General Types and Styles

General Content Types

The content you create for your website falls into two broad categories: Viral and SEO. Viral content (also known as “click bait”) is specifically designed for social media and email marketing and has nothing to do with optimization for search engines. Yes, you’ll still get some organic traffic, but that isn’t the point.

VIRAL CONTENT

Viral content is much more fun to create, but can be dangerous or damaging if it is used incorrectly. It’s called “Click Bait” a lot of the time because it encourages you to click it, even if you weren’t looking for the information it’s related to in the first place. In fitness, you might see something like “The Top 10 Fat Burners that Could KILL YOU” or “The One Move that the 300 Actors Used to Get Ripped.” The title doesn’t have to be optimized and SEO is secondary to getting traffic through social media or email campaigns.

SEO CONTENT

Most of the techy geeks are concerned with everything SEO. I am too, but all other aspects of content creation need to be considered as well. On top of that, you never know what the hell each search engine is looking for at any given time; it changes constantly! You need to concern yourself with consistently creating good, interesting content for your target market while following some simple SEO rules that will help you gain organic traffic.

Content Marketing Style

How you write your article is dependent on the audience you are writing for. The only way you’re going to know how your specific audience will respond is to try different styles and see which one works. At first you need to be very flexible, then evaluate and move forward.

FUN

The Fun Style involves writing in a playful, realistic voice with lots of jokes and sometimes even emoticons. It should be conversational and provide practical examples in a nonthreatening way.

TECHNICAL

If you get technical, understand who you’re writing for. No one likes being in school unless they are extremely interested in the content. For the most part, this means that the audience that will be the most interested in the Technical writing style are other trainers and coaches. They could be good for some peer-cred, but they won’t interest your consumer market for the most part.

ANGRY

If you have a metal-head type audience, writing with an Angry style could be very effective. In your content you would be insulting to other methods or groups and combative with the audience in general. Unless you really know your people, this is a dangerous way to write. Make sure you can back up everything you say up and don’t be surprised if you get hate mail and very
negative comments.

PRACTICAL

The Practical style is a mixture of technical and fun. It’s useful and informative but it’s presented in a way that everyone can understand. Unless you’re experimenting, stick with Practical.