The Anatomy of a Good Piece of Content
No matter what industry or niche you’re working in, good quality content is 100% possible. But it’s not something that you can slap together quickly.
In my opinion, creating good quality content takes several things to go right.
The Topic
The topic of course is key to whatever audience you’re marketing to.
And the audience needs to really care about this particular topic in a passionate way.
Not in a way like “that’s kinda cool” and then they completely forget about it. They have to be more like “wow! I’m really glad I have read this!”
Let’s face it. Your articles just aren’t going to get read from top to bottom in today’s world because attention spans are too low. Plus there’s way too much content out there and people are easily distracted.
It would be really naïve to believe that you’re going to create this content that 90% of the people are going to read all the way through. It just isn’t going to happen.
But, if the topic is hyper relevant, really significant, and puts people in the right frame of mind, you’ll have a major winner on your hands.
You have to convince your audience to say “wow, this is really interesting and I want to read more. This can really help my business or my problems,” you understand what I’m talking about.
That’s exactly what you’re shooting for during the content creation process.
This kind of content is really hard to find.
And for every 10 pieces of content that you make, even when you follow the best practices, only one of them is going to hit to this extent until you really get this down pat and dialed in.
How to Make a Topic Really Resonate with Your Target Audience
To make a topic resonate with your audience, it needs to be actionable, it needs to be unique and something that the reader can’t find anywhere else (i.e. an internal case study, data analysis, personal experiences – could be yours or one of your team members, etc.)
The Writer & The Copy Editor
The writer of the content can be you, somebody you hire, a data researcher, someone that you’ve met who is an expert in your industry, or anyone else for that matter.
If the meat and the potatoes of the content is of the highest quality, well researched, and you’ve chosen a good topic, then you’re probably going to be on to something good.
There are many things that make a good writer. And the easiest way to discover a writer is to read their content. You’ll know if you think they are a good writer or not.
As far as the copywriter/copy editor is concerned, he or she could also be the writer in some cases if you are lucky enough to find somebody that can edit their own copy.
Situations When a Good Copywriter/Copy Editor Can Bring the Best Out Of an Article
- If the writer that you hire doesn’t engage the reader with the first sentence by not talking to them or asking questions, you may need the help of a good copywriter/copy editor.
- Or they aren’t formatting things in a nice way that the reader can skim and look at things in bite-sized chunks, you can certainly benefit from the help of a good copywriter/copy editor.
- If the writer isn’t making anecdotes that suck the reader into the story and get the reader away from monotonous facts and examples, you probably need a really good copywriter/copy editor to bring out the best in the article.
A great copywriter/copy editor can bring an article to life! And just remember that all great writers aren’t always great copywriters.
So think about putting someone like this on your team. Or if you plan to get big enough, think about adding multiple copywriters/copy editors to your team.
They are the people that can create the great formatting and everything else that I’ve mentioned that helps bring great copy to life.
Plus, they make sure the content is error-free which is also very important.
The Graphic Designer
Another key component of creating quality content is a great graphic designer.
Most people blog on WordPress now.
When you look at WordPress, the typical formula now is one random stock photo at the top of the article and its left justified. After that, you’ll see paragraph after paragraph of big long text separated by sub- headers.
That’s what I see over and over again when I look at typical WordPress blogs.
And in my opinion, this is total, total barf!
Articles need to have life, personality and branding. They need to be colorful and they need to have images that capture and recapture the reader’s attention.
If you aren’t a graphic designer and you aren’t spending time making these articles visually appealing and visually more helpful, then you are missing out on a great opportunity to produce a really high quality piece of content.
Tips for Graphic Designers
You want a completely custom featured image.
The image should have a title in it. It should match your website’s brand. It should have an interesting picture in the featured image – i.e. somebody doing something or a unique background that pops.
You should also have images that take interesting parts of the content and turn it into image form – i.e. quotes, section breaks, images that tell a story about what you’re writing about.
A graphic designer can put this stuff together with the proper direction.
And when dealing with a graphic designer, you have to set your standards upfront.
You have to be on the same page about the fonts they use, the colors they use, and setting those standards from the get go is going to save you a lot of back and forth on the backend.
If everything looks good, we can now move on to the final part.
A Great Headline
According to a recent study that I read, a CTR optimized headline will generate a magnitude more views when compared to a generic headlined.
In truth, it usually makes the most sense to write the headline after the article is done.
Why?
Well, after it’s complete you have a much better sense of what the article is about.
Before you write it, you may have a general idea but you could end up going in an entirely different direction. And if that happens, your headline will not match the content.
It’s great if you’re good at writing headlines.
But writing headlines is its own unique skill, so if you can’t find the time to write a great headline or write several headlines and A/B test them, you need to hire a professional headline writer with fantastic reviews to take care this task for you.
Summary
At this point you should have:
- Found an exciting topic.
- Hired a great research writer.
- Hired an excellent copywriter/copy editor.
- Hired a great graphic designer.
- Hired a phenomenal headline writer.
When you get this content up on your site, you’re going to have dynamite articles that everybody loves. They are going to talk about them, comment on them, and your target audience will really engage with your content.
And if you use this particular system with all of your content, you are going to be pumping out fantastic articles all the time.
On the other hand, even if you only apply this methodology some of the time, some your blog posts are really going to shine.
That’s my method for creating high-quality content. I hope you find it useful.
If you have any other questions, you can leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you.
Good luck!
