FreelanceScribe

The prime objective of a marketing campaign is to reach and preferably engage with a target audience. In today’s marketplace it is not enough to have a website and to engage in paid advertising as a separate activity.

What is needed is a content strategy that defines how and in what manner to gain maximum benefits from converged media which includes:

• Owned media
• Shared media
• Earned media
• Paid media

What is needed is a content strategy that defines how and in what manner to gain maximum benefits from their integration.

The Internet is now a huge information repository, a crowded marketplace where everybody is seeking attention. Information overload and ad blindness are now facts of life and, as a result, the bar for effective content marketing has been raised a few notches.

You need to drive visitors to your sales funnel and you need to do so in an unobtrusive manner. Your content must not be self-centred and overly promotional in nature. People no longer respond when the feel they are “being sold to”.

The content you publish on your website or blog needs to be informative and relevant to a user’s search intent, as expressed by the search query entered. It also needs to be unique and offer some value.

Writing requires a methodology, at least if you intend publishing something a little larger than a blog post. A common mistake authors make is that they just start writing. This is like driving down a country road not sure where you are heading.. After a while, you will disorientate yourself in trying to decide whether content should be here, there or somewhere else. The end result is likely to be messy and the time and effort involved will be far larger.

Proper planning requires a top-down approach, not unlike the planning approach used in software engineering. It will save you time and produce a better result. Here are the essential steps.

• Purpose
• Research
• Audience
• Outline = Content -Presentation
• Review

A previous blog post I published on this website is titled “How to Write – A Methodical Approach”. I should emphasize the word approach in the title because that piece said little or nothing about writing style at all, only how to plan and prepare the task of writing something in a methodical manner.

I broke down the method that works for me into segments: Purpose > Audience > Research > Outline > Content > Presentation > Review.

The most important issues may well be purpose and audience. In other words, “what do you want to say to whom”. If you are not clear about this, then you are off to a bad start. Always start be clearly defining the purpose of your writing and the audience to which it is addressed; this determines the scope and the limitations of style.

Your writing style should convey something about you as a person. Who are you, and where are you coming from in presenting your point of view? Tell your readers if you are writing and debating things you have heard or read, or if you have personally experienced what you are writing about. Whichever, be clear about your unique point of view.