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3-2-1 Friday: Making life easy for your editor, image SEO, and writing a good lede

18 Mar

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.

IMAGES] 14 Funny (And Inspiring) Quotes About Writing

Hullo, 👋

I am late. Damn. And I am so sorry.

I overslept. I haven’t slept well the past few days. So, I took 1mg of Melatonin last night.

Boy, did I sleep…

How’s your week been?

Here’s a random image of me willing a Tesla and GLE350 into my life:

Any thoughts on the “Content Marketing Weekly Roundup?”

Thanks to everyone who read it. Thanks to everyone who shared it.

3 Things I learned This Week

I.

Here are five ways to get your editor to love you:

  • Use keywords naturally

  • Make sure the product plug is relevant to the angle of the post

  • Make sure to substantiate any claims you make with a data point or quote from an SME.

  • Make sure to trim the fat/fluff from your piece.

  • And please take advantage of Google Docs Line & paragraph spacing function

Do these five things. And you reduce your editor’s workload significantly.

II.

When adding images to your blog post, use relevant images. Google’s algorithm can use image recognition to figure out what your content is about and use it in ranking.

So, stock images are good. But make sure you aren’t picking random stock images.

If you’d like to read all the nerdy stuff, here’s a fantastic article on image recognition and Google by Cognitive SEO.

III.

Your lede is the opening paragraph of an article. And a good lede defines your introduction.

It can be the difference between tons of people reading your article or bouncing away. Your lede must:

  • Be exciting

  • Infuse the reader with energy and excitement

  • Either implicitly promise something interesting is about to happen if they continue reading

  • Or the reader is about to come across some interesting piece of information.

The goal when writing a lede is to get the reader to care about your blog post. So. you can’t afford it to be dry or pedestrian. Keep all the dry information for the body of the piece.

One easy way to do the above is to give them a human being they can identify with.

2 Things I am Thinking About

I.

The best way, and perhaps the only way, to change others is to become an example —— Naval Ravikant.

II.

Filtering is the best hack to productivity. The gods smile on you when you leave behind things that don't serve you.

1 Book Recommendation

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Morgan’s lessons on how to manage money are timeless. But you also get practical examples on how to use transitions to take your reader from one section to the next.

Content Writing Jobs

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

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 3/25.

Dozie

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