Even if using AI. there are six things you need to create good content that separates you from your competitors. This blog is about how to produce quality content for your business and will go through the basic elements. AI will help you generate content quickly, but there is still some prep work involved!
1. Create persona profiles
You need to create a profile of your buyer persona(s). This is also called your ‘Ideal Client Profile‘ or ‘Ideal Reader Profile‘. This should contain common traits, such as their likes, dislikes and, if you are selling a service or product, their common pain points and buying behaviours. You can use AI to help you but rely on your knowledge to create informative profiles.
2. Create a voice and be consistent with it
You need to decide on your tone of voice (TOV) or the voice of your brand. This should consider how you want to sound and what your audience/ideal clients/buyer needs to hear. Be true to yourself – faking it to make it is exhausting and will make you feel phoney, and people will sniff the insincerity if you cannot consistently pull off a voice that is not yours.
AI generally produces bland ‘markety’ voices, so edit your content to sound more like your chosen TOV. Using a style guide or a word style guide will help you stay consistent. (Sign up for my newsletter for a FREE style sheet.)
There are a lot of books, blogs and courses about copywriting, marketing and writing within genres. But remember, there is no ‘one way’ to sell things. There are some things that work by being pushy and playing into feelings of scarcity and fear. There are other things styles that are more appropriate, such as building trust, being generous, and allowing people to return to you. If you have created in-depth persona profiles (keep building these and reviewing these) and if you create an authentic voice that is true to you, you will find your market.
3. Create a goal before each new piece of content
What is the goal of the message you are writing? For example, are you aiming to inform and be helpful? A thought-leader? Get people to sign up for a course.
What are the keywords of your content? Keep a list and use these keywords within the text (headings, subheadings and paragraphs). Focusing on keywords instead of SEO is easier if you don’t have an SEO team, and it will help you to focus your content. (Remember that you need to keep generating content for increased viewership.)
(There are people who push SEO as an absolute necessity. However, search engines are becoming better at looking for genuinely useful content that people want to read, not information contrived to get clicks. No one likes websites that aren’t useful and a waste of time. Google knows this. So instead of thinking about SEO, think about keywords to help google understand the main point of your text so that it can help people find you.)
4. Think about your keywords
How do you know what your keywords should be? Ask your AI or try a free keyword search app. Ubersuggest from Neil Patel is free. I use AIO SEO for my website and blogs. Remember to ensure your keyword appears in the URL for the page you are writing on.
5. Your headlines need to
answer a question
Keep it simple. Being clever is risky. If you are working on online content or content that will appear as hard copies, try to phrase your title as a question or an answer to a question using the keywords you’ve identified. This is because when we use search engines, we often have a question in mind. The headlines (the H1, H2, etc) of your website are where you want to show that offer answers.
Our questions are around when, where, what, how, who and why. For example:
- ‘Where is Dollywood?’
- ‘When does a baby learn to walk?’
- ‘What is the warmest fabric to wear in winter?’
- ‘How do you cook squid?’
- ‘Who were the Phonecians?’
- ‘Why do I need to use a primer?’
Using your persona profiles and TOV, you should know what types of questions your audience has. Your content should be an answer or a reply.
At the end of your content, people often like being told what to do next, so remember to give instructions, create listicles or create a single Call To Action (CTA).
6. Quality checks
If you don’t have a proofreader or editor to help with quality and formatting checks, remember to edit and proofread before publishing your work. Give yourself a break for a few days so your brain can catch mistakes later. Writing can always be improved so give yourself time to get it right. (Even someone like me needs an extra pair of eyes on my writing!).
To help you, try using AI that specifically works on long-form text. ChatGPT does not actually so well with long-form writing nor does it understand context well (at the time of writing). Apps like Grammarly and ProwritingAid (which are AI) are good options. MS Word’s Editor is helpful, and a website called Hemingway App (which is free) is useful for writing more plainly. None of the software is perfect, but they do a good job, and using an app or two is better than nothing.
However, if you really want to create a finessed, on-point sales page and you have a budget, hire a human copywriter who will capture your voice. Good copywriters are expensive, but writing for sales in a particular niche is a craft that takes a long time to learn. Copywriters have experience and will think about how every word will land (like a poet!).
If you are writing a blog or newsletter, consider an editor or proofreader to help you look like a professional who can be trusted.
In the latter two instances, make sure you prepare a good brief. You can check my blog on how to find writing services.
Summary
Remember, there are six things you need to do before writing and using AI to create good content:
- Define your audience by creating profiles
- Define your voice
- Decide on the goal of each piece of writing
- Decide on the keywords to make your content appear in searches
- Create a headline that shows you answer a question
- Do a quality check by giving yourself time to return to your writing and using a few apps. For more professional outputs, hire a human copywriter (for sales) or hire a proofreader or an editor for other content.
Keep this as a list somewhere to keep you on track. We all get better with practice and you will too!
