Who Needs Content Writing? (and why?)

You already have so much to think about when you’re running a business - I know content writing might be the last thing on your mind. I don’t even keep up with it in my own business, and my whole business… is writing 🫣

But, if you’re interested in finding new customers, nurturing existing ones, and establishing yourself as a trusted voice in your community or authority in your field, you need to be writing content as soon as yesterday.

Take this model of the customer journey:

5 stage model of the customer journey showing awareness, to consideration, to purchase, to retention, to advocacy.

The reason content writing is such good value for money (or time, or effort) is that it can catch customers at every stage of the journey - sometimes more than one at once.

Today, I’m going to split the benefits of content writing into 3 categories: visibility, persuasion, and trust.

Visibility

How many times a day do you Google (or ask AI) a question? If your searches look anything like mine:

Good veggie burgers in New Zealand

How big is a standard cushion

How do sunrise alarm clocks work

…then you’re probably seeing other businesses’ content marketing at the top of your search results every day. If you click their link to find the answer to your question, you’re now solidly in their funnel.

These businesses aren’t just writing any old content to get them on the first page of Google (and we all know that the first page of Google is the only one that exists, right?) - they’re using search engine optimisation (SEO) to let Google know that they’re the most knowledgeable, trustworthy voice out there.

It used to be pretty easy to game the system by just smashing keywords in everywhere you could, but Google’s latest updates have left short-cutters falling down the list - and, I hear on the grapevine, banned altogether in some cases. This includes AI generated content.

When your potential customers Google a question and you have the answer, convincing them that you’re the best person to solve their problem becomes a whole lot easier.

Persuasion

Most customers don’t come to you ready to buy - they need a little warming up first. They need to know that you understand their specific problem and that you’re offering the solution. Your written content gives you plenty of space to do that, far more than you can get away with in an ad or a social media post.

With long-form content, you have all the time you need to take a potential customer from completely unaware to buying into your business.

Trust

Finally, content writing helps you to nurture every small business’ dream: repeat customers.

By offering value in knowledge and information, you leverage the reciprocity effect: when you do something good for someone else, they feel indebted to do something good for you. Not only are you building a solid reputation as an expert, but you’re sticking in your customers’ minds as someone who offers value beyond what they pay for.

So how do I write content for my business?

The type of content you write to capture each stage of the customer journey will vary - but this is something we’ll get into at a later date.

Next week, I’m going to answer everyone’s current favourite: “What’s wrong with using Chat-GPT?”

I know I’m biased, so I won’t focus on my own opinion. Instead, we’ll take a look at how LLMs like Chat-GPT actually work, the effect they have on your Google standing, and how they really impact your business.

Still to come, I’ll finish the Writing 101 round by talking about the basics of writing for people who don’t think they can write, before moving on to articles like: how to use AI to your advantage (without making the mistakes we’ll be discussing next week) and how you to write in your own brand voice.

These are the first baby steps for Write Good, so if you have any burning questions or requests for future topics, drop them in my suggestion box below.

Cheers,

Katie @ Write Good x