Looking for a way to increase your brand awareness, connect with your audience, and become a thought leader in your industry? Consider looking into content marketing.

Small businesses can benefit significantly from content writing. Although the process of writing informative blog posts may be a bit tedious, it’s definitely worth the hard work.

The Content Marketing Institute states that 67% of marketers report that content marketing generates demand/leads.

Writing can be a challenge, especially if you have little to no experience in the subject. So, to generate traffic and connect with your audience, you need to understand the subject you’re writing about and produce content showcasing your expertise and niche in the topic.

To write quality content, you need to utilize your creative writing skills. Readers can differentiate between good and bad content. Quality content writing shows. You won’t be able to generate much traffic if you don’t put effort into your writing.

According to Orbit Media, 38% of bloggers who spend more than 6+ hours writing a post report strong results.

In this article, we’ll break down seven content writing tips to help you craft content that will keep your readers intrigued and bring in traffic to your small business.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

When you write content, you’re writing for your audience. Before you start typing away, you need to get to know who your audience is. Figure out their age, gender, habits, and behaviours. This can be done by looking through your Google Analytics reports or previous sales reports.

There are bloggers out there who make the mistake of making content they like without thinking about their audience. Since the audience has no interest in the content, the result is a blog post without any engagement and traffic.

By knowing your target audience, you’ll be able to make the content they relate to and know that your content won’t go to waste when it goes live.

2. Provide Solutions to Frequently Asked Questions

What better way to start content writing than by answering your audience’s questions? Your blog can be a great place to answer frequently asked questions in a detailed manner.

This allows you to come up with content ideas without too much effort, and it also provides valuable content for your readers.

If you already have a FAQ on your website, you can start by writing blog posts based on those questions. However, if you don’t have a FAQ, you can go through emails or interactions with consumers on social media to find out your customer’s pain points.

3. Research Thoroughly

The best content is thoroughly researched, speaks to the audience, and is compelling to read. Of course, content like this can’t be written instantaneously.

It takes research and planning to write a great piece. Here are three ways you can research a new topic and get all the information you need.

Blog Topic Research

If you’re unsure about what topic to write about, try looking at current trending topics. We recommend using Google Trends to scout new topics. This tool is handy because it shows trending topics based on everyone’s Google searches. You can also browse related topics and look at what topics are trending based on different regions.

Keyword Research

Another popular research method is keyword research. Depending on what tool you use, you can see what keywords are trending and what topics are worth writing about. We recommend using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to do this.

The goal is to find keywords that are low in difficulty but medium in volume. When you aim for keywords that are high in volume, you might need help to rank or bring in traffic. Whereas if you aim for a lower volume, you’ll have a chance to rank higher.

Competitor Research

Lastly, you can always research your competitors and perform a competitor and content gap analysis. This means finding out what types of content are ranking for them and what content they’re not covering that you can write about.

4. Always Start with an Outline

Writing without an outline can make completing an article seem overwhelming. Instead of writing whatever comes to mind, writing an outline makes writing content easier because it breaks down your ideas into feasible sections.

An outline allows you to organize your thoughts and ensure that your content isn’t all over the place. It also lets you look at your blog post as a whole.

Once you have a clear idea of what you want to write about, it’s time to break it down into smaller parts. Think of your outline as a map and guide for when you write your article or blog post.

5. Focus On A Keyword Phrase

You want to avoid keyword stuffing when writing for your small business blog. In short, keyword stuffing is when you use the same keywords over and over again in your content. This is usually noticeable, and readers will usually be put off by it.

Although using keywords is necessary, you should avoid using the same keywords too often because it can cause your site to face penalties from Google, damage your brand, and affect user experience.

6. Use quotes and examples

It’s always good to go the extra mile by using quotes or examples to back up your points. There is so much similar content on the SERP, but if you do more research, you’ll provide valuable content that readers love.

As a result, your blog posts can get more backlinks and traffic, be more authoritative, and many loyal readers visit your blog frequently. In addition, you might get noticed by the people you quote.

7. Add visuals

Adding visuals to your content marketing is a powerful way to keep your readers interested and engaged. Besides, using relevant images paired with the same information improves human memory by as much as 65%.

Consider using different types of visuals, such as images, videos, or infographics. Be sure to optimize your videos and add alt text to your images.

8. Do On-page SEO

A study on SEO for small businesses said that 80% of people research a company online before dealing with small businesses. Thus, when you write for your small business blog, make sure to keep SEO in mind.

Optimizing your content for SEO will help your site be more visible on search engines and increase your chances of gaining traffic. On-page SEO for content writing usually entails inserting relevant internal links, optimizing keywords, and linking externally when necessary.

Closing Thoughts

For small businesses to thrive in this digital age, content marketing is one of the most useful tools out there to boost SEO, generate organic traffic, connect with audiences, and achieve business goals.

Content writing can be challenging, especially if you have little experience in the subject. So, if you’re still unsure about writing for your blog, you can always consider hiring a professional writer if needed.

Author Bio

Adela Belin is a content marketer and blogger at Writers Per Hour. She is passionate about sharing stories with the hope to make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to their personal and professional growth. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.