Content marketing skills you should master

Under the title “the death of search results and what it means for marketers,” Michael Stelzner, executive director of Social Media Examiner, one of the leading content companies specializing in marketing, predicted a significant decline in the importance of search results due to Google’s keenness to provide answers to users in excerpts and voice assistants without visiting any Web page. He came to the important conclusion that the only content that people will read in the future is the content of expert advice and opinions that neither excerpts nor voice assistants are able to provide. Whether” Stelzner ” is accurate or exaggerated, this prediction, along with the opinions of many experts, emphasizes the importance of having high-level content marketing skills, which ensures a brilliantly competitive content industry.

1. Write a stylish and convincing text
In 2012, former US President Barack Obama’s campaign was criticized for making an obvious linguistic mistake that was only a missing space between two letters, using the word “along” instead of “a long”. Spelling and grammatical errors, no matter how simple, damage the brand’s reputation and give the impression of Anarchy and lack of professionalism.

If you want to practice content marketing seriously, you need to write neat, clear, error-free sentences. This requires that you are familiar with basic spelling and grammar rules and use punctuation correctly. Many Arabic grammar books, video lessons on grammar, spelling and the basics of proofreading are available on the internet, they are even available in interactive form with specialized teachers on the khamsat market.

Content marketing does not just aim to tell people facts and tips in what looks like journalistic templates, but it primarily aims to turn the reader into a customer and increase sales, and here comes the role of the second part of this skill of content marketing skills, which is persuasive writing.

Persuasive writing is an attractive, informal writing that emotionally engages with the reader, increasing the likelihood that he will respond to the action to be taken, whether it is a decisive response, such as making a purchase, or a flexible response, such as completing an article or revisiting a blog.

Persuasive writing uses many methods such as addressing emotions and understanding needs, storytelling and conversational style. The writer’s choice of words and the tone in which he speaks play a vital role in the success of this type of content.

Persuasion in content marketing also intersects with copywriting, as it uses an advertising tone in a subdued tone in the folds of the offer and call to action, but it gets out of the limitations of advertising such as short, concise and direct phrases to the breadth of creativity in the use of long sentences.

Besides, as in copywriting, a content marketer needs to write with a unique brand voice to ensure consistency of the overall tone, which requires his ability to color the style depending on the needs of his customers from different commercial activities.

How to be convincing The basis of persuasion is to provide the client with an effective solution and be credible. This is followed by some techniques such as attention to the attractiveness of the title and subheadings and call to action (CTA), and the use of conversational style means that you address the reader by adding the first person sometimes with the use of the exact words used by the audience in describing their needs and problems. In addition, approach the topic from new and interesting angles.

2. Professional journalistic research
A group of the most successful content marketers was born from the womb of journalism, the reason for this is that working in journalism develops an excellent research skill that enables a journalist to confirm every claim he makes in his article from reliable sources.

On a personal level, working in journalism has helped me a lot in moving to work in content marketing. Help me in researching the needs of my customers, their competitors and the product on the basis of which the content was created, and create a spirit of perseverance in the search until reaching the desired useful and reliable answer.

There are many methods of professional journalistic research, starting from talking to clients and picking up the tip of the thread to find out their interests and pain points and producing attractive relevant content, up to using effective search techniques on Google such as quotation marks, searching within the Domain domain and searching for certain types of files (PDF, for example) and within a specific time range.. Etc.

It extends to distinguishing between specialized and non-specialized sources and giving them a relative weight that measures their importance to decide to what extent they will be assigned in the content industry.

3. Understand the audience well
No matter how great the content you write, you will achieve the desired results by turning a reader into a buyer only if you know exactly who the audience you are talking to is. The fact is that target audience research has become the cornerstone of the marketing process, and the more closely you know your audience, the easier the task of creating the content they will devour becomes.

Again, the conversation in content marketing with the audience is flavored with friendship conversations; so the better you get to know this friend the better you can make your message more personal and attractive. To master this content marketing skill, put on a detective hat and look for clues about your audience using the following five tools:

Search for topics relevant to your industry on discussion forums such as I/O accounts. Note the conversations that take place between them and what their desires, dreams and frustrations are, this will help you understand the audience on a deeper level.
Use Google Analytics to get to know your visitors more closely, this tool allows to find out valuable demographic information about the audience, such as age, geographical location, gender and interests.