In this “content is king” age, article writing is more important than ever before.

According to Statista, the global digital population is just over 4 billion. These include the 3.7 billion mobile internet users who spend an average of 8 seconds reading social media posts or other online content.

Based on these numbers, the efficacy of content marketing is not surprising.

A 2018 statistics from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) suggests that 91 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers. Also, 86 percent of B2C marketers think content marketing is a crucial strategy.

Be that as it may, content writing works as a marketing strategy when it’s engaging and helps the target audience.

Yes, there’s an art to writing articles for marketing. But, before we delve into the details, let’s begin with a basic introduction.

What is Good Article Writing?

In the simplest term, writing a post involves providing relevant information to a target audience. The keyword here is “target audience.”

That means if your blog post, ad copy or white paper fails to attract the target audience, then it’s not serving its purpose. The lower your audience engagement, the less the result it’ll deliver.

So, how would we define an excellent article?

Along with having a clearly defined purpose, good content shows consistency, creativity, and SEO tactics.

About 95 percent of search engine users click on websites from the first result page on Google. By optimizing for search engine, you can pull organic traffic to your site and generate leads.

This raises an essential question: how do you write a marketing article?

7 Useful Article Writing Practices for Marketers

Whether you’re writing a marketing post for a blog, online magazine, or news media, consider the strategies outlined below.

1. Focus On the Audience

Google‘s primary focus is to provide the best experience to search engine users. That means, as long as you create content that helps Google achieve its goal, you’ll always have a place on the SERP.

So, how write an article that’s centered around a target audience?

For one, put your self in your audience’s shoes and create posts that’ll directly address their issues. Also, you may want to research your top competitions in your niche and mirror their content writing practices.

Consider performing a competitive content audit, which will help you identify who your competitions are and how they present their posts.

After selecting a topic to write about, now comes the real work: In-depth research.

2. In-depth Research is Essential

Your readers are coming to you because Google suggested that you’re an authority about a specific subject. Not only would a watery article repel your readers, but it could affect your standing on the search engine as well.

In-depth knowledge of the subject, on the other hand, would improve your chance. So, how can you acquire the necessary experience?

You guessed it: deep research.

Dig deep into your topic, and discover how your content can solve the readers’ problem. Then, let your content reflect that superior knowledge and problem-solving quality.

There’s just one thing. While your research may have led you to technical knowledge of the topic, consider breaking the complex parts down for easy digestion.

This brings us to the next point.

3. Make Your Articles Super Readable

Writing readable content may be the most critical part of good article writing.

People have a minimal attention span. That means, to get your target audience to read your content, it must be super easy to read.

How do we do that, you ask?

• Use Clear Structure
• Be Engaging
• Use Active Voice
• Proofread

Clear structures involve formatting your articles in short paragraphs. Also, consider using the number list, bullet points, and multiple subheadings to make your content appear less bulky.

Engage users with shorter sentence length and by cutting the fluffs in your content. Also, you may want to use passive voice sparingly in your texts.

Okay, that may seem a bit overwhelming to a novice. Luckily for you, online writing tools and proofreading software can help improve readability.

Two of these writing and editing tools that we highly recommend for article writing are INK and Grammarly.

4. Consistency is Key

After creating content that’s easy to read, now you have to work on your consistency. Whether it’s your voice or number of posts, you can implement consistency in various ways.

Not only does your voice define you, but it also affects how your audience will relate to your brand. After researching your audience and topic, you must select a tone and approach that can be both comforting and professional.

Also, posting quality content regularly encourages a steady increase in readership.

5. Creative Article Writing

As a content writer, you should be able to continually create ideas for full stories or consider different angles on a specific topic. One way to do this is to spend more time at the ideation stage of your article.

By spending more time at this stage, Sujan Patel, co-founder of Voila Norbert, suggests that writers can save time in the article creation.

It begins with crafting a compelling headline that’ll entice searchers to visit your page. Then, the engaging subheadings, including high readability, can keep your readers on the site.

In the end, you’ll have an improved click-through-rate (CTR), which could, in turn, improve your page ranking.

6. Optimize for the Search Engine

Writing an excellent article is just one half of content marketing; the other half is optimizing the post of search engines.

About 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine. Unfortunately, very few users ever scroll past the first page of the result page.

As such, it becomes necessary to have a basic knowledge of search engine optimization to have a shot at the first page.

However, if you don’t have the requisite knowledge, you’re not entirely doomed. Consider using a content optimization platform to boost your posts out of the neglected pages 3 and 4 of the search engine.

Aside from helping you create an audience-focused article that’s easy to read, an SEO writing tool can help you understand how Google interprets content.

7. Content Should Be Social Media Friendly Too

When your audience isn’t searching for your content on Google, they’re probably using Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

According to a recent report, social media posts are the most effective types of content for B2C. As such, a content writer must have the ability to capture attention on social media too.

Wrapping Up

Whether you’re writing for a news site, magazine, blog, or an ad copy, the rules are the same. Know what you’re writing, who you’re writing for, and how your write-up will help them.

Also, remember to write in a way that’ll please the readers and the search engine.

Read More: 10 Content Writing Tips for Beginners and Entrepreneurs

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