Author: Vikram Varma

How to Become a Freelance Content Writer in India

Gone are the days when people found joy in 9-5 jobs and spent their lives working at only one organization. They were satisfied with doing the same thing every day. The generation of today wants more from life. Fortunately, technology has enabled careers that allow you to be in charge. From your work timings to projects to pay, you get to decide everything. Many youngsters are going for freelance content writer jobs as it is flexible and has a great future.

The freelancing economy is growing in India and how. As per a report by Payoneer, India is the world’s second-fastest-growing freelance market, with an estimated 15 million freelancers in this workforce.

While freelancing opens up different avenues for skilled individuals who want to explore this style of work, a few freelance jobs have a particularly high demand in the market. For instance, as a freelance writer in India specifically, you will see good traction with more and more businesses opting to work with freelancers. Not just that, international clients also prefer collaborating with Indian writers for their high-quality work.

Have you been thinking of giving freelancing writing a shot? How do you know if it is the right step for you?

We have charted out all the details you may need to identify if freelancing as a content writer is the right step for you.

How To Know If Freelance Writing Is A Perfect Fit For You?

Working as a freelancer in India is tougher than it comes across. On the one hand, freelance writers are always on the hunt for potential clients. On the other, you will have to ensure that you submit your current tasks on time after conducting proper research and writing as per the client’s guidelines.

Deadlines are sacrosanct, and rework may disturb your planned timelines. However, if you enjoy writing and are looking for a creative outlet, freelance content writing is one of the best career options that can get you a decent living.

Content writing requires several skills, and understanding them can help you determine if you should pursue it and earn money by writing.

Let us see what these skills are.

1) Curious

As a writer, you can expect to work on multiple topics. Best content writers are the ones who can borrow examples from several aspects of life and correlate them to weave a story worth telling.

When you are curious, you are intrinsically motivated to learn as you carry about your day. Moreover, it drives you to research well to write quality pieces.

2) Meticulous

In your content writing skills, there is no space for mistakes. Even the smallest errors, like misspelled words or missing punctuation marks, can make you appear inexperienced.

Moreover, you will have to follow the guidelines of your client. Writing as per the prescribed guidelines and reflecting the brand’s voice requires great attention to detail.

3) Hard-working

Freelancing as a writer is hard work. Online freelance writing jobs require you to follow strict guidelines.

As the work is time-consuming, you may have to work round the clock to submit your piece within the deadlines. One cannot succeed in this profession without a strong work ethic.

4) Committed

Working as a freelance writer is a job of high commitment. You will have to ensure that you deliver on time and do not back off after accepting a project. Besides, there will be times when you will not get work as per your expectations.

However, being committed is the only way to sail through such times.

The more experience you get, the better you become. Besides, developing long-term relationships take time, and with your commitment, you will definitely reach there.

The Step-By-Step Approach To Pick A Domain

Most people figure out they want to pursue content writing after starting blogging on the side. More often than not, it is in the fields of travel, entertainment, food, or home decor. However, these are generally not the genres that can help you grab freelance writing jobs because of high competition.

Here are the steps you can follow to pick an appropriate domain that will help you build credibility and get work that pays well.

1) Make a list of niches that match your educational qualification, interests, or work experience. Try to explore niches such as technology, finance, HR, or marketing to make a place for yourself in this competitive market. These are the genres that also pay well.

2) Start reading up on the latest news in these niches to enhance your knowledge.

3) Make a portfolio by writing 4-5 high-quality blog posts, guest posts, or articles on trending topics. You can show this portfolio to clients who wish to see your previous work.

4) Once you get a headstart, try to gain experience in other categories gradually to expand your work area.

How to become a freelance writer in India?

Once you know that your true calling lies in working as a freelance content writer, the most obvious step is to find work. Well, the good news is that in today’s times, there are multiple avenues through which you can explore opportunities.

Here are a few ways in which you can find work.

1) Approach clients on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a forum that can help in finding writing gigs. As it is a social platform, you can write content and share it to build your audience network. With your portfolio already there, it will be easier for the clients to see your quality of writing and offer you work.

Remember to write on the most current topics and add a personal opinion or examples to differentiate your content.

Also, try to connect with content marketers and share links to your work. Add content writing services as one of your services on Linkedin. You can do so by visiting your profile > Add profile section > providing services to clients

2) Make an account on freelance platforms

A freelance marketplace works as a bridge between writers and clients. For instance, at WittyPen we help you get content writing projects across domains. This helps you find regular freelance work in multiple niches and earn well in the process.

Some of the writers have been earning upwards of INR 50k every month by creating quality content for some of the largest brands.

3) Join groups on social media

Facebook has several content writing groups where you can find work. You can share a post that you are looking for work or even share some of your work.

4) Cold emailing

If you have a database of content marketing professionals or content managers, you can always write cold emails and send snippets of your work to pique their interest in your work.

How Much Should You Charge For Content Writing Services?

One of the most tricky parts of a freelance writer’s profession is to decide your charges. You will find several clients and sites that pay for writing, which pay as low as Rs 20-40 per word. However, if you think the quality of your work deserves better, don’t be afraid to demand the right price.

Have a reasonable discussion with your clients about money and give them an idea of the approximate time it would take to finish a task. Researching and fulfilling SEO content writing as per the given guidelines are time-consuming activities.

Also, fix your charges per hour to inform your clients of the cost of each task; you can always take suggestions from a fellow writer. If it is a long-term relationship with a client, you can offer discounts for continued work. Charge more for thought leadership tasks and lesser for SEO articles.

Another way to earn money through a freelance writing job in your early days is by taking on bulk projects. Such projects come at a discounted rate. However, they assure continued work.

You can look at it through the lens of time vs money. If you spend 20% of your time connecting with new customers and finding new work, bulk projects can save you that time and pay for it too. Thus, it makes sense to take a project that comes at a 20% discount rate.

3 Ideas To Improve Your Income As a Freelance Content Writer

1) Add to your skills

Reskilling will enhance your income by helping you pitch as a retainer to a client. The easiest thing you can do is learn content marketing, digital marketing, and SEO to offer a package deal to the clients. After you do this, you can charge a fixed cost for SEO research for each article and optimize on-page content.

2) Expand your horizon

Read up about other niches to expand your work area. Take up work even if it pays low if you are inexperienced in those areas. Apart from writing blog posts, there are other avenues like technical writing, medical writing, sop writing, web content writing, etc.

3) Learn social media marketing

You can charge extra to drive more traffic for your customers as you share social media copies. Another option is to design images on Canva to enhance the value of the content. This will help you think more as a brand and also improve your writing style.

How To Avoid Fraud?

One of the most common challenges in the Indian freelance industry is when writers do not get paid. Several freelance writers have faced this and learned to be more cautious the hard way.

To protect your interests, you can take partial payments before you start work on freelance writing jobs. You can also submit half your work and request payment before sharing the complete write-up.

When working on bulk projects, you can sign contracts with funded or large corporates. Carrying out a background check of a new client on LinkedIn, Google, or their professional website can also save you from any unpleasant situations. Freelance marketplaces usually save you a lot of hassle in closing payments as they work with the finance teams to close payments timely. They take more time to pay out, but you get the benefit of payment assurance.

Remember Some Finance Basics

When working with companies, you will need to raise invoices to get your payments. That requires discipline as companies may object to seeing invoices for work that you did months earlier. Keep track of the invoices from online platforms and maintain a spreadsheet to quickly tally your payments.

Taxation is another aspect that you will need to consider as a freelancer. You will have to file your yearly IT returns. Understanding your income and keeping your finances in check is essential for your financial well-being.

Read More: 5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is Important With Its Strategy

To Wrap Up

Working as a freelance writer can be a good career choice if you are a creative and committed individual. If you have decided to be one, we hope you like the suggestions above. And to know more about how you can join Wittypen as a freelance content writer, apply here.

September 26, 2022
Keyword Research: What Works For SEO? Complete Guide

Keyword research is considered by most content marketers as their priority when it comes to SEO. They offer insights into what your audience is looking for on the web, along with several other details, and thus point you towards the kind of content you should ideally create if you want to generate more traffic and rank higher on search engines.

If you’re wondering how to go about keyword research to get the highest possible rankings, this guide is for you. We go through various aspects, such as finding the best keywords, what you should consider when choosing them, the different keyword research tools you can use, and much more.

How To Do Researching for Keywords To Improve SEO Rankings

1. Create Buyer Personas to Understand What Matters to Them

In 2023, it’s likely that several companies have already created buyer personas as part of their content marketing strategy. For those of you who don’t know what a buyer persona is, it embodies the characteristics of your ideal customer, thus helping you look at them as people. They offer great insights into what matters to your audience, along with the kind of information they look for at different stages of the buying process.

Additionally, it can also help guide you about how they’re searching for this information. Understanding these aspects makes creating content much easier, as they give your content marketing efforts a direction.

Creating a buyer persona involves factoring in various demographic details, such as age, location, income levels, subsequent relationship with your domain, the likely problems they face, etc.

Ideally, then, creating a buyer persona is the first step to take before you look for keywords, as they give you the added advantage of knowing which ones you could consider based on the user’s intent. Further, it can also help identify topics that are relevant to your domain.

For example, at WittyPen, this process helps us identify broader topics such as content marketing and content writing, apart from other subtopics that fall under these umbrellas, such as SEO Strategies and Growth Insights, among others. These topics then become the focal points of our blog, as you can see from the images below.

2. Find Keyword Ideas Through Google and Youtube Suggestions, Wikipedia, and Forums in Your Domain

Finding keywords isn’t as hard as you might think. In fact, the simplest way to find out what people are searching for is by using Google Suggest and YouTube Suggest. Look at the image below. Typing the words ‘Best laptops for” gives you a bunch of keyword suggestions that you can then consider while creating your content. This goes to show that people are, in fact, looking for the best laptops for college students, coding, or architects. You can do the same with YouTube, which will give you yet more options.

Yet another way to find popular keywords on Google is in the ‘Searches Related To’ section at the end of a page of results. These give you more suggestions for the searches that users on Google make.

Wikipedia is yet another avenue that can offer you a gold mine of keywords. Here’s how it works. Simply search the keyword you’re looking for on Wikipedia and open its page. The contents of the page offer a bunch of keywords that might otherwise be overlooked. In this case, searching for Teak results in a list of contents that includes its botanical history, cultivation, and propagation, each of which can make great keywords when used like this – “teak propagation.”

A third way of finding keywords is through forums in your domain. To find them, search for “keyword + forums” in your search engine, and you’ll get a whole list. Now, look for queries that people have been asking about the subject, and you’ll realize that several of these have great potential to be used as keywords. The best part is, it tells you that people are indeed looking for this information, which you can then provide.

3. Use Keyword Research Tools

The next step in the process and the best way of finding the right keywords to rank with is using keyword research tools. There are various options available, such as Ahref’s Keyword Explorer, and Ubersuggest. ExplodingTopics.com and SEMrush, among others. To demonstrate how these tools can help you decide on the best keywords you can rank based on various parameters, we’re going to use Ahref’s Keyword Explorer.

In the example above, the keyword entered is “keyword explorer.” What’s great about Ahref’s is that it gives you various details about the keyword, such as the difficulty, the cost per click, the percentage of organic clicks, along with the global search volume with a country-wise breakdown.

Every tool that we mentioned previously offers different elements that might work better for some than others. It’s up to you to make a decision based on your needs. However, each of them works brilliantly to guide you to those keywords with a higher chance of ranking.

Deciding which ones will have a better chance of ranking further depends on several factors. For instance, long-tail, niche keywords in your domain that have less competition, or in the case of Afref’s tool, a lesser search volume, have better chances of ranking higher, and if optimized right, sometimes even on the first page of Google’s search results. As we’ve mentioned before, this is crucial since most people don’t go past this page in search of more information. Thus, your goal must be to rank among the top results on the first page to have a higher chance of people clicking on your content.

4. Test Keywords Using Google Ads Campaigns

Testing your keywords using Google Ads is an important step before using them in your content. This can be done using the “exact match” option. This is a great way for you to figure out how much traffic these keywords can generate in the real world.

Run the campaign for 24 hours and see how many clicks and impressions were generated. Of these, find out how many converted to being customers, and then calculate how much this generates in terms of revenue. The results can help choose between keywords that have a higher chance of conversions, as opposed to those that don’t, leaving you with clarity on which keywords to finally use in your content!

Read More: SEO Keyword Research and Analysis – Boost Organic Traffic

In Conclusion

Keyword research is a process that requires dedication and a fair amount of time. However, the benefits really pay off. Using the above ways of finding the right keywords to tank your business higher can save precious time that would otherwise be wasted in a trial-and-error approach. We hope this guide on keyword research helped you identify the best ways to optimize your content for the best results.

Now, it’s your turn! Dive into the rewarding process of keyword research and let us know to what extent it helped increase the number of clicks and conversions. On the contrary, if you’re on the lookout for content writing services that take the task of keyword research off your plate, WittyPen is the platform for you! Good luck!

March 22, 2022
7 Tips for Effective Fintech Content Marketing – Wittypen

The importance of content marketing has been well established as we transition into the coming years. While it primarily serves to engage with your audience across social channels, it also helps educate them, thus generating leads and resulting in better conversions. While content marketing is now the norm regardless of your domain, each demands its unique approach.

Financial Technology, or Fintech as it’s commonly referred to, is one such domain. Its content marketing needs are unique, simply because of the nature of the domain itself. Fintechs rely heavily on their audience’s trust, and they can only achieve this by educating them about their products and their benefits with the utmost transparency. If you’re a fintech or are planning on starting one, this article will give you eight key tips for successful fintech content marketing.

7 Best Fintech Content Marketing Tips That Drive Results

1. Content Marketing Must Be Backed by a Content Strategy

Every content marketing initiative must follow a content strategy. If you’re wondering how the two are different, here’s a quick roundup – content marketing includes blogs, guest posts, white papers, and reports, while a content strategy gives you a framework that sets goals and helps measure the efficacy of these marketing practices. Without a content strategy, content marketing would simply involve creating and publishing content, and hoping it brings in desirable results.

On the other hand, a content strategy helps lay down a set of objectives and metrics that form the foundation of your content marketing efforts. Let’s take a look at Google Pay, a UPI-based payment app launched in India in September 2017.

For instance, in its second year, the app saw a 3x growth to 67 million monthly active users. Let’s say for instance, that their target as per their marketing strategy was to reach about 50 million monthly active users in the same period. This objective would then form part of their strategy, thus laying down an objective for their content marketing efforts.

The same works for every fintech – a content strategy is a must for fintech content marketing to be successful.

2. Your Content Must Focus on Educating Your Audience

Fintech can be a rather complicated domain for the average consumer to understand. The same goes for specific fintech offerings. The overarching goal of fintech content marketing must thus be to educate your audience about the benefits of your product or service and highlight the problems it solves. You must remember that the average consumer probably won’t understand the technology powering your product. On the contrary, their primary concern is knowing how it can make their financial operations easier while being safe.

Let’s take the example of Google Pay again. When the government at the centre banned the 500 and 1000 denominations, people found it rather difficult to always have cash in their wallets (as banks and ATMs were unable to meet the demand for money) This demonetisation is what formed the bedrock for the rise of cashless payments in India.

However, suppose Google Pay was advertised initially on the back of the technology behind UPI. In that case, the chances are that it wouldn’t have achieved the kind of initial success that it did. This is because the UPI system had already been launched a year earlier.

Instead, their approach was to simply tell their audiences how their product would make it easier for them to safely make payments using their smartphones, and thus eliminate the need to carry cash. This, to put it in specific terms, was their value proposition. Add to this an enticing rewards program, and you have yourself a product that continues to grow steadily even three years later.

The unsaid factor here is trust. Every fintech must get their consumers to trust them, and understandably so, especially since their usage relies on our money being safe.

3. Your Content Should Cater to Every Stage of the Marketing Funnel

Given the nature of the domain and the technicalities that come with it, the buying cycle is longer than most others. In fact, it can take an average of three months to even a year to convert a lead into a customer, regardless of whether you’re business or customer-facing.

Additionally, given that success as a fintech relies heavily on gaining your audience’s trust, it’s pertinent that your approach to fintech content marketing is consistent while continuing to educate. This can only be achieved through consistently marketing your offering across all social channels, while also addressing any possible concerns your audiences may have.

A simple example could be the safety of their money itself. As a content marketer, it’s your job to convince your audiences that their money will indeed be safe and that your product has a lot to offer them.

Going further down the funnel as well, your content marketing must be tailored to your buyer personas. Doing this can include highlighting your product’s benefits in light of its competition, to further convince potential leads. The same goes for the final stage of the funnel as well.

However, this isn’t the end of it. Customer retention will further rely on how well you continue to support existing users of your product. Addressing their pain points, highlighting how the product can be used to make transactions easier, and assuring them of consistent improvements to your software will play a huge role.

4. Engage Audiences Across All Social Channels

Every social media platform presents its own potential leads. If you are to successfully establish yourself as a product that’s worth considering, you must consistently interact with audiences across all social channels as part of your fintech’s content marketing. Additionally, sharing all your content on your social media handles is essential as it broadens your footprint.

All throughout 2020, and even going ahead, video is poised to be one of the most effective content marketing tools. And this holds even truer for the fintech sector. You must utilize high-quality video content that explains your products and services to your audiences, more importantly, because the video is a lot more attractive than text-rich blogs.

To make the process of handling your social media easier, you should look into a social media management tool to organize and schedule all your social content based on your content calendar. This will ensure consistency, which is key to building your authority on these platforms.

5. Hire Expert Content Writers to Create Your Content for You

Every single day can be challenging when handling and growing your fintech. And now that content has been established as your best bet, you must ensure that the content you put out is authoritative, well-written, and comprehensive, to build yourself as a thought leader in your domain.

Sometimes, however, this is easier said than done. Smaller teams can often find it hard to handle the tech, logistics, and content all at the same time. This is where it’s wise to hire expert content writers who can create content for your fintech with your vision in mind. It takes a huge chunk of work off your plate and gives you more time to focus on improving your product.

6. Building Backlinks Will Greatly Help Build Your Authority

Going ahead, generating backlinks is bound to be one of the best ways for you to build your authority online. Backlinks are absolutely crucial, as they lend credibility to your content. Remember, Google won’t see your content as credible unless people link to it and rely on it as part of theirs. These backlinks will also help increase your domain authority or rating over time, which goes a long way in getting your content onto that first page.

The first thing to do is to identify what kind of backlinks you’d like to achieve. These could be from authoritative websites in your domain or those that include your keyword in their anchor text. These are the websites your backlinking strategy should be aimed at.

Further, you must also create content that’s more likely to be linked. These could be original research, diagrams, infographics, and even list posts. When your content consists of these elements, it’s more likely to be linked, thus boosting your domain’s authority over time.

Additionally, email marketing is also a brilliant way to gain backlinks. If you want to find out how you can effectively use backlinks as a part of your content marketing strategy, check out our in-depth guide to building backlinks.

7. Create High-Quality Content That Ranks Higher on Search Engines

Last but not least, creating high-quality content should always be your top priority. The best way to achieve this is by assuming a content gap in whichever topic you’re creating content on. By doing this, you automatically aim to be as comprehensive as possible. It also leads you to maintain a sense of consistency across all your content, thus reflecting your brand’s tone.

With Google’s algorithms constantly being updated and improved, the need for high-quality content is essential if you want it to be present on that lucrative first page of Google’s results.

Read More: 25+ Content Marketing Tools – Drive Growth For Your Business

In Conclusion

Fintechs find themselves in a unique position owing to the length of the buying cycle. The need to establish the truth is paramount, and even more so when you’re business-facing. The best way for you to establish this trust is through effective and consistent content marketing. We hope this guide helped you figure out what you should include in your fintech content marketing strategy.

At WittyPen, we strive to create high-quality content that helps scale your business. If you’re in the market for expert content writers in your domain that you can trust, check out our services here.

Until then, good luck with growing your fintech!

March 1, 2022
SEO in the Last Decade: Important takeaways for Organic Traffic
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has gone through a sea of changes over the past decade. SEO has always been a crucial part of a brand’s content marketing efforts, but these changes have meant that the ecosystem is constantly in flux and that brands need to keep on top of these changes to succeed.

As we came to the end of the last decade, we saw a core algorithm update from Google, which shook a lot of websites and was talked about in the SEO circle. After analyzing the recent update, our belief in the suggestions listed in this article has become stronger than ever!

Now that we’re firmly in the next decade, consider this article a trip down the SEO memory lane, as we review the key SEO takeaways from the last decade.

SEO Takeaways From the Last Decade – What Have We Learnt?

Align Your Content With User And Search Intent

When planning your content, it’s important to focus more on solving your user’s problems, and less on your products, services, and offerings. Google tends to prioritize content that makes it easier for users to find the right answers to their search queries.

With the recent update, it was also observed that content that was structured well with a high focus on headings, saw a significant increase in the SERPs.

Another SEO trend that has contributed to the shift in user intent is the increasing use of voice search. Since people tend to ‘speak’ to Google as they would naturally speak to one another, the algorithm now demands that content marketers, in turn, create content that reflects this change.

Additionally, by curating your content to best answer what users are looking for, you stand a better chance of being ranked higher, which will result in more traffic and leads.

Long-Form Quality Content Over Mere Quantity, Any Day

This is one of the most debated topics among SEO pros and marketers. While the fact that users have a shorter attention span than ever holds significant weight, one needs to understand the factors that help your content reach its intended audience.

Content above 2000 words has been shown to rank much better and outperform blogs with 1000 words or less. The reason why long-form content ranks faster is pretty simple – to write a high-value, long-form article, you need to put in a ton of research, which is bound to provide immense value to the end user. And any content adding value to the users is given importance on SERP.

To validate the point on short attention spans, a user need not spend a significant time reading the entire content, but only a little to read specific information as per the core intent. This solves the user’s problem and benefits your website, all at once.

The ideal approach, in fact, is to go as far as assuming the presence of a content gap in your domain or the subject of your content, and aim to fill it. This means curating content on the assumption that yours is the only piece of information on the subject. This makes you come across as more authoritative, and is also great for SEO!

This ensures that readers find all the information they need by reading your content, reinforcing your value in their minds. Additionally, when readers are left satisfied, they’re also more likely to sign up for your services.

Double Down Your Focus On UI/UX

Websites have long since been the digital version of a storefront. The more attractive it is, the more likely it is that people will spend their time going through it to see what’s on offer. Over the years, however, the technicalities involved in optimizing websites to changing algorithms and user behavior have increased.

Today, with search engines rewarding crisp, high-quality content, along with reducing time and attention spans on the part of the users, website content has had to shorten, while remaining equally, if not more informative. Here at WittyPen, we’ve revamped our website to reflect these changes and keep up with the times. Our website is now crisp, yet gives you all the information you’ll ever need about our services in a neat, easy-to-understand layout.

As you can see, the website is easy to read and navigate, with the chatbot always being at the tip of your fingerprint should you need detailed information.

Additionally, ensuring that websites load quickly and making them mobile-friendly has now become the norm. With people across the world relying primarily on their mobiles to consume content, brands have had to ensure that their websites are optimized to deliver the best results through this medium. At WittyPen too, we have had to optimize our website for mobiles to make it easy to access and readable at the same time.

In the image above, you can see that the website is very readable, the menu is easy to access, and so is the chatbot.

SEO Now Requires a Great Deal of Planning

As mentioned earlier, SEO is no longer about simply stuffing a set of random keywords in a piece of content and expecting it to yield results. Today, achieving desirable results requires a comprehensive SEO plan. This includes, but is not limited to in-depth keyword research, identifying keywords, including long-tail keywords, creating content based on these relevant keywords, uniform social media marketing across platforms, backlinking, and building content communities.

Combining these elements in a carefully detailed plan that’s executed by a team of experts is what is now needed to build your website’s authority online. One can see a brilliant example of how consistent planning had led to achieving better results with Neil Patel’s website. As he outlined in his blog while planning his content marketing strategy in terms of using keywords, for example, using the right ones led to a significant increase in the number of clicks and impressions on his website.

Source

Backlinking Has Become Tremendously Valuable

Guest blogging has become the most common mode of generating backlinks in recent years. At its very foundation, it serves as a give-and-take between the host and the individual providing the guest post. However, its benefits for your website’s SEO as we’ve come to experience them include –
- Building your brand’s visibility beyond the confines of your own website.
- Building its authority in your community or domain.
- Generating more backlinks.
However, the backlinks themselves aren’t enough – the aim is to capture and convert them into subscribers. Going ahead, guest blogging is poised to continue to be a viable and rewarding strategy. It will also play a huge role in building content communities, which in themselves are likely to be among the most impactful content marketing trends, as we have highlighted in our previous blog post.

Also Read: 25+ Content Marketing Tools – Drive Growth For Your Business

In Conclusion

SEO today has evolved significantly from the nascent stage it was at ten years ago. Change after change has meant that content marketing is no longer a one-person job, but one that demands a comprehensive plan and an entire team of determined marketers. However, they’ve also paved the way for newer ideas that can significantly drive traffic and result in valuable leads.

We hope this article has helped you recall the freshen-up memories, understand the key SEO takeaways from the last decade, and inform you of what’s in store, such as long-form content, capitalizing on content communities, and so on.
January 15, 2022
5 Key Tips to Boost your B2B Content Marketing Efforts

B2B content marketing is defined as a marketing approach that involves attracting and retaining business through strategic marketing with the ultimate aim of converting them to actionable leads. While the ultimate goal of B2B marketing might be the same as B2C marketing, one must remember that B2B marketing often aims to forge long-term relations.

The foundation of a B2B relationship is thus the trust between the two businesses. Buyers want to be certain about to who they’re making a long-term commitment, and it thus falls upon the service provider to effectively build that level of confidence among their potential leads.

This begs the question – how should marketers think of B2B content marketing to drive the best possible results? We’ve detailed an approach that’s sure to help you achieve your content marketing goals going ahead. Read on to find out more.

B2B Content Marketing Practices That Drive Results

1. Write to Convert, and Not Always to Rank Higher on Search Engines

Content marketers across industries have always given keyword research a very high priority. This helps their content rank higher on search engines, which inevitably gives them the visibility that every brand aims to achieve on the web. However, in this quest to constantly rank higher, marketers often optimize content solely for keywords, rather than tuning it to drive meaningful conversions.

In fact, using keywords in a few strategic places such as the title, subheaders, and a few times across the body is more than adequate. The larger focus, however, must be on answering the user’s query. This approach is one that’ll benefit you in the long term, as opposed to simply focusing on ranking higher. The reason behind this is that while being higher up on the list of search results might give you more clicks, people will see through your content if it doesn’t really give them the answers they’re looking for, taking them more often than not to your competitor’s website. Creating content based on ‘user intent’ is the way to go.

2. Create Content That’s Both Evergreen and Answers Specific Questions

The ideal B2B content marketing strategy must include creating two types of content – that which answers specific questions and holds true over time.

At WittyPen, for example, while it would certainly make sense for us to create content that provides a guide, as we have done here, the fact remains that by 2022, it will become largely redundant. On the other hand, if we were to create content on the topic of what we’ve learned from SEO over the past decade, or about the myths surrounding hiring in-house writers, viz-a-viz the benefits of freelance writers, we’d have content that continues to remain evergreen and relevant through the years.

However, to maintain this content as evergreen, this content must be revised and updated with time, and also constantly interlinked with newer content produced as part of your marketing efforts. This approach ensures that your content is more reliable and that your blog is a one-stop shop for all the necessary information in your domain.

3. Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points and Cater to Them to Build Trust

As a content marketer, you must reach out to your audience through every step of their buyer journey. This starts from the top of the funnel and all the way to the bottom. Through every stage, be it awareness, consideration, or purchase, your content must speak to the audience.

For instance, at the awareness stage, your content must inform your audience about who you are, and what services you offer, while also making a strong case for the need for this service. At consideration, your objective must be to make a strong case for your offerings viz-a-viz your competitors, while the final stage requires giving your leads a push to sign up or make a purchase.

While this is a tried and tested approach, it mainly benefits you as a business. However, your content must also benefit your audience by recognizing their pain points or issues and creating content that acknowledges and solves them. This approach is of immense value, as it shows to your audience or leads that you understand their needs and care for them. This, in turn, will benefit you, as you will be seen as the only natural option for them to even consider, while also building trust, which as we discussed, is the foundation for a successful relationship between two businesses.

4. Continually Track the Success of Your Content

Your content marketing efforts will not bear much fruit if you don’t continually track its success. This involves analyzing its strengths and weaknesses to get an idea of how you can improve your approach. The use of a tracking system comes in very handy here, and there various options to choose from. Ahrefs is one such example.

A major aspect of tracking is also a content-gap analysis. Once you’ve figured out what content you have, a content gap analysis helps identify gaps you can then fill. This helps make your approach a lot more comprehensive, and a detailed plan can also help you streamline your marketing efforts across various channels.

5. Keep Track of Your Competitors’ B2B Content Marketing Initiatives

The world of marketing is highly competitive, and will only continue to be so as more and more startups surface across various domains. Marketing your content, thus, cannot exist in isolation, and keeping track of your competitor’s content marketing efforts becomes of great importance. This helps achieve two main things – you can keep yourself aware of the topics they’re discussing, while also keeping track of the channels they’re using, and how they’re doing so.

Also Read: 25+ Content Marketing Tools – Drive Growth For Your Business

In Conclusion

Marketing your content is only successful with a streamlined approach to promotion. The latter, however, is heavily dependent on the former. A B2B content marketing strategy that guides your audiences through their buyer journey and continues to support them with the aim of retaining them is key to your business’ success. We hope this guide has helped you understand how to tune your content marketing efforts to drive the best results!

February 15, 2021