Do you want to live in your pen? Do you dream of opening a blog? You are an entrepreneur and think about getting started in content marketing? Before you start, read the next paragraph.
Analysts at Beckon have measured that 5% of the content created is read by 90% of Internet users. We deduce that 95% of the content is struggling to attract the attention of the remaining 10%. In other words, a handful of content creators share almost all the benefits of web writing.
So if you want to live with your pen, you dream of opening a blog or think about getting started in content marketing, you know what awaits you. At the time of information saturation, you can not just write to write.
Write great content and triumph or add standard content and perish. Your pen (or keyboard) must be a machine to create added value for your audience. But how?
Follow the guide
1. 5 tips for finding viral ideas easily
The art is not to arrive with new ideas but to interpret these ideas that have always surrounded us. George Lucas
Content begins with a design that crosses your mind like lightning in the sky or a thought that has been ruminating for hours like a peaceful cow in a Swiss meadow. I have so many churches to relocate to the middle of the big village of content marketing that I’m not going to look beyond my ears to find topics to deal with.
Well, that’s what I believe. That’s right, but let’s say it’s less natural than I think. Indeed, if I find myself in this state of constant boiling, it is because I have put in place some practices that make it come into being.
1.1. Set in the text your mistakes and your successes
I always had the idea that to become an expert in a subject you had to: experiment a lot, make a lot of errors and read between 50 and 100 books on the subject.
I learn from my mistakes and write about them. What I have always missed and I still do not think to find him one day is a mentor. An experienced guy who would show me the right way. My lucky star of marketing. Or writing. Or both, even better.
But between the fierce competition and the modern poverty of intergenerational communication (among other sociological factors), collaboration is approached only from its practical point of view.
So by dint of having to do everything and experience everything alone, I accumulated mountains of errors. While everyone must give themselves the right to do so, some people lose too much time not to share them.
Be concerned to help those who have to go through the same paths that you once borrowed because they are a part of you.
That being said, take pride in your successes and put them on a beautiful little digital paper. In the form of case studies, for example.
1.2. Read a lot
As both sides of the same coin, reading and writing are the yin and yang of any aspiring writer or writer. Stephen King himself sets an example by claiming to read a minimum of 70 fiction books a year.
Read relevant books about your topic and offer summaries to your audience. It’s a high added value. Knowledge never goes out of fashion.
Books, but not only! With the BuzzSumo tool (what an inelegance in the name!), You know exactly what kind of article is thundering in the skies of the web.
Bring your stone to the building of this viral news, enjoy the traction they offer, bring back your strawberry. If possible, bring an original vision on the subject.
Why does she make you react in this way? Often, a subject is treated in a bipolar manner. For or against this? For or against it? Without flaw, the relevance of a debate drowns once it reaches the waters of the radical opposition.
Propose a third voice, raise the debate. In philosophy, dialectics recognizes the essential nature of contradictory propositions. So, a thesis and an antithesis always give a synthesis. Be the synthesis.
1.3. Use Quora
Why invent questions when they already exist? An article that turns like a football between the feet of an inspired Barcelona is above all a written piece that meets a need to know.
Quora is the largest platform in the world for questions and answers. These are sorted by theme. All you have to do is go shopping!
To complete your work as an investigator, join Facebook groups, go to relevant forums and share in the comment section articles that have previously hardcover.
1.4. Highlight what others do not dare to broach
In a group, there are leaders, followers and outsiders. The followers will stay nicely in their place. Only the underdogs can one day become leaders.
And of course, that’s what you need to aim for if you’re creating content.
Except that content marketing experts continue without an eyebrow to sell their cam as the holy grail of marketing! As if it were enough to write a quality blog and wait for the miracle to happen.
The truth is that if you start, you will need a little more, a reinterpretation of what exists, a welcome marine freshness in a stuffy climate.
Stifling with honeyed and always-like advice from those who have succeeded, but do not realize (do they do it on purpose?) That their world has changed.
It must also be said that what they sell is precisely the way that allowed them to join the Olympus digital. Yes but: it does not work anymore!
And even if the articles are of quality, although telephoned as on the famous Blog of the Moderator, for example, you can not resolve to the singer.
Why? Because your voice will never exceed that of others. We do not wait for a new man to make expert tie articles (almost always horrible also, these ties). They are listened to because they have a status that you do not have.
And then very sincerely, 99.99% of them will not even consider you. And they will do it on purpose since they do not want you like professional bloggers who only accept professional bloggers. I can name 10, just in the world of writing. Surely one day, I will allow myself this little pleasure.
From democracy to communitarianism, as in “real life” …
To make your voice heard, there is no point in bawling until you see yourself: speak differently, whisper originally, tell what nobody says.
1.5. blow
Follow me, I run away, flee, I follow you. In love as in writing!
Be active, but also know stop. I’m not talking about taking holidays every three blog posts, but knowing how to look up from the screen and go about doing other things.
I do not count the number of times an idea came knocking on my door when I was talking to a friend; I was walking outside on a Sunday morning or sipping an excellent grape juice after a hard day’s work.
Read to inform yourself, practice to learn, and your best ideas will not wait for you to pick them up. They will come to you.
2. Write with style, impact and elegance – Step 1: Preparation
To write is to lift all censorship. Jean Genet
You have your idea under your elbow, should you still know how to present it. If you read me a little already, you know that I aspire, for me and those who follow me, to develop the best of the feathers.
In content creation, there is no middle ground: try to be excellent or disappear in the crypts of the web. Compromise is a false friend.
For the ink of your feather to flow like the water of a mountain river and your text to be as attractive as a Mediterranean cove in the heart of summer, specific requirements must be combined.
That of clarity, first of all. Then of the personalization of the text: the reader must have the impression that the lines which he reads are a melody which he waited for a long time.
Finally, beauty: as you aim for elevation about the mass of available content, render a service to humanity. Give grace to your text.
2.1. Why do you want to write this particular text?
Among the ideas that have swarmed in your mind, why did you choose to present this particular world to the world? By defining your intention, you will immediately give more weight to your words.
2.2. Who do you want to talk to?
Identifying a group is not enough. Identify a particular person, the one to whom you would tell your idea around a roaring fire, a good glass of wine or a walk under a blazing sun.
Give him a name, physical characteristics, socio-demographic qualifications. And even an attitude! How could she react to such an idea?
This is an essential step for your words to make your readers vibrate.
2.3. Make a list of the points you will cover
Do not fall for the joys of brainstorming only when you already have an idea in mind. How many needlessly “brainstorm” sessions have I attended? I do not count them anymore.
On the other hand, here, no question of restraining oneself. Gambadez in the land of freedom and stop at every exciting point of view. Pell-mêle, put flat what causes your brain to tremble. Shake the palm tree and harvest all the coconuts!
2.4. Group these points by theme
You will have noticed, but many of your points overlap. Enter how you can assemble them to give consistency to your writing. At the risk of ending up like the idiot society of Martin Luther King.
Your points must work in unison to build the foundation for your next success. And the more they travel from one eye to another, from blogs to blogs, from newspapers to magazines, the more robust these bases must be.
Continue grouping, complete 3 or 4 passes until your list is a draft article where each party would develop their message. Coming to support a red thread at any time clear.
3. Write with style, impact and elegance – Step 2: Writing
I write you a long letter because I do not have time to write a short one. Blaise Pascal
The particularity of web writing is that it does not admit frills.
All great copywriters, from Warren Buffet (no longer present) to David Ogilvy (who is nicknamed the father of advertising), will reveal the same secret: write as if you were talking to one of your friends.
However, the English language being particularly rich in literary production, it is difficult to take the pen and write as if one spoke. If the best is to start writing as the heart dictates and then revise your copy, these few suggestions will help you not to complicate your text for nothing.
3.1. Avoid negations
Assert yourself. I could also have written, “not afraid to assert you”. But note the significant impact of the first sentence. If you express yourself on the web, it is because you have convictions to share. Spread them without half measures.
Rather than saying “I never doubted you,” say “I always trusted you.” This technique is counter-intuitive, but very easy to set up. Above all, it first allows you to lighten your text, then to give more weight to your words.
Be cleavage.
3.2. Do not modulate
In the same way, avoid writing the obvious. “I think this technique is excellent”. No, we know you think so! “This technique is excellent,” point.
If you want to improve your storytelling ability, I have prepared a comprehensive guide to the basics of storytelling.
3.3. Be natural
Keep your style, avoid at all costs to imitate your favourite author or the blogger who inspires you right now.
We are imitation beings! You will do it anyway, unconsciously. So if you force the line, the reader will feel that it sounds wrong.
Be authentic
4. Structure your next success
It is not the title that honours the man, but the man who accepts the claim. Machiavelli
Content creation can take shape from 100 and a different way, but the king of formats remains the blog post. It is, therefore, to this one that I am interested here.
4.1. The title
I should put it in the end, but you would feel like you’re walking on your head. This is an essential part. You know it, I know it.
And yet, I’m sure you do not give enough time to its development.
A good title is the result of two very different things: expressing precisely the subject of the article and letting the mystery hover. Otherwise, there would be no benefit in going through it. Do you want some examples?
- A list. Three tips that every entrepreneur should read before starting.
- A grande list. Five hundred two free books for any broke art student.
- A question-answer. Do not know where to publish your content? This successful blogger has the only answer you need.
- The snapshot. Three bad habits that you must give up if you want to be read.
- The success story. How this 28-year-old man became a millionaire thanks to his pen (we have the right to dream!).
Find five different titles for your next item, leave the set-aside and come back the next day. Take the one that made the most effective for your proofreading, with a cool head.
4.2. The introduction
Bleed as soon as your first sentence. Show the drama that is playing in your article. Play with emotions as if it were a musical instrument.
If you’re like me, you tend to explain the logic of your idea right away. What the reader wants is to understand immediately why you put forward this one rather than another? What has happened in your life for you to decide to share it with the world?
And most importantly, for a blog post, limit yourself to one idea per post.
In a nutshell: state right away why your article is essential. The time of your hearing is limited, respect it.
4.3. Why you?
You have put forward the why of this post, but why should they listen to you, rather than another?
Why should readers trust you? What did you achieve and what is your intention?
4.4. Body of the text
Just tell them what you have to say. With ideally an argument, an example and a brief return on the case.
If you can, also create a small list containing 3 points that they can apply immediately. This gives your article immediate usefulness. Here I have more than twenty, but the material is long and written as a guide.
You should print it; it will serve you throughout your creative process.
4.5. Conclusion
For the last time, remember how much and why your idea is essential. Briefly.
And most importantly, add a call to action. You write to offer information, but you do not write for anything.
Send your readers to another page on your site, encourage them to subscribe to your newsletter, to discover a product or to share your creation.
5. Write (really) good or write (really) nothing
Do not try to become a successful man. Try to become a man of value. Albert Einstein
Content creation promises to work wonders for businesses, bloggers and anyone acting on the web.
The truth today is twofold:
- The pot has never been so high,
- it reserves to always less elected.
Your goal is one and only one: that your content reaches this 5% blessed, the one that is read by 90% of the audience. And for that, no miracle: you need to create content with high added value and very regularly.
Your message must be original, inspiring and unifying. Give the best of yourself, and even if you start from scratch, like me, you will end up as a hero!
