How do you write content that ranks high and engages users?

Language is a key factor, using words and terms they use could cause a huge difference. In my experience, I ran an A/B test during a social media campaign, testing general terms against local ones for the audience, the difference in results was much more than I expected.

During the construction of Nike Montreal, I was constantly creating TikTok videos about it, hyping up the city for the arrival of the 2nd biggest Nike store in Canada. My first videos got a few hundred views, but that was it... until one day, a video got 10K views in about an hour! That single event made me rethink my whole TikTok strategy for Nike Mtl's promotion. Since that video went viral in the city, I started using the same exact hashtags and displayed similar words on every other video I made about this subject, and it got big! Eventually, every single video I made reached thousands of users in just a few minutes! More than half those videos went over 10K & some almost reached 100K views! So yes, keywords ALWAYS matter!

Keywords are like magic wands for creating content for those who need it and at the right time. You are more likely to get more views and engagement on your content if you research your keywords and provide answers and value to what people are actively looking out for. Whether you are just blogging or creating social media contents , you should make it a part of your winning strategy to research keywords and stay on trend.

There is a major flaw in this article. It starts out by talking about “creating content” but then continues by only talking about “writing”. Content is not just the written word and I’ll even go as far to say that starting with written content is the least efficient way to create content with a decent ROI. Starting with video and/or audio not only is more engaging, but it can output all other forms of content - including written content. In addition, if this multimedia content is from expert conversations, then SEO is built in due to the conversations being about topics (that should be) guided by what your audience wants to learn about or hear.

Careful not to sound too salesy nor baiting clients through your headlines. Audience of today don't easily tolerate being baited to click or read something only to figure out that it's not what they expected, yes headlines could be very effective in increasing your numbers and conversions but it could also be harmful to your brand identity if done repetitively.

Optimizing your content could be done in many different ways, the easiest and most straightforward way is to use a clean format so it's easy for your audience to read and go through and doesn't look boring or complex, anything you would add that would support readability is considered optimization.

Metaphors are an effective and engaging way of communicating a concept. For a blog post on why managed service providers should have an IT service catalog (basically a comprehensive menu of services), my opening paragraph pointed out that if you went to a restaurant and had to quiz the waiter on what they served, how much it cost, what came with each dish, etc., it would be extremely frustrating and you would probably not want to eat there.

Content that is highly-optimized for SEO tends to sound overly abstract or academic. A good way to take the edge off this is to mix in some personal stories or anecdotes from subject matter experts.

The game of content can never be taken for granted or expected to work as planned, so whenever you can, A/B test, so you can try different elements against each other and go with what's getting more results.

In 2023, apart from the above points, I feel it is necessary to have an understanding of the new-age tools to come up with quality content. To share stories on LinkedIn - always write your own story without tweaking it as the audience knows the authenticity when they read.