“Just a word factory”

I had a boss that once referred to the content marketing team in the company as “just a word factory”. They said we receive a brief, we churn out content inline with the brief, that no creativity is needed and that anyone can do it. Then, the next brief comes in and we do it all again.

The audacity! At the time I was offended and fiercely defended the art of copywriting. But was there just a speck of truth in what was said?

In my experience, it’s easy for copywriters to fall into a rut - especially when they have daily word quotas to meet and are required to push out high volumes of content every day. (This is one reason I’m against giving writers word-based targets; the focus of copy should always be on quality, not quantity and when under pressure, it’s easy to revert to tried-and-tested methods, delivering only the required minimum. Plus - every piece of content is different. It might take me the same amount of time to whack out a 500-word piece on a subject I’m familiar with, as it does to write 200 words on a complex topic, or even a couple of impactful lines for a company’s promotional material.)

“Here’s how we can take the repetition out of copywriting to create something that real human users (not just search engines) want to see.”

Ye olden’th’st’d structure

There’s an old-school, trusted blog post structure that we’ve all been guilty of using at once point. And why wouldn’t we? It ticks the boxes and it works. The idea behind it is to take a primary keyword to build a guide that answers every basic question a beginner to a topic might want to know.

To find the questions, writers can use tools like Answer the Public or SEMrush. (For the record, I have nothing against these tools; I love them both and think they’re essential for understanding the landscape and creating timely, relevant content.)

The structure makes sense, since it includes the search terms that users are actually typing into Google and answers them directly underneath - featured snippets; here we come! It usually looks something like this:

1. Heading 1: The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing
2. Heading 2: What is content marketing?
3. Heading 2: What are the benefits of content marketing?
4. Heading 2: How does content marketing work?
5. Heading 3: In conclusion...

As you probably guessed, the keyword for this made-up example is “content marketing”.

Of course, this layout is fine. It does the job. It answers some raw queries. My issue is that this kind of guide tends to dumb down topics, addressing questions to which most people already know the answer.

That’s why the best approach is always to address the things your target audience actually needs to know about. Put yourself in their shoes and deliver an experience that’s genuinely valuable, instead of just trying to fill up that word count.

Your blog post (or any piece of content) should tell a story that keeps people engaged. Don’t eliminate headings completely; we need ‘em, because the slightly heart-breaking fact is that most users won’t actually read all of your copy and will use your headings as jump points to guide their eyes. So have fun with them. Make them interesting. Of course, use keywords if you can include them naturally and search traffic will come with time.

While you wait for that to happen, get proactive. Amplify your content via social media, so your beautiful blog doesn’t get lost in a black hole picking up cobwebs.

Well, nah. The capabilities of search engines is always progressing and the best copywriters are choosing to focus on creating quality content - instead of trying to outsmart the engines. Remember when everyone used to write paragraphs of keywords and hide them in white text on a page? Google caught them out and penalised them.

Now, we’re realising that we don’t need a set keyword density and distribution within our content. In the past, an SEO tech might have sent us a brief with the keyword “portable toilets Melbourne” and writers would have to include that exact phrase in that exact order - it made for some clunky copywriting.

Remember that now Google is able to pick up on the theme of a page, and can extract context using the rest of your content. Through something called latent semantic indexing (LSI), search engines can find the hidden relationships between words to better understand the topic of the entire page. Its ability to do this is continually improving.

“Search engines can find the hidden relationships between words to better understand the topic of the entire page.”

This doesn’t mean keywords are useless and you should definitely still include them in your content where you can! Just make sure the flow is natural (and created with a user-first mindset) and remember you can use function words in between key phrases without breaking the phrase. Think “portable toilets around Melbourne” rather than “do you need portable toilets, Melbourne?!”

Breaking grammar rules

“Rules are made to be broken.”

Most copywriters have had to deal with self-appointed grammar police at some time or another in their career. Quite often, business owners want us to convey their fun, quirky, ahead-of-the-times brand through our copy, but they’re prescriptivists who don’t agree that language is there to be played with.

Getting creative with words is a powerful way of getting the right message across. While the idea of breaking grammar rules is certainly industry-dependent, it’s a great way to add excitement into your content marketing. That’s because consumers are bored. Something a little bit disruptive wakes them up. And makes them take notice. And creates a new thread of emotion through the language.

Oh my god - she started like two sentences with a conjunction! Here are some other grammar rules you can break, if you’re feeling a bit mischievous.

When repetition is powerful

Sometimes repetition is a good thing. Sometimes repetition is a good thing.

When utilised responsibly, you can reproduce or recreate pieces of content to help flesh out your strategy, generate more ideas and make the most of everything you create. Here are some times I fully support being repetitive:

1. Repurposing content. I know how painful it can be to constantly look for new ideas for your content. But brands that do this well, do so because they repurpose. So, use that great blog piece as a podcast, a video, or even take snippets and share them across your socials from time-to-time as bite-sized pieces of advice. Unless you’re a huge brand, your audience won’t be following you on every single channel - and they won’t notice that your posts are recycled.
2. Planning your posts. Find what works for you and stick to it when writing copy. For me, I start every blog post with the headings so I can visualise the raw bones of a piece and make sure it flows. Then, I create my own brain dump of bullet points, before expanding and doing some research if needed.
3. Clarifying strong points. While you should never repeat phrases word-for-word, there’s a case for reframing or rephrasing your key ideas in a new way, to get the message across more strongly. Subtle repetition makes your content more memorable for readers.
4. When you show prospects your ad multiple times across multiple platforms (i.e. remarketing). Thomas Smith wrote a book called Successful Advertising: Its Secrets Explained wayyy back in 1885. In it, he discusses radio ads and how listeners only take action after hearing an ad 20 times. I’m unsure what kind of market research he carried out in 1885, but he might have been onto something.