different tones, themes, and subject matters depending upon your client’s needs. With all these requirements in place, there is more than one way a person can go wrong or forget to add something of importance to their writing material.

The last thing you want is for your articles to come off as sloppy. The sign of a well-written content piece is in its sophistication, relevance, and to-the-point execution of the message. This is what will earn you your place in the highly competitive content writing world, and distinguish your brand as authentic. In this blog, we discuss the 7 Do’s and Don’ts of Content Writing that you need to keep in mind to make your content work out for you.

1. Do Search for SEO Keywords

Before you start writing, you need to be aware of what you’re writing about. Being blind-sided about the content topic while writing an article is not good for the article neither is it good for your learning. You need to have at least a basic understanding of the topic and search into what your competitors are doing to gain search engine optimization while writing for similar topics. Search for keywords, determine what Google and your audience find relevant, and then shape your title and sentences to fit those keywords.

This doesn’t only highlight the mistakes in your strategy and the things your competitors are doing right, but it also helps eliminate your weaknesses and optimize your content in such a way that it drives traffic to your article or blog with ease.

2. Don’t Plagiarize

The last thing any content writer needs is the tag of plagiarism on their head. This jeopardizes not just your current task, but your career as a whole by putting a question to your authenticity and making you come-off as unreliable and a ‘cheater’ in more ways than one. Be original with your content, even if it is topics you don’t have a lot of knowledge about.

One of the basic tricks to get your content to be original is to read several articles on the topic you’re about to start writing on. You will find that while the content seems different on a whole in every website, the theme inside the content is quite similar. This is something you can apply to your own content when you start to write. Gain ideas and knowledge from reference articles, and come up with your own words in your writing to convey your message.

3. Do Add Relevant Calls-to-Action

Your content needs to have a relevant CTA to make your audience take action. Whether you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, buy a product from your store, download any software or resource, share your content on social media, or get a demo of your software or services, you need to mention it in your article through a written copy.

Empathize with your reader, think from their perspective to come up with ideas on what would make you take action if you’re on a relatively new and unfamiliar website and they ask you to do something. Make your CTA catchy and valuable for your brand.

4. Don’t Overdo It

Jokes and sarcasm go well in some articles while exploring different themes, but you never want to come off as non-serious or annoying. On the same note, you need to choose quality over quantity; filling up pages after pages of content without any real value to the audience is not going to be of benefit to either of you, instead, it will end up wasting your and the reader’s time more than anything.

Quality content has one rule: keep it simple. Get rid of unneeded words, unnecessary sentences, and concepts that clutter your content. Make the reader feel something that keeps them interested in your content, not run away from it.

5. Do Update Your Content

The world changes fast, and information about everything changes even faster. In order to be relevant and accepted in this fast-paced world, your content needs to be up-to-date. Eg. if you’re writing an article about statistical facts of a social media platform, those facts should be recent (of the last week or month) instead of data from 3 or even 1 year ago. This is extremely important because it establishes trust between you and your audience and makes your content authentic and valuable to them.

6. Don’t Avoid Grammar

Does this even need to be said? Your title makes people open your page, your grammar is one of the factors that make them stay! Do not avoid the importance of grammar in your written content. Having grammar tools and plugins installed is one of the first major tasks for any content writer. You don’t want people turning away from your hard work because you didn’t proofread it for errors.

Make use of all the tools available at your disposal such as Grammarly and Hemmingway, to make your content clear to-the-point. Don’t be afraid of testing your writing skills; write articles, essays, or blogs and send them to friends to be read, don’t be afraid of criticism because in the end you will only learn and grow from it. Make sure your content isn’t just sending your message but is also doing it as clearly as possible. Your grammar is what makes you in-demand as a content writer. People judge even their partners on the basis of grammar, you as a writer should definitely be doing better!

7. Do Use Proper Tone and Themes

How do you know you’re on the right track with your article? The tone you’re using and the underlying theme of the content you’re writing. Content writing is not the same as making an academic paper; while in academics you have to be serious, in content writing being too serious can make you come off as dry and boring. That’s not what your users, client, or even you, want.

Research into different tones when writing content, experiment with the voice and themes that work for you, and then start writing! To make your audience come back to read your work, you need to earn their interest from the first sentence and keep it till the last. Any person who comes to your blog deserves better than to read some cold words that were written half-heartedly. Be passionate, and make that passion visible through your writing.

There are a lot of things that go into making any content appealing and valuable when it comes down to it. Whether you want that for your writings or not is entirely up to you. There are a lot more do’s and don’ts that you can find to make your content writing experience better. Using hyperlinks in your blogs, writing unique content, etc are all important tricks in the industry that will make your content worthy. At the end of the day, you will learn more from experience than any other way, so get to work and make that experience count!