Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was in grade school, I would write creative stories for projects and receive great marks and funny comments from my teachers. As I progressed through high school and college, I started to see the value of not just creative writing, but writing to your audience and well-thought-out writing to go with it.
Writing for Your Audience
Previously on this blogThis term originated as shortened version of “web log” and has come to be known as a regularly updated web-page, often containing news, opinion and personal stories. I wrote about social media content and how that can help marketing purposes. Like in my last post, having solid content is about timing, but also about your audience. You should have a clear vision of what you want to say and write in a way that will speak to those you are targeting.
When I was in college at Utah Valley University, I was a sports editor for the school newspaper. My duties included writing a weekly column about any sports topic I deemed important. I will be the first to admit that my columns were hit and miss. One of the times I misread my audience particularly sticks out in my mind.
At the newspaper, our focus was about reporting accurate news, pushing the envelope, and getting people interested with online sharing and social media. My biggest column flop came when I wrote about the 2014 Sochi Olympics. My frame of mind was focused on the money spent on the Olympics, the money generated by the games, and how the games are really just a distraction for the entire world from problems for two weeks.
One thing I did not take into consideration was that most people who want to read about sports don’t care about the political side all that much and want to read about recaps of games and pieces on their favorite teams. Needless to say, people hated my column and it didn’t speak to them. My column would have been better suited in the politics section or the opinions section.
Writing Should be Well-Thought-Out
At the paper, part of our goal was to expand on Internet-driven content. Our newspaper wanted to have advertising, and websites are driven by advertising and the traffic that each site can produce.
On our staff, we had an analytics team that would show us all of the stats from each article on many variables. One of these stats they would show was how long a user would be on a page. Obviously, longer times meant they were actually reading the content and not just skimming.
I noticed the topics I had a lot of passion about and really thought about had higher traffic, more reads, and more shares. The articles I had only a little bit of passion about or just put together last minute would not do well at all. Content should be interesting to read and resonate with the reader. By thinking clearly about what you want to say and writing it to your audience, you can do great work and reach your goals effectively.
These lessons I learned as a college student have helped me in my professional career as a content writer in the SEO world. These lessons of knowing your audience and creating well thought out content have helped me produce quality content for companies that are seeking Online Image®’s help. Our writing team is dedicated to our craft and can help create the best content for your company.