Content writing is an art, and every art requires knowledge, skills, and lots of practice to be perfected. Whether you’re a blogger, small business owner, or digital marketer, content writing is probably your highest priority.

As you can notice, regardless of what you’re trying to promote, content acts as a bridge between you and the customer. If you think about it, everything is content, starting from the text you use on your website and ending with the sales pitch that you use to finalize a purchase.

If you learn to create amazing content, you’ll never have trouble with your competition. Why? Because even though “content is king”, lots of bloggers, businesses, and authors put more emphasis on generating satisfying marketing results while ignoring the basics and essence of content development.

Many others tend to leverage superficial content writing services and believe that their money will compensate. Certainly, that’s not a reliable approach.

In today’s post, I’m presenting 5 effective techniques that will help you skyrocket your content’s performance. All you have to do is regularly practice, test, and optimize your content writing skill right until you’re fully satisfied with what you produce. Let us begin.

Write a Head-Turning Headline

A content writer knows that his work must draw the attention of the reader, otherwise his efforts will be mostly in vain.

Headlines are the “bread and butter” of content marketing, simply because readers will not click on a link if something “doesn’t tick” in their mind.

Crafting head-turning headlines is simpler than you imagine. First of all, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience. If you understand your prospects’ mindset, needs, and problems, you’ll be able to trigger emotions through your headlines.

To involve emotions in a headline sentence, you should leverage the so-called existent “power words”. They’re often called emotional words or persuasion words. When properly used, readers cannot help but pay attention. Here are the 7 types of power words:

• Fear words (shame, painful, terrifying, etc.)
• Encouragement words (life-changing, inspirational, badass, etc.)
• Anger words (useless, brutal, cheat, corrupt, etc.)
• Lust words (delightful, blissful, ecstasy, divine, etc.)
• Safety words (proven, guarantee, money-back, etc.)
• Greed words (gift, high-paying, greatest, cheap, etc.)
• Forbidden words (secret, unknown, esoteric, ancient, classified, confessions, etc.)

Of course, there are many other words that fall in these categories. You can check out this comprehensive blog post that spells out over 600 power words.

Use Keyword-Rich Phrases

Content writing and SEO are two different things, yet they’re very much related to each other. When you write content, you want to make it count. One of the ways to do that is to optimize your content pieces for the search engines.

You can do so by performing keyword research in order to figure out what your target audience is mostly interested in. There are many SEO guides and free keyword research tools that will show you how to integrate keywords into your content, so make sure that you do your homework first.

Read Great Content for Inspiration

When you’re out of inspiration, you should immediately start reading your competitors’ work. You shouldn’t copy paste any of their topics, but notice what can be improved.

Moreover, you can turn your attention to an analytical book essay example to spice up your creative juices. Lastly, I’d suggest you check out the Skyscraper technique, a method that should teach you how to make the best out of more original pieces of content.

Try to Be Unique

What does that mean in the content writing context? Well, a message can be transmitted in infinite ways. It is your voice, your passion, your examples, and the context that you use to say it.

To be unique means to be yourself and to write with full confidence. You should develop a unique voice and use it throughout your content. Strive to offer juicy examples and always try to do better than your competitors. In fact, you can be unique even if you’re taking someone else’s work and making it better!

Address Your Target Audience

A great understanding of your target audience will allow you to create immediate rapport with your readers. When we meet new people, we’re instantly looking for similarities and common ground. If we find these things, we’ll often feel that we’ve found a friend.

It works exactly the same with content writing. Therefore, you should know who you’re “speaking to” before expecting that person to pay attention.

One great way to do that is to create several “target personas”. When you write a piece of content, imagine that you’re having a conversation with that person. Think about his needs, interests, and problems, and provide rapport through words!

Takeaways

What is content writing? Well, content writing or content development is the art of sending powerful messages to a specific audience. Whether educational, inspirational or promotional, content is something that needs to be treated very seriously.

If you own a brand and you’re trying to position yourself in the marketplace, your business performance will be directly proportional with your content’s quality. For that simple reason, use our tips and tricks and keep practicing until you overstep your boundaries!

BIO: Emma Rundle is a journalist and content writer that publishes content on various blogs and magazines. Her passion for writing started the moment she met her current husband who is a passionate author.