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How to Create Long-form Content with WordPress

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How to Create Long-form Content with WordPress

If your business has an online presence, you will likely find yourself in a highly competitive position to make your presence count amongst brands that have been building content and growing a substantial audience base for years. Especially if you are a new business, you might be intimidated by those brands with massive content libraries that are much ahead in the game.

But there are ways around it. You can quickly establish yourself online with the right internet marketing services and content marketing strategy. But the best way to your rescue is to use long-form content. Long-form content gives the audience an in-depth and detailed explanation of the topic you want to talk about. Plus, they make for more evergreen and shareworthy content.

In WordPress, “long form” articles refer to all those that contain at least 1,000 words and more. Long-form articles provide a fantastic chance to go deep into subjects your audience is curious to learn about. It might seem like a lot, but if done right, it can win your audience and make you stand out in the competition. With WordPress, it is even easier to create high-quality long-form content.

Long-form posts will engage your audience for a long time and truly educate them about the answers they are seeking. It requires substantial research and takes time to produce since it demands time and resources, but it positively impacts your audience. They will certainly come straight to your website the next time they search for an answer. Long-form content can be in the form of case studies, topic guides, detailed blog posts, data roundups and reviews, and much more.

In this article, we will try to understand how you can make long-form content that counts and why you need it in the first place.

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The Importance Of Long Form Content

Even while many people find reading lengthy articles to be off-putting, this does not indicate that you should focus on small pieces of material. Content producers today favor lengthy, well-defined articles instead of short articles, and their justifications are sound. Here are a few reasons why you should choose long-form content.

  • It improves the user experience and lengthens their stay on a website.
  • Content with more than 1500 words performs well in search results.
  • Long-form content increases shareability and, consequently, increases visitors.
  • Long-form material that is simple to navigate allows visitors to quickly find the information they need while passing over the sections they don’t care to learn about.
  • These in-depth articles offer a means for readers to conveniently access all the information they need about a particular subject under a single link without having to waste time and effort looking for it in several places.
  • The extensive information assembled in a lengthy form article aids in producing high-quality content and will aid in building a devoted audience. People will regard you as an authority on that particular subject, which will produce positive results.
  • Because they are comprehensive and helpful, long-form articles are more likely to receive backlinks from reputable websites, raising page authority.
  • It will give you direction and purpose for future posts on your website.
  • The space for comments and discussion will encourage people to discuss the content.
  • Long-form articles allow you to partner and make more referral relationships by linking out more.
  • It can also facilitate conversions because it provides more room for adding CTAs.

Now that you have a fair idea about the importance of long-form content, only use it for some topics. In fact, choose on a topic-to-topic basis whether you want to go for long or short-form content. With that in mind, take a look at how you must create/format long-form content and the tips you should keep in mind while writing it.

How to Create Long-Form Content

We cannot tell you how long you should write your article or the process you should follow because you must define that as the writer. However, we suggest the following tips you can keep in mind when writing to create a high-quality long-form article.

Use a Popular Topic

It would help if you chose a popular topic that was of interest to your readers. Keep in mind that your post should be more than simply a fragment of a story; it should be a means to help others solve a problem or learn a new concept to improve. It is also better to choose topics that won’t lose their relevance over time, so they remain evergreen, and no matter when an individual searches for them, it will still help resolve their problems.

Knowing what topics in your sector are popular right now will help you attract more users to your material. You may use various keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, GrowthBar, etc., to select or get a suggestion for a topic. Create a content calendar to stay at the top of your posting and sharing schedule.

After choosing a subject, you must thoroughly research the topic. Your post will be a superb piece of content if you choose a certain niche-relevant topic that is well-researched and well-rounded.

Add Images And Optimize Them

Reading through long walls of text can be challenging, especially when reading an article on a small screen. Images help you add value to your material while also allowing you to make logical breaks. They make the content look more engaging and attractive to look at.

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Each image you use in your article should be directly related to the text that follows it. For example, if the section gives instructions about making tea, add an infographic that mentions the steps in short or just feature someone making tea.

Try WordPress plugins like iList Infographic Maker that help you visualize data and information in a way that appeals to the eye and draws the reader in. Beautiful lists, infographics, charts, and graphs are simple to build and may significantly improve your content marketing strategy.

Some impressive photographs can significantly improve the quality of your post, but optimizing them is crucial so that your website loads quickly. The more individuals click away without reading your content, the longer it takes for your page to load. Try using various WordPress picture optimization plugins like Optimus Image Optimizer, WP Smush, and Imagify.

Lists Will Be Helpful

Lists can be used similarly to graphics in that they help break up long text passages and make them easier to read. They also give you a fantastic opportunity to clarify your arguments. They give a better structure to your article and look nice having a place in the article. Additionally, they offer a visual progression to your ideas and make scanning through the article easier for readers.

In WordPress, adding lists to long-form text is a relatively simple process. The format should provide you with lots of opportunities to do so, depending on the subject you’re covering. Think about adding benefits, key features, pros, cons, steps, types, etc., in the form of lists to your content.

Use Sub Headings

If you enjoy reading online, you’re undoubtedly already aware of how articles divided into subheadings make it much easier to comprehend information. Using these components in your own material has a lot of advantages. They are ideal for breaking up long articles into smaller pieces and are also better for SEO.

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Here are three suggestions for crafting effective subheadings in your long-form content:

  • Put as much optimum detail as you can into each subheading to help your readers understand what to expect.
  • Use them to divide extremely difficult sections; for instance, roundups and step-by-step instructions. Thus, feel free to add more subheaders than you had initially planned.
  • The structure of your text should reflect in the subheadings.

Create SEO-Optimized Content

Of course, having high search engine rankings is necessary if you want to reach the largest audience. And to do that, your content must be SEO-optimized.

It would help if you began by conducting keyword research first. The Google Keyword Planner is one of the tools that most writers use for finding and researching keywords and analyzing their competition. But wait to pack your content with keywords after you’ve chosen one. The content will end up being awkward and artificial for readers and search engines if you endlessly stack it with keywords. Use plugins that check for keywords in your text and the text’s readability with them. This helps you improve your content for readers and SEO bots and makes sure nothing feels forced. Additionally, the plugins come in handy for putting crucial SEO tools like a sitemap and breadcrumbs on your website. It is a valuable asset for your WordPress SEO campaigns to rank your long-form posts.

Proofread Your Content Before Publishing

It can be complicated to write an article. It is especially tiring to edit and revise your work after you’ve finished writing for hours. Many spelling and punctuation errors are possible, which are never good for your brand’s reputation. Long-form content typically has a higher likelihood of mistakes than short form. But several tools are available to aid content writers in avoiding such errors.

These days, there are a plethora of tools that authors use to make good content that does not oversee such errors. One such program that is particularly well-liked by the general public is Grammarly. These tools must be able to check all of your spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors and make suggestions for a better delivery style. It would be best also to verify your text for plagiarism to improve content analysis.

Make Shareable Content

People enjoy sharing information that they find fascinating and believe would be of interest to others. Make your material simple to share to increase your audience and the effect of your lengthy pieces. You can choose from a wide variety of social sharing plugins, as is the case with anything else related to WordPress.

You can use plugins like AddThis that lets you add floating share buttons, social profile follow buttons, and even related topics fast and easily. Such plugins allow you access stats for your most popular shared content, referral networks, pageviews, and more, which proves to be beneficial for evaluating your long-form content.

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Get Promoting

You can start promoting your goods and services in your long-form articles once you have the reader’s interest and they believe you to be an informed and trustworthy source of information. After educating them on a subject, you can offer your assistance in coming up with a solution to the problem they came to you with initially.

Adding a call to action (or CTA) is one way of doing it. There are several call-to-action WordPress plugins available at your disposal. You can use these to point users to your pricing page, newsletter signup form, contact form, etc.

You can also have the option to use a shortcode to insert relevant products into your text if your website also features an online store.

Conclusion

Long-form content requires study and time to write, but the effort is worthwhile. You’ll establish yourself as an authority, your readers will stay on the site longer, user engagement will increase, and your site’s SEO will improve. Creating long-form content doesn’t have to be tough; you need to be willing to put in the time to make space for these few tips above, which will help you ace your content as a writer. Use plugins supported by WordPress to make your life simpler, and watch how the article performances shine.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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