The 3 Must-Have Ingredients to Writing Great Content

I'm talking about content marketing here. Not about copywriting for a landing sales page, although that might ultimately be where you want your readers to click through to. No, I'm going to tell you what I think are the 3 keys necessary in all your content marketing that precedes your sales copy.

This means writing content for your:

Blog posts
E-newsletter articles
Emails to your list
Twitter updates
Other social networking site communications
Comments on other people's blog posts
Web pages
Articles
Speeches
Podcasts, audio files
Video casts
Ebooks, special reports, white papers

If you think of other places where it's important that you write and publish content to market your business, let me know.

If you aren't writing sufficient content in multiple forms and places on the Web, then it will be that much harder for you to get enough traffic over to your sales pages where you convert them to real clients and customers. That's what content marketing does…

Each form has a different style, but here's what they all must have in common to qualify as great content that effectively markets your business and your products and services:

Unique, useful information that saves time, energy or money or in some way enriches the lives of your targeted readers. It doesn't have to be original or new. But it should be presented or positioned so that it's not ho-hum.
It's not good enough to regurgitate what everyone else is saying. Readers want to know your own particular perspective. Tell them why this is important for them to read and learn.

2. Great content must connect with readers. If your content is being delivered in one direction, it's like a one-way street: "no entry." Write as if you're having a conversation with your favorite client. Use the pronouns "you" and "I" often. Ask questions and invite readers to respond. Show them how they can respond and make it easy for them to do so. (Click on the comment link if you want to respond.)

Always keep the readers' interests and needs foremost in writing your content. It's not about you. It's about them, their needs, their wants and how you can serve them. Talk and write about them.

3. That said, reveal yourself and your personality, be a genuine human being who happens to run or work for a company. Tell stories, as long as they're authentic and valuable to your target readers. Make sure there's something in each story for your readers, a learning lesson, a valuable tip, a mistake not to make.

Include a few details of your life, but know good boundaries. Don't bore readers with stuff that's only amusing to you (or other cat lovers.) Respect people's limited time, intelligence, and energies. [Whoops, didn't mean to say people have limited intelligence, but maybe limited brain space!]

Avoid academic writing that imparts information in a dry, non-human lecture style. But don't preach or hype either.

These three elements must be present in your content otherwise you're writing stuff that will fall short of good content marketing goals.

And I'm serious about this applying to Twitter updates and commenting on other people's blog posts. If you don't think you can 1) add info, 2) build relationships, AND 3) be genuine in short snippets, then you haven't been trying.

Do you agree? If not, why not?