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3-2-1 Friday: Logical writing, 4 skills you need when starting out in content marketing, and deleting irrelevant content

27 May

Welcome to today’s issue of Efikó, a weekly newsletter by me, Dozie Anyaegbunam, with a focus on content marketing, writing, social strategy, and living your best life. THANK YOU for being here! I appreciate you!

Hey rockstars,

I am not yet 100%.

Last night was horrible. I have this nerve-wracking dry cough holding onto my throat harder than babies latch onto their feeding bottles.

I’ve been on Dayquil for two days. Nothing has changed. I switched to Robitussin this morning. Hoping I don’t have a repeat of last night’s episode that had me driving to the pharmacy at about 11 PM.

3 Things I learned This Week

i.

Writing in a logical flow is easy and hard.

Easy because once you know how to do it, it becomes a switch you turn on once you open up your Google Doc.

Hard because you need to do most of the heavy lifting before you get to the blank page.

Here’s a two-part process for logical writing:

Part One

  • What’s the intent of the article? Awareness, thought leadership, or a job-to-be-done piece.

  • What’s your brand’s point of view?

  • Are you working with an SME to write the article or relying solely on topical research?

Once you have all these, it’s time to start writing.

Part Two

  • Set the context. Joanna Rutter calls this your thesis. You need a thesis for your introduction. And a thesis for every section. The thesis lays out your brand or client’s point of view.

  • Support your thesis with a follow-up argument. Analogies are a great tool when building your follow-up argument.

  • Expand on the argument with an example or SME advice/experience.

Lay it out this way, and your reader will have a treat devouring your blog posts.

ii.

Content marketing is broad. There are a ton of channels or approaches you can take to win. But starting can be overwhelming, especially if you are a solo content marketer. Here are four skills that’ll never fail you:

  • Audience research: Learn how to find out what your readers struggle with or want to learn about. This guarantees that you’ll produce content that matters.

  • Keyword research: Learn how to understand the search intent of a keyword. Learn how to find long-tail keywords and where they sit in the content marketing funnel (ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu).

  • Distribution: Learn how to repurpose your content for distribution. Pick one channel and own it. Then move to another.

  • Reporting: Finally, learn how to sell the value of your work. To do this, you need to get comfortable with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and tools such as SemRush or Ahrefs.

Notice I didn’t talk about writing. That’s taken for granted at this point.

iii.

Should you delete irrelevant content from your blog?

I have been optimizing the UserGems Blog for the past five weeks. Content refresh, updating keywords, internal links, name it.

And we have this piece that isn’t aligned to where we are going from a positioning angle or an SEO angle. But it does drive some traffic. Now you might say delete the article from the blog.

But the question here is…

Is it totally irrelevant or harmful to the blog?

Not really. It drives traffic. It creates awareness for the UserGems brand. And as long as it’s not damaging to the brand image, I’ll leave it there till the foreseeable future. Here’s what I did and what you should do if you come across this:

  • Update and improve the content.

  • And then link it to other pieces of content that need a boost.

Instead of deleting, milk all the value from the piece. And then let it die a slow death. Especially if your blog is in its early stages like the one I manage. Older blogs with more organic traffic might take a different path.

2 Things I am Thinking About

i.

"Most big, deeply satisfying accomplishments in life take at least five years to achieve. This can include building a business, cultivating a loving relationship, writing a book, getting in the best shape of your life, raising a family, and more.

Five years is a long time. It is much slower than most of us would like. If you accept the reality of slow progress, you have every reason to take action today. If you resist the reality of slow progress, five years from now, you'll simply be five years older and still looking for a shortcut."

James Clear

ii.

The fastest way to get old is to stop learning.

1 Book Recommendation

Jordan Peterson is a contentious fellow. But his 25-page guide on essay writing is a great read. Read it here.

Content Writing Jobs - May

All the best, folks. Could you please share with any of your friends/colleagues who might find this helpful?

Not Enough Writers

Precious Oboidhe of Foundation Marketing will be speaking to the Not Enough Writers community this Sunday about his content marketing journey.

Know anyone who might find the session helpful? Share the time and location with them.

Time: 6 PM WAT

Location: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3161903197?pwd=M0RhdTBRSDc1eVRyeUlkT1kzMWFWZz09

If you would love me to review your writing and give you feedback, you can book a time here. Or just hit the reply button.

Thanks for reading this far. I am grateful!

Be good out there. If you can't be good, be careful

I’ll be back on 6/3.

Dozie

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