6 Essential Skills Every Content Writer Needs to Know

Content writing has been the base upon which internet marketing has rested for decades now. During that time, it evolved from mere text on web pages to a sophisticated art form that drives engagement, educates audiences, and converts visitors into customers. In today’s digital landscape, where attention spans are fleeting and competition is fierce, mastering this art is more important than ever before.

Simply put, this art form requires you to wear many hats. It’s no longer enough to just write well and hope for the best. Instead, you must create experiences that resonate with readers and compel them to take action. Today, we’re going to dive into some essential skills that can help you level up as a content writer, so let’s get straight into it.

   

Keyword Research Tools: How and Why You Should Use Them

Boosting online visibility, and by extension keyword research, is a foundational aspect of being a content writer. With 90% of user journeys starting with a search engine, optimizing your content for SERPs is crucial. Here are some essential tools to help you find the right keywords and enhance your content strategy.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner provides keyword ideas and estimates search volumes, all at no cost. What it lacks in competitor analysis, it more than makes up for by providing highly accurate data straight from the source.

SemRush

If you want something a bit more comprehensive, SemRush offers an extensive database and competitor analysis tools. Features like Keyword Difficulty scores and other SEO metrics help in developing a solid keyword strategy, which more

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is widely considered to be the most powerful SEO research tool in the world, and for good reason. Providing a combination of deep backlink analysis, content gap identification, and KD scores, plus a slew of other features, it’s no wonder that professional content writing services around the world flock to this tool.

SEO Beyond Keywords

Let’s say you hire a content writing service and ask them about their SEO strategy. If it revolves entirely around keywords, that’s a major red flag. Successful SEO strategies require a much more nuanced understanding of how search engines work and how users behave. After all, nearly 95% of keywords receive just 10 or fewer searches a month, so there’s only so far they can take you. Check out these more advanced SEO concepts you can try out.

Rich Snippets and Schema Markup

Rich Snippets

Schema Markup

Rich snippets are enhanced search results like product pricing, dates, and reviews, whereas a schema markup consists of structured HTML tags. Both boost your content’s visibility and should be considered part of the writing process.

User Intent

A good content writer needs to target specific user intent. Are your readers seeking information, or are they looking to make a transaction? Tailor your content accordingly and your engagement and click rate will skyrocket.

Semantic SEO

Using keywords and search terms is one thing, but you need to go a few steps further if you want your content to rank on the SERP. Adding contextual, related terms and phrases can make your keywords much more effective, and your content will read more naturally as well!

Ethical Persuasion Techniques

Building trust and credibility among your customers is critical to surviving in today’s business landscape. With one in three customers paying extra to work with companies they trust, cultivating trust can help you charge a premium for your products and services. Ethical persuasion techniques help with that. Here are three you should keep in mind.

Authority

People tend to trust authority figures, which can be a big help from a content marketing standpoint. As a content writer, you must establish yourself as an authority by demonstrating adequate knowledge and experience in your field. Showcase your credentials and personal experience to really drive the point home.

Social Proof

Testimonials and endorsements from satisfied customers can seriously boost your content’s traction. Highlight social proof to reassure readers that your content is reliable and trustworthy.

Authenticity

Telling you to “be yourself” might sound cliche, but it’s essential for creating content that resonates with audiences. Be genuine, be transparent, and communicate honestly with your reader base.

Behavioral Psychology Techniques

The main goal of any content writing service is to subtly influence consumer behavior. There are other priorities too, but for now, let’s focus on behavioral psychology techniques you can incorporate into your writing to effectively influence readers.

Loss Aversion

Are there potential losses your readers might experience if they don’t take a certain action? If so, it’s a good idea to highlight it. Focus on scarcity or time limits on availing various products, services, or deals to gently nudge your readers and bump up conversion rates.

Choice Architecture

This also helps with guiding users to specific actions. Choice architecture involves structuring your content based on choices the reader might need to make to convince them to go for the products and services you’re marketing.

Behavioral Segmentation

No matter who your audience is, they’ll be more engaged if you adopt a personalized approach. Segmenting them with tools like Salesforce can help you better understand how to make content that’s in line with their needs.

Audience Psychographics

Learning audience psychographics techniques can make it much easier to zero in on the right target audience. It gives you insight into their values, interests, and desires, all of which can inform the content you create. Check out these three techniques.

Persona Development

Use HubSpot to develop a persona for your target audience. Just input any data you’ve collected into the given fields and you’ll have a rough idea of who your average reader is.

Segmentation Strategy

Your readers might follow vastly different lifestyles and have unique personality traits. Segmenting your content according to these factors is crucial, since you might need to switch your writing style based on who you’re targeting.

Values Alignment

Any piece of content you write needs to have values that align with your reader base. The messaging needs to be clear and concise, but you can’t just pander to their views. You must show that your values align with theirs through consistent messaging.

CRO Optimization

CRO, short for Conversion Rate Optimization, is all about boosting the number of site visitors that click on a CTA, or perform some other desired action. Here are three key techniques for getting the job done.

Clickmaps and Scrollmaps

Clickmap

Scrollmap

It helps to have a visual representation of how your readers interact with your content. Clickmaps and scrollmaps help with that by providing info on where users click and how far down they scroll. Adjust your content based on areas that seem to get high engagement.

Natural Language Processing Tools

NLP algorithms can interpret meaning and sentiment for AI, which can be a big help for you while you write content. For example, Google Cloud Natural Language API can ensure your content is both keyword rich and semantically relevant. In other words, your text will be optimized not only for search engines but also for understanding by human readers.

Conversion Funnels Analysis

Content writing is a key part of the conversion funnel, playing a major role through every stage from awareness to the actual conversion itself. By analyzing where readers drop off in the funnel, you can figure out how to write better content in the future.

We Provide Holistic Content Writing Solutions

At Content Development Pros, we understand that content writing is about so much more than just putting words to paper. It combines elements of creative writing and journalistic research with sophisticated SEO and digital marketing techniques to develop copy that drives results.

Your content must be well-researched, but it should also cut through the noise with the appropriate keywords and metadata. It should use advanced behavioral psychology and ethical persuasion techniques based on audience psychographics.

That’s why our content writing team consists of seasoned veterans who not only write well, but understand the technical side of the process too. As a result, we’ve cultivated a huge list of happy clients over the past 15 years.