Content writing means you have to show your views, thoughts, and ideas clearly to the reader and there must be thousands of people out there writing content on the same topic as yours so that you make your content more attractive than others.
The Content Writing Course was held for 5 days, and it was such a wonderful session for all the participants who wanted to enhance their content writing skills. The course was facilitated by Mr. Kushal Pokharel, Columnist, The Rising Nepal. This course helped the participants to understand the basic concept of writing blogs and articles, media articles, and techniques of writings covering the theoretical aspects of writing, its growing significance in the world, and emerging trends among others. Through this course; they also learned to unleash their creativity and write more efficiently to become a more confident writer. They also got ideas to distinguish between traditional writing versus writing for the web. They were guided to Step-by-step learning of different types of content with the best practices for each type.
The session delivered following learnings;
Conceptualizing Content Writing
Content writing is emerging as a popular form of online writing. It is a process of planning, writing, and editing content for web-based platforms. Content is information related to a specific topic with a focused targeted audience. For content writers, Creating, Engaging and Valuable content that helps your target audience is vital. It comes in several various mediums: Blogs, webpages, social media posts, media articles, video, and audio recordings among others. Content writing as a career option offers huge opportunities and the demand for especially content is growing in the market.
Why Content Writing?
- Increasing scope particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic;
- Flexible work schedules and multiple opportunities for writing enthusiasts;
- Consistent, engaging, and high-quality contents are high on demand in fields of business, education, travel and tourism, IT among others;
- Professional development, promoting your business and other activities;
- Comprehensive: Freelancing, blogging to technical writing, copywriting, and creative writing;
Some Features of Good Content
Great content starts with information that your audience will find relevant, interesting, and perhaps even entertaining. Here are some features of High Quality, Convincing Content Writing;
- Caters to the specific audience;
- In-depth research (Expert information)
- Reader’s friendly Clear sentence structure, active voice, a vast amount of information in easiest way (Readable)
- Innovative- new ideas, concepts, and styles of expression (Creativity and Ideation)
- A unique voice, a different perspective on the same subject matter (Originality)
- Suitable for publishing through social media (Social media-friendly)
- Compelling headline- tone, length
- Short paragraphs, subheads, bulleted lists, hyperlinks
- Short words e.g. show for indicating, get for obtain, to for to, help for facilitate
- A new way of storytelling- multimedia and visuals to the extent possible
- A reliable source of information, and
- Good content is action-oriented
In this digital world, it is important to embrace all forms of content to help your brand stand out. Text-based content will always play an important role in digital marketing, but creating and promoting visual and interactive content can bring huge benefits when done right. In general terms, there are popular forms of Content Writing;
- Blogging
- Social media
- Web content
- Journalistic/News
- Writing
- Creative writing
In light of the above, these courses acquainted the learners with the cardinal principles of content writing but also equip them with the necessary skills and mindsets to embark upon the journey of content writing.
Introduction to Media and Blog Writing
Mr. Pokhrel introduces the term Media & Blog Writing, Copywriting, Social Media & Email Writing Skills in a detailed manner. He introduces the term MEDIA OP-ED which is a piece of writing that expresses a personal opinion of the author, published in a newspaper opposite to the page on which editorial is written (Cambridge Dictionary). He added it is usually longer than a regular letter to the editor. He also explained that op-ed writing has a working significance as it is a Succinct and clear means of communication, which nurture a reading culture among students and improving their analytical writing skills, and also Promote authentic and critical writing and reading skills that help students to excel in professional world influencing public opinion and shape practice. The most important discussion was explaining the ABCD rules on writing.
ABCD Rules
A- Attention: Grabbing reader’s attention
B-Billboard: Elevating the stake and introducing general evidence and context
C-Context: Background information to support your point
D-Demonstrate: Use examples, factual data
E-Equivocate: Dismissing counter-argument by further additional evidence
F-Forward: Parting thoughts, drawing reader’s attention to look toward the future
Concept of a Blog
He introduces Blog writing as a piece of writing that expresses your thoughts, experiences about any topic in a more informal way and also adds some of its significance. He also highlighted the major differences between Media writing and Blog writing. In addition to this, he also gave essential tips to the participants in Media and Blog writing. Here are some steps of blog writing that were discussed in the course;
- Find your niche and audience;
- Identify a topic;
- Do some Google search on similar blogs;
- Develop a writing framework;
- Write a blog post with an interesting title;
- Organize your writing;
- Proofread and copyedit;
The content writing course encouraged participants to draft an article that can be published in media, blogs, or any other companies’ website and also provided tips and tactics in drafting better content. Participants got proper guidance from the trainer to overcome the challenges of writing with guided feedback and mentoring beyond the training duration.