Inclusive, Engaging, and Always Accessible – Written Content Is an Evergreen Medium to Sell Your Idea
Written content is one of the most effective ways you can communicate the benefits of your product to your audience. It allows you to fully explain your product and educate your current and future users about how the product can be used.
Unlike podcasts, videos, and other multi-media, written content can be easily revised to ensure that it remains engaging and relevant. While all content can make some initial waves and trend until it is pushed out by the next exciting thing, written content will be indexed, searchable, and as useful in the future as it is now – evergreen. You don’t need any special hardware or software to create great written content, making it is the only evergreen content medium that can continue to provide returns at potentially no initial cost (outside of your time).
Written content is inclusive
Written content, by its nature, is one of the most inclusive forms of communication and promotion available. Your written content can be easily translated by non-english speakers using freely available tools, can be read by the hearing impaired, and listened to using screen-readers or through braille reading devices for those with visual ailments. No other medium can reach as diverse an audience as written content.
When looking for product explanations or tutorials, people turn to transcripts from videos and podcasts if they didn’t understand a word or concept – but these are far less useful as they often omit context. Written content, tailored to the audience it is speaking to provides a more direct conversation with the user, and can include all required information (including links to definitions or additional materials) in a frustration free format that gives the reader everything they need. Importantly, it also caters to different learning styles by allowing readers to progress at their own pace.
You can read anywhere, anytime
Written content is also perfect for another growing demographic – those who just don’t like video content. Skipping through videos to get to the relevant section, or being in a public area, or trying to digest concepts that require complex explanation are all inappropriate for the video format.
Many can read faster than a presenter can talk, meaning that content locked behind videos is often overlooked by those that find this frustrating (we all get annoyed at padded-out YouTube videos with lengthy personal introductions followed by the inevitable ‘like and subscribe!’). Written content gives the reader the value they are looking for instantly and conveniently, and if they successfully find what they are looking for, that value that they will attributed to your product.
Written content is searchable (and searched for!)
Internet search engines are primarily geared towards searching through text. Search engines like Google rank pages based on their relevance, including keywords and their links to and from other pages, as well as use interactions with the pages.
Blog posts, articles, and documentation are all readily indexable to search engines which can immediately start to assess the relevance of a page to a given search term provided by users, meaning that they can rapidly appear in search results and gain higher positions as users find them.
It’s a great way to create backlinks for SEO
Backlinks – other websites linking back to your page – are one of the most important metrics used by search engines. Generally speaking, the more backlinks you have, the higher your ranking. High-quality written content that interests readers is highly likely to accumulate backlinks as people share your article on social media, or reference it as an authoritative source from their own written content.
Additionally, search engines are increasingly emphasizing user engagement as part of their search ranking algorithms. Content that actively engages readers and delivers on the promise it makes to them will keep them on the page longer, make them scroll and click, and rank you and your product higher in search listings.
Writing can be revised, optimized, and re-targeted
Sometimes you don’t get it right the first time. Re-shooting a video, or re-recording an entire podcast is time consuming and expensive. Written content, however, can be iterated on easily, and tweaked for different audiences and marketing channels.
Text can be tweaked to target different SEO terms, and as product messaging evolves, so can the wording used to promote your product. If time and resources are short in the early stages of a project, a ‘good enough’ article can be published and start gaining traction with search engine and in online communities, and later improved on and even re-shared.
It’s what the internet was built for
Hypertext is text displayed on your computer that is interlinked with text on other pages. It’s what the internet was built to deliver. Everything you see and do in the internet boils down to clicking on links that lead to content which itself includes more links to other content.
Whether users arrive at your content through search engines, through sharing, or through links in other articles, the interlinked nature of the internet is the means by which they arrive. Written content provides the most opportunities to include links to and from the content provided by the wider internet community, making your own content part of that web of relevant information. It’s always there, waiting until someone needs the specific information it contains.
3 ways to get great written content about your product
So you’ve got a product or service you want to promote with evergreen written content – now what?
The best thing about written content is that you don’t need any special tools – no expensive cameras and microphones or multimedia software is required. The best thing to do to get started is start reading. Find out how other businesses in your field speak to their customers, and practice writing in a similar style. Find articles that you enjoyed reading or that provided you with useful information and craft your own after them. If you don’t feel they are good enough, you can always revise them later after practicing more.
Written content can also be provided by others. Testimonials, reviews, and tutorials from your community all promote your product to new users and instruct them on its usefulness. Encouraging others to discuss your product online and link back to your original content will generate those important backlinks that will lead readers to your pages.
Finally, if you are going big, you can find professional writers with experience in crafting targeted text that will speak directly to your audience in terms that they understand, using clear language tailored to your demographic.
I work in technical content writing – specifically targeting SaaS products. My understanding of software development and various facets of the IT industry allows me to identify the value in a service, and explain that value to the developers who need it most. If you’re interested in creating your own written content and aren’t sure where to start, drop me a message!
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