A staggering 98% of marketing teams agree that their most-used content is written articles. However, one in three marketers admits that their content writing is only somewhat effective. For some marketers, their writing isn’t effective at all. This means that a lot of marketing teams are missing out on a big opportunity because they simply haven’t found the right ingredients for the secret sauce of success. If your motorcycle content isn’t giving you the results you want, then it’s time for a new approach.
If you’re putting a lot of work into your written content and not seeing results, then now is not the time to quit.
1. Start With the Headline
The vast majority of people that come into contact with your blog will only read the headlines. About 80 percent will move on to something else after reading the headline. Only 20 percent of people stick around and start reading your actual content. This means your headline means everything for getting people to even consider reading your blog.
A strong headline is specific but not overly informative. It needs to intrigue the reader without giving them the whole story. The first step is sticking to the ideal character length. The most shared headlines are about 60 characters or six words in length.
Instructional phrases are most successful on Facebook. These are phrases like, “you need to know” or “why you should”. They tell people they are about to learn something, giving them a hint that your content is useful and informational.
2. Keep It Strong With the Intro
You have convinced the reader to move past the headline and now they are reading your content. Congratulations! The work is not over, though. A strong intro is key to keeping the reader interested and wanting to continue to read. This is much harder said than done. About 57 percent of page viewing is done above the fold. This is the content that’s viewable on the screen when the page first loads. The amount of people that scroll down to the next screenful of content drops to just 17 percent.
Take this article for example. If you’ve made it this far, then it’s safe to say that you’re interested in making your motorcycle content better and more effective. You are one of 17 percent of people that made it to this blog post and scrolled down past the fold.
3. Get to Know Your Audience
Too many people make the mistake of trying to write for everyone. They want their content to reach a broad audience, so they write that way. Unfortunately, this is a huge mistake. When you write for everyone, you identify and appeal to no one. Instead, get to know your audience and write specifically for them. While your blog post won’t go viral, it will effectively reach the people who are most likely to become your customers.
Think of it this way. There are millions of people that ride motorcycles. But not every ride enjoys the same type of bike. If a motorcycle manufacturer tried to build a bike that would appeal to everyone, it would be a strange and unappealing contraption that doesn’t live up to anyone’s expectations. Instead, manufacturers focus on a particular style of riding. They may not sell the motorcycle to everyone, but it will become the go-to bike for those looking for that type of bike. This is why Harley Davidson is the go-to manufacturer for cruises and touring bikes. Kawasaki and Suzuki are top performers in the sportbike category.
4. Develop Lazer Focus
Don’t try to include too much information in a single article. While you want it to be informative, it needs to be digestible. Each piece of content needs to have a clear message from headline to the conclusion. This will help you stay on track and give the information that the reader expects to get.
The only exception is if you’re writing a pillar page. However, not all of your content should be pillar content. These are your longest and largest pieces that broadly discuss a topic from a high level. You would then link from that pillar piece to smaller and shorter pieces that delve deeper into specific elements.
Too Broad: How to Improve Your Marketing
Getting Better: How to Improve Your Motorcycle Marketing
Best: How to Improve Your Motorcycle Content Marketing
As you can see, the first title would be entirely too broad. You, the small business owner in the motorcycle industry, wouldn’t know that the article would directly relate to you and your business. The second title is a bit better. It directly speaks to your motorcycle business, but it doesn’t specifically tell you the information you’ll receive. The third title is the best because it does it all. It speaks directly to motorcycle businesses and tells you exactly how it will help with marketing.
5. Be Engaging
If the content you’re producing isn’t interesting and engaging, then you’ll lose the reader and they will bounce. The first step is to use simple language that most people can understand. Writing that’s too complicated or that uses high-level vocabulary will be too hard for the majority of readers to understand. Try to aim for an eighth-grade reading level. You can use a tool like Hemingway to adjust your writing. Copy and paste your content into the website and check your writing grade level, passive voice, adverbs, and the number of hard or very hard-to-read sentences.
It isn’t enough to write with short sentences and small words. You also need to use a voice and language that your audience will relate to. Think about how riders speak to each other, and adopt these idioms and vocal mannerisms in your content.
6. What’s Your Company’s Personality?
This step builds on the last one. Develop a personality for your business. What type of company do you have and who are your target customers? Creating a personality for business helps it to stand out and humanizes it. This makes it easier for consumers to identify and relate to the company.
Once you’ve created a personality for your business, you need to stick with it. Maintaining a consistent voice is easy when you have one person managing all of your marketing. However, it can become more complicated when you have a team with multiple individuals who are all managing different parts of your marketing. You run the risk of losing focus and developing conflicting tones and perspectives.
At a minimum, you should create a a brand personality document that you can share with everyone.
- Core values
- Mission statement
- Description of the target audience
- How the target audience speaks
- Your goal relationship with the audience
- Examples phrases and words that you should or shouldn’t use
7. Give Useful Knowledge
You need to give the reader information that they can put to use. Don’t waste 2,000 words on telling someone why content marketing is important. This doesn’t help them implement actionable tools to make their content marketing better. It’s also not useful to title the article about content marketing and then spend the entire time talking about logistics or HR issues.
It helps to focus your content on a question. Look at long-form keywords that you can frame into a question. This helps you focus your writing by answering the most asked questions. You can also use a formula approach. Address a problem by explaining who, what, where, when, why, and how.
8. Start With an Outline
At this point, you’re ready to start writing. Before you do, write an outline. This step is crucial for crafting well thought out and organized content. It helps you stay on track and ensures you don’t forget anything. Imagine you decide to write an article about why someone’s motorcycle won’t start.
You can also use the outline as a structure for including statistics and quantitative data that supports your content. A simple way of creating your outline is to use the who, what, where, when, and how to format. Another option is to use your keyword research. Use the questions that people ask the most as your H2 headers. You are doing double duty this way. This strategy benefits your SEO performance by letting Google know you’re directly addressing the most commonly asked questions. It also helps you to provide the most wanted information for your audience.
9. Action Not Passive
Your content needs to be actionable. This means using an active voice to motivate people into putting your advice into action. The goal of your content should be to empower your audience into action. Give them simple tools that they can take with them and apply to their own lives. Look at this article. I give you ten steps to making your motorcycle content better.
Try to relate your tips and advice to real world situations. Reference tools that are required, steps taken, and expected results. You can touch on potential pitfalls and issues that someone could run into while attempting a particular project.
10. Build Trust
Throughout your content, you need to build trust. This is what will convince your audience to follow your advice. Once they give it a try and see positive results, they are more likely to come back. The easiest way to build trust is by demonstrating that it’s well researched and authoritative. It also helps to establish your reputation. The more well-known your company is, the easier it is to establish trust.
Give Motorcycle Content Writing Another Try
By following these ten steps you should be able to improve your motorcycle content writing. Start by choosing a specific topic, develop an outline, and craft a solid headline. Then write an article that’s engaging and actionable in a voice that directly speaks to your target audience.
I can help you improve your motorcycle content writing. This will help you establish a stronger content marketing plan for your business.
