Great content is about getting noticed and to get noticed you need to communicate and grab your audience’s attention. Ultimately, communication is the key to success in any business. Whether you are selling a product, a service or an idea, you need to communicate clearly and persuasively with your potential customers. However,
Kate Morgan, Journalist
So how do you write effective communication that can attract and convert your audience? And how do you make sure that your content is optimised for search engines like Bing and Google, so that more people can find it online?
In this blog post, we will answer these questions and give you some tips on how to write effective communication for your business, sales, and marketing.
How to Write Effective Business Comms
When it comes to writing effective communication for your business and sales, you need to consider three main aspects: your audience, your message, and your medium.
Know Your Audience
The first step to writing effective communication is to know your audience. Who are they? What are their needs, wants, problems, and goals? How can your offer help them? What are their objections and questions? What are their preferences and expectations?
Knowing your audience will help you tailor your message to their specific needs and interests. It will also help you choose the right tone, style, language, and format for your communication.
For example, if you are selling a software solution to a technical audience, you may want to use more jargon, data, and facts to demonstrate your expertise and credibility. But if you are selling a lifestyle product to a general audience, you may want to use more emotions, stories, and benefits to appeal to their desires and aspirations.
Craft Your Message
The second step to writing effective communication is to craft your message. Your message should be clear, concise, compelling, and consistent. It should also follow the AIDA formula: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
- Attention: You need to capture your audience’s attention with a catchy headline, a hook, or a question that piques their curiosity.
- Interest: You need to keep your audience’s interest with relevant information, facts, statistics, stories, or examples that support your main point.
- Desire: You need to create desire in your audience by highlighting the benefits of your offer, showing testimonials or social proof, addressing objections or concerns, or creating urgency or scarcity.
- Action: You need to prompt your audience to take action by giving them a clear and specific call-to-action that tells them what to do next, such as “click here”, “sign up now”, “buy now”, “call now”, or “contact us”.
Write a Compelling Headline
The headline is the first thing that your audience will see when they encounter your communication. It is also the most important part, as it will determine whether they will read on or not. Therefore, you need to write a compelling headline that can capture their attention and curiosity.
A good headline should:
- Be clear and concise
- Communicate the main benefit or value proposition of your offer
- Include keywords that your audience is searching for
- Create a sense of urgency or curiosity
- Use emotional triggers or power words
For example, instead of writing “How to Improve Your Communication Skills”, you could write “How to Communicate Like a Pro in 10 Minutes a Day” or “The Secret to Effective Communication That No One Tells You”.
Write a Strong Introduction
The introduction is the second most important part of your communication, as it will determine whether your audience will continue reading or not. Therefore, you need to write a strong introduction that can hook your audience and persuade them to read further.
A good introduction should:
- Address the problem or pain point that your audience is facing
- Agitate the problem or pain point by showing the consequences or implications of not solving it
- Present your offer as the solution or answer to their problem or pain point
- Provide social proof or credibility by showing testimonials, reviews, statistics, or awards
- Preview the main points or benefits that you will cover in the rest of your communication
For example, instead of writing “In this blog post, I will show you how to communicate effectively with your customers”, you could write “Did you know that poor communication is one of the main reasons why customers leave a business? According to a study by Accenture, 52% of customers have switched providers in the past year due to bad customer service. That’s a lot of lost revenue and reputation for your business. But don’t worry, there is a way to avoid this. In this blog post, I will show you how to communicate effectively with your customers and increase their loyalty, satisfaction, and retention. You will learn how to:
- Use active listening and empathy to understand your customers’ needs and emotions
- Use positive language and tone to create rapport and trust with your customers
- Use clear and concise language to avoid confusion and misunderstanding with your customers
- Use persuasive language and techniques to influence and convince your customers
- Use feedback and follow-up to ensure customer satisfaction and retention”
Write an Engaging Body
The body is the main part of your communication, where you will deliver the value and benefits of your offer to your audience. Therefore, you need to write an engaging body that can keep your audience interested and motivated throughout your communication.
A good body should:
- Use subheadings, bullet points, lists, numbers, quotes, images, graphs, charts, or other visual aids to break up the text and make it easier to read and scan
- Use stories, anecdotes, examples, case studies, or analogies to illustrate your points and make them more relatable and memorable
- Use facts, statistics, data, research, or evidence to support your points and make them more credible and authoritative
- Use transitions, connectors, signposts, or summaries to link your points and make them more coherent and logical
- Use questions, challenges, quizzes, polls, surveys, or calls-to-action to engage your audience and make them more interactive and participatory
Writing Content for Google
Google evaluates content in terms of search and rankings based on several factors, such as relevance, quality, authority, user experience, and freshness. These factors are not fixed or weighted equally, but they may vary depending on the type and intent of the query.
Some of the things that writers should be aware of when writing content for Google are:
Relevance:
Writers should match the content to the search intent of the users. This means understanding what users are looking for and providing the best possible answer to their query. Writers should use the exact terms or semantic variations that users are searching for, and avoid keyword stuffing or over-optimisation.
Quality and authority:
Writers should provide high-quality and authoritative content that is original, accurate, comprehensive, and trustworthy. Writers should cite their sources, provide data and evidence, and avoid plagiarism or duplicate content. Writers should also demonstrate their expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) by providing clear information about themselves or their organisation, such as credentials, contact details, and reputation.
User experience:
Writers should create engaging and user-friendly content that is easy to read, understand, and navigate. Writers should use subheadings, bullet points, lists, images, videos, or other visual aids to break up the text and make it more scannable. Writers should also optimise their page speed, mobile-friendliness, and security to improve the loading time, usability, and safety of their content.
Freshness:
Writers should update their content regularly to reflect the latest information and trends. Google favours fresh content for queries that are time-sensitive or have high volatility. Writers should also use structured data markup to help Google understand and display their content better, such as dates, ratings, reviews, or events.
Writing Content for Bing
Bing evaluates content in terms of search and rankings based on several factors, such as relevance, quality, credibility, user engagement, freshness, location, and page load time. These factors are listed in general order of importance, but they may vary from search to search and may evolve over time.
Some of the things that writers should be aware of when writing content for Bing are:
Relevance:
Writers should match the content on the landing page with the intent behind the search query. This includes using the exact terms or semantic equivalents, such as synonyms or abbreviations.
Quality and credibility:
Writers should provide high-quality and credible content that includes an evaluation of the page itself, the author’s or site’s reputation, and the level of discourse. For example, an article with citations and references to data sources is considered higher quality than one that does not cite data sources.
User engagement:
Writers should create engaging content that encourages users to interact with it, such as clicking, sharing, commenting, or rating. Bing measures user engagement by using signals such as click-through rate, dwell time, bounce rate, and social shares.
Freshness:
Writers should update their content regularly to reflect the latest information and trends. Bing favours fresh content for queries that are time-sensitive or have high volatility.
Location:
Writers should optimise their content for local searches by using geo-targeting keywords, adding location information, and using local business listings. Bing considers the location of the user and the content when ranking pages.
Page Load Time:
Writers should optimise their page load time by reducing the size of images, videos, scripts, and other elements that can slow down the loading speed. Bing considers page load time as a factor for user experience and ranking.
About OutSec
OutSec is the UK’s leading online transcription company whose business has grown substantially since 2002. We are one of the most successful transcription companies in the United Kingdom.
OutSec provides secure outsourced transcription services to the medical, legal, property and surveying, universities, media and interviews, advisory boards, conferences & seminars, inventories, financial, corporate, HR, recruitment and Executive Search sectors.
Why is Dictation More Efficient than Typing?
Well, the simple fact is that we can all speak considerably faster than we can physically type:
“The average person types between 38 and 40 words per minute”.
A “good rate of speech ranges between 140 -160 words per minute.”
In other words, dictation is up to four times faster than we can type. Therefore, simply dictating a document is more cost-efficient, giving you more time to dedicate your efforts elsewhere in your business.
Therefore why not add OutSec as a business continuity option for your business? Accounts are free, you pay on a per-minute basis (rounded to the nearest minute) on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no contracts or minimum spend. What do you have to lose? Why not open an account today?
Picture Attribution:
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