Page 225 - Entrepreneur - USA (January - February 2020)

ADVERTORIAL

The Seven Fundamentals

of good content writing

By Robert W. Bly features and benefi ts. It was because your content marketing program will
the software in that category was achieve its objective. It’s like food
expensive, and even though the pros- vendors giving away samples: the
If you asked me to name the two
pects wanted the functionality the better the free food tastes, the more
biggest trends in B2B marketing
software delivered, they couldn’t likely the consumer is to purchase a
today, I’d have to say social media
cost-justify the purchase. To solve snack or meal.
and content marketing. And social
this problem, the company published
media seems to work best when it’s
a white paper titled Calculating 6. Set the Specs
based on content.
Return on Investment for Purchase of Outline the characteristics, fea-
But content marketing isn’t just
XYZ Software. It showed that the time tures, and specifi cations your
publishing information—there’s way
and labor savings the software pro- customers should look for when
too much information available today
vided could pay back its high cost in shopping for products in your cat-
and your prospects are drowning in
six to eight months. egory. If you do this credibly, the
it. What they want is knowledge—they
customers will turn your content into
want to know how to solve problems
4. Educate the Reader a shopping list. For example, if your
and how to do their jobs better.
Chances are you possess propri- title is Ten Th ings to Look for When
Th e following are seven guidelines
etary knowledge about your products Buying a Mixer, your mixer naturally
that can help set up your content
and their uses. Share some of this will have all ten characteristics, and
marketing campaign and make it
knowledge in your content and give the competition’s won’t.
more productive and eff ective.
your reader specifi c advice and ideas
they haven’t seen before. Don’t worry 7. Generate Action or

about giving away too much. When Change Belief
they learn how much eff ort solving Content marketing succeeds when
1. Narrow the Topic
their problem entails and see that it gets prospects to take action or
Th ere is no benefi t to cramming
you clearly have the expertise they change their opinion, attitude, or
every last bit of information about
need, they will turn to you for help. beliefs about you and your prod-
a subject into your white paper or
uct. When writing content, I always
other content marketing piece; the
5. Deliver Value ask my clients, “What do you want
prospect can easily fi nd that data
When you can, include some to happen after the prospect fi nishes
through Google.
highly practical, actionable tips the reading?” I often end the content
Content marketing works best
prospect can implement imme- with a section titled “Th e next step,”
when you narrow the topic. Th e more
diately. Th e more valuable your which tells the reader what to do and
precise the topic, the more in-depth
content is to prospects, the faster how to do it.
and useful your content can be.

2. Target the Prospect

Th e more narrowly you target the
audience for your content market-
ing piece, the better able you are to Buy The Content
deliver truly useful content.
Marketing Handbook
3. Determine the Objective and set yourself up

Remember, you’re not giving away
for success.
information out of the kindness of
your heart. Th ere has to be a pur-
pose for the content you spend time Available at
and money to produce. For instance,
a software publisher discovered that entm.ag/blybooks
it wasn’t losing sales to a competi-
tor because their products had better