Articles
Resources Every Content Writer Should Know About
Posted on June 13, 2014
Whether you are an internet marketer trying to write a blog post or a writing copy for a website, you probably have some bookmarks and tools that you like to use. We all have our reasons for why you should have a blog, and in internet marketing and SEO the big trend is content marketing so it’s time for everyone to step up their writing skills.
We all get writer’s block at some point or another and need something to get the ball rolling.
Title Generators to the Rescue
- Title tool by Content Forest is great for pulling relevant and useful titles. Unlike the others it doesn’t just input your keyword into hundreds of pre-populated titles. Instead it gives you back realistic titles that actually work.
- To get you thinking more outside the box, and for generally humorous approaches to writing, Portent’s content idea generator.
Oddly enough, being born and raised in the Amish country of Lancaster County and not knowing what SEO was until after graduating college, I never would have known there are dozens of SEO companies in Lancaster. We apparently have the Amish to thank for that, and not that Amish mafia show. (Spoiler alert…the show is fake. It’s reality TV, there aren’t any real ones left..never were).
- Tweak Your Biz’s title generator gives you an extremely comprehensive list for all the different types of blog posts you could write; lists, best of/tops, how to, questions, love, celebrities, secrets, business, motivation and more. You can also choose to have your keyword to be a noun or verb to better fit the titles.
- Lastly, but most certainly not the least effective, is Hubspot’s blog topic title generator. You put in 3 words (capitalize them so they aesthetically look nice in the title) and it spits out some titles.
If you really want to get down to business, you can download their blog topics for the next year spreadsheet. Just like on the site, you put in your 3 words and it comes out with enough blog topics for a year.
Obviously you may need to tweak some and others just won’t work, but still it is a good way to get a plan together and schedule out blog post ideas over the next couple of months.
Alright, so now you have the best titles to write about and you get down to it. You know that everyone loves visuals and you want to insert some images. So you head over to Google, do an image search, and plop in a relevant awesome image, right? All wrong. That would be stealing, Johnny. Don’t be like Johnny. (I know of no Johnny that steals Google images).
Best Sources for Free Images
Assuming you don’t have a Shutterstock account, there are still plenty of places you can go to.
- Compfight is a great place to start. Just be sure that after you do a search to click on ‘Creative commons’ on the left sidebar to filter out those with commercial licenses.
- Search the Creative Commons database for a less stocky approach. Be careful to just search Google here and take images there. I prefer to use Wikimedia Commons when other places haven’t fulfilled my desire for that right image.
Personally, those are the three that get the job done for me. But if you too find yourself digging deeper for that perfect image than you can check out this ultimate list of free image sources from Buffer.
So now it is up to you to come up with some great scannable content. Just make sure it is compelling and resourceful information that the reader will learn at least something from reading it. Next topic of discussion will be how to take that content and optimize it for the search engines and to get social shares.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/resources-every-content-writer-know-0912202#RPxFDfkA5QKk1Dcu.99
