Engineering Copywriter Blog

Content marketing tips and insights to help grow your engineering audience

July 27, 2022

How Do You Create Content That Will Attract More Visitors?

Create content

Modern digital marketing strategies are built on the foundation of content creation. In broad strokes, creating content means conducting research, strategizing, turning your ideas into high-value material, and distributing what you’ve created to a target audience. There are many forms of digital content — pillar content, infographics, whitepapers, case studies, and social media posts, to name just a few. The primary goal of content creation is to attract leads and convert them into customers. It should build your brand’s thought leadership while also providing your audience with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.

New content gets introduced to the internet every day. Yours must be of excellent quality to stand out and create a good impression among both current and prospective customers. This implies that it is not only well-written and designed but also targeted to the needs of your customers.  The benefit you gain from your brand’s content is proportional to the amount of effort you invest in its creation.  High-quality content will help you:

  •      –  Get noticed as an authority in your field
  •      –  Expand your subscriber and email lists
  •      –  Boost your website traffic
  •      –  Generate more income

Follow these steps to create content that generates leads.

writing for engineers

1. Set your goals

Create contentSet goals in the early stages of planning your content marketing strategy. Perhaps you want to increase the number of visitors to your website and generate more leads. Give yourself a specific target that will make a notable difference in your company’s bottom line but which is also reasonably attainable. After you’ve chosen your metrics, every piece of content should help you get closer to those goals.

2. Know who you want to reach

Developing a content marketing strategy demands more than dreaming up writing topics. You must first determine who you intend to write for and how you will communicate with them. In a perfect world, you’d be able to interact with every visitor to your website, but that’s not realistic. Instead, create buyer personas that represent the type of people who would like to read your content and eventually become customers.

Buyer personas are built upon research, brainstorming, and constant reevaluation. The outcome must be a clear picture of who is interested in your business and who you want to market to. Each buyer persona follows a unique path toward purchasing your products. This is called the buyer’s journey.  Your individual customers will never be at exactly the same step of that journey at the same time. It’s thus important to craft content for each stage. Everyone who visits your website should feel like they’re getting useful, relevant information. Then, when they move to the next stage, they’ll find that other pieces of your existing content have gained new importance.

3. Choose the appropriate content type

The most appealing type of content changes as your customer moves through their buyer’s journey. Ultimately, you need to determine your audience’s standpoint and meet them where they are. Your goal is to discover what your prospects most enjoy learning and select the best style of content to deliver that message. Remember that the content type you choose must suit the target audience. You shouldn’t necessarily use the same format for all of your content; the point is to learn which type best fits your customers. Consider the following factors to determine which content type to use.

  •      –  What stage of the buyer’s journey does each item address?
  •      –  How easy is it for your audience to consume content?
  •      –  Where do your prospects spend most of their online time?
  •      –  What type of content can you create consistently?
  •      –  Do you have the resources to create content at a competitive quality level?

4. Keyword research

Create contentThe importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) cannot be over-emphasized. Keyword research is an important step in this process because it helps you develop your content plan. It’s not enough to merely know who you’re creating content for; you also need to know what keywords to target. Online search engines can then put you in front of many more eyes. Each keyword or key phrase will have an effective ranking that you should discover during your research. That process will also reveal other keywords that you can consider for later use. Avoid high-volume keywords at first because they are quite competitive. Try to also line your keyword difficulty up with your company’s domain authority. There are various techniques for conducting keyword research, but the following are the most common:

  •      –  Use keyword research tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Surfer to find relevant keywords.
  •      –  Enter your potential keyword into a search engine and see the results.
  •      –  Check for related searches at the bottom of the search engine results page.

5. Content plan

You can start developing a content plan after doing your keyword research. A content plan describes the content you want to create and establishes guidelines for how it should be crafted. There are many factors that go into a successful content plan. Before drafting yours, take some time to consider the following:

  •      –  Do your topics line up with the themes and messaging of your content strategy?
  •      –  Is every piece of content going to be relevant and helpful to your target audience?
  •      –  What is the most relevant style of content for your target audience? For instance, are your customers more interested in blog posts than long-form content?
  •      –  Does your industry have a seasonal or promotional period? What impact will this have on your plans?
  •      –  What content opportunities have you discovered while researching your competitors? For instance, does your target audience want data-driven whitepapers but aren’t getting them from your competitors? You could fill that demand.
  •      –  Do you have a content repurposing plan? Is it possible to split your eBook into a series of articles? Could you create an infographic and an interactive video using the same data?

6. Writing process

After successfully drafting your content plan, the next step is to actually write. Keep in mind the following when creating your engineering content.

  •      –  Write to your buyer persona. Communicate in their language, address their needs, and don’t be hesitant to ask what content they’re looking for.
  •      –  Use titles, headers, and meta-descriptions in your content to grab your audience’s interest. Your writing’s value should be apparent right in the title.
  •      –  Create unique content. Look for topics that haven’t been covered before, or write on popular topics in a way that speaks to your specific audience.
  •      –  Stick to one clear idea. You should avoid confusing your audience by attempting to discuss different topics in one article.
  •      –  Keep it simple and concise. People expect information quickly. Walls of text get ignored. Instead, create a professional presentation and break up complex ideas into digestible portions.

7. Publishing

Upload your content once it is ready and thoroughly reviewed. This is the stage at which a content management system (CMS) can really shine. The CMS acts as a single-point clearinghouse that can push your content out to all your relevant outlets. You may have content going to your blog, an email list, and four different social media accounts, but you can manage it all in one place. Many CMS programs also help you analyze marketing data points. Perform your content audits and evaluate which strategies are working best so you can properly focus your efforts.

Engineering content

Content that generates leads

Content marketing is a great marketing technique that focuses on delivering valuable, consistent content to attract a stable target audience and, eventually, drive new sales. To be effective, you must create content that your customers will love. Contact us today if you need help creating content that will help attract many targeted visitors.

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