How To Write and Research Your Content For the Web

How To Write and Research Your Content For the Web

Content for the web has a different approach and writing style.

Understanding how to write your content for the web is important to your market and visitors. Although you’re a writer and, if like me, have a strong English writing background, you will need to change your style.

Content writing for the web looks much different than what you may be used to. It is important to conduct research first. Secondly, you plan around this research. Interestingly, I came to content writing for the web with it the other way around.

I’m sure you have as well. No worries. This happens to many newbie content writers. In school, we’re taught to first plan and research afterward.

Content writing research is an essential key to writing. You need more than prior knowledge.

What I mean by prior knowledge is any experiences, encounters, and familiarities with a particular subject or topic.

Adding the research component gives you more to say and write about in your content. I often find that frustrated writers cannot research because they don’t know how to.

And, again this all goes back to our reading and vocabulary. What you don’t read could very well be the missing point in your writing that attracts people to your voice, style, and tone.

For example, let’s use the subject Fitness. If you’re writing a blog, developing a website, or any at length content, here’s a great research approach.

Fitness is our topic.

Now we need to determine WHO we want to talk about or target (Depending on what or who you’re writing for determines an age bracket for it).

For instance, if it’s a blog, talk about female training for specific sports or activities.

Usually, in this case, this content requires you to be gender specific. Writing content for a fitness website you’ll want to be as precise as possible.

Be as specific as you can.

We’ll target and talk about women age 40 who are looking for 20-minute morning workout routines.

Look specifically to answer these questions:

Who, What, When, Where and How

True. These are the five W’s in newspaper writing. They’re also the 5 W’s used for summarizing. But, in this case, you’re objective is to capture the researched information for your topic.

There are TONS of information in this area to help with research and writing.

Why? Four main areas people are attracted to in their lives are Relationships, Money, Health/Fitness, and Religion.

These same areas are also heavy hitters in business and marketing.

Next, we’ll search non-fiction articles with the most shares on social media. There are specific websites that show you an exact amount of shares and likes for these articles.

Everyone uses social media daily. Here is where your readers, customers, and clients live.

You can search for these articles on Facebook, Instagram, Buzzsumo, Google (plus the other search engines), News and Magazine sites, Amazon and Kindle, etc.

Using the article search method on these sites for your content helps you greatly. These sites reveal how many times people shared the articles on social media.

This will help you gauge how to develop more content and powerful headlines.

Also, remember to look for non-fiction content with credible sources.

Research requires patience because it’s a lot of work. Don’t forget to cite your sources when using the ideas and statements of others. You don’t want to plagiarize.

Aside from content research, there is a standard writing process. It’s known for 5 Stages.

1.Prewriting. This is the planning stage. You don’t start the actual writing of your content here. Some people can begin writing and know exactly where “they intend for the content to go”

Others need actually to see it in outline form. The planning stage helps to organize and structure your thoughts.

Roman Numeral Outline -Used by many people to help organize their thoughts. It helps to show the direction of your content. This works for an essay, blog, ad copy, book, etc.

You can also use a graphic web, where the topic is in the center and words supporting it branch off from it.

This one is my absolute favorites! I came up with an entirely different organizer that helps all of my clients.

The organizer helps you see what’s in each paragraph, is color-coded and guides your writing with strong, specific question stems. To get the entire thing check it out on my website https://thelivingacts.com/tla-courses

2. Writing. Here you begin the first draft in its entirety. During this stage, you start to form sentences from your planning stage.

If you’re writing a blog, please be sure to have no more than four clauses per paragraph and use transition words beginning in the second paragraph.

Are you a business owner writing content for your business website? This area requires the writing process as well. You’ll always tweak and adjust to your market and audience.

3.Revising – After you write, this stage is where you’ll focus on sentences and words. You may remove a few sentences and or words and replace them with new ones.

The writer may switch around sentences and or paragraphs. The objective is to make sure there are conciseness and a nice flow of your writing. To ensure smoothness and consistency, I highly recommend reading it aloud.

This is a practice I go through with my clients. Hearing what is written aids in the revision stage. 

4.Editing – This stage wraps up your content. Here is where you focus primarily on grammar and spelling. The grammar includes comma usage, subject-verb agreement, etc. 

5.Publishing – You’re now ready to submit the polished content for public appearance. It’s ok to have one up to three others read your content if time permits.

I don’t suggest more than three because you don’t want any “confusion” regarding it. Too many voices are just not good. I’ve lived by this rule for my published works. 

We recently announced through media outlets the Jacqueline T. Hill, “Writing Your Way Through Fears” program and course. It represents my efforts to support writing needs for frustrated writers in education and business ownership.

As aforementioned, I am a certified (early “retired”) English teacher with over ten years of classroom experience, curriculum writing and ensuring that learners matriculate and grow in writing.

Many business owners demonstrate weaknesses in writing, and my program has the cure for it.  I know it will change many lives, help people write at any level and solve many problems.

I’ve worked with students and adults who wrote less than 20% for an essay, blog and web content and have developed a proven tool and strategy that demonstrates growth beyond 70%.

My program and course focus on the following areas in isolation:

  • Introduction
  • Thesis Statement
  • Body Paragraphs
  • Transition Words
  • Conclusion
  • Brief Revising and Editing Techniques
  • Web Copy
  • Copywriting
  • Blogging

Conclusion

I have a solution for content writing that currently offers a free 45-minute strategy consultation to support writers in the ways they deserve.

Mostly, it is structured to help and serve you in a capacity that will assist business owners with their content to gain more leads and sales!

Fearful Writers, Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, Bloggers, Authors, PhD Students can schedule here https://thelivingacts.com/free-45-minute-strategy-call/

Image courtesy of pixabay.com

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