Are you thinking about introducing a blog to your website and looking for tips on writing high-quality articles?
Are you worried that not having an English or journalism degree might hold you back?
You needn’t worry; anyone can write good blog articles—it’s just a matter of sticking to a few simple rules. We’re a marketing agency that helps medical device companies deliver comprehensive content campaigns, and we believe there are no better people to write for a company than the ones who work there. So, we’re going to run through our tips for writing content that gets results.
Content marketing: An overview
Having an understanding of content marketing will help you to understand what makes great website articles.
Content marketing is all about giving your customer something without directly asking for anything in return. It allows you to add value to their lives in a way that convinces them of your value, creating a connection and building trust, which is incredibly important when it comes to increasing brand equity.
Content can come in many forms, such as imagery, videos, slide shows, and more, but written content gives you the chance to demonstrate your expertise and help your audience. It’s also a great way to optimise your website to rank higher in search engine results pages.
We’re going to delve into how you can write high-quality content that will not only create a great experience for your reader but will also help you rank higher on search engines.
Know your reader
When it comes to medical device marketing, knowing your audience is the first and arguably the most important step.
If you don’t know who your audience is, how they think, and what their challenges are, how can you be the solution they’re looking for? You can’t create high-quality content without high-quality content ideas.
We find that a great way to come up with ideas for content is to focus on the questions that your audience is asking. This is the information they’re looking for while they’re deciding whether or not to buy from you or work with you. Answering their questions before they even have to ask them will not only save time when it comes to sales meetings, but it will also earn their trust.
The likelihood is that you already have a very good idea of what content is required based on intuition alone, but involving your whole team can really help to generate amazing content ideas. Your customer-facing teams are the ones who really know your customers, so it’s critical that they play a role in directing the content.
Keyword research can also help you to understand your audience and generate content ideas, as it tells you what search phrases and topics are popular.
Write for your reader
When it comes to writing content for SEO, MedTech companies often focus on creating content that ranks, forgetting about the user. This may provide impressions, but as the impressions are not with your target audience, it is ultimately a pointless and costly activity.
Additionally, other practices such as keyword stuffing can be detrimental to SEO. Not only is it penalised by Google, but it also makes your content less readable. Keyword stuffing is when writers try to fit a targeted keyword in every possible location. The disruption this causes to your article’s readability is primarily why Google frowns on such practices.
While you will need to keep search engines (SEs) in mind while writing, the priority should always be the reader. First and foremost, SEs are looking for content that is going to be the most valuable to readers. They are extremely sophisticated and able to detect when someone is trying to ‘cheat the system’ and rank without putting in the hard work.
The bottom line is you need to create original content that is of value to your intended audience.
Create a consistent tone
The tone of your content will be predetermined in your brand guidelines and is there to ensure consistency throughout your website and other materials, but when it comes to writing articles, you may need to adapt it slightly.
Copy for articles is not like traditional website or social media copy; it doesn’t need to be condensed down and so closely focused on your messaging (although, of course, your messaging should guide it). Instead, you can expand upon subjects and go into more detail.
The tone and writing style in articles should be determined by who you’re writing for. For instance, if you’re writing an article aimed at engaging healthcare professionals, you should use more technical language, which will not need as much explanation. However, if you are trying to target patients, you may need to take on a more reassuring tone and explain more complex concepts.
Do comprehensive research
The content of your articles will always be better when it is thoroughly researched.
Before you can even think about writing, you should make sure you’ve gathered all the necessary research and taken note of the references you need.
Ensure that you have read up on relevant studies and clinical papers around your topic, as these provide a reliable source that will add credibility to your article. You should link back to these sources where applicable, as this not only demonstrates to SEs that your article is well-researched, it also provides a level of evidence for your readers as well.
Keep your writing engaging
It goes without saying that your articles need to be well-written and engaging; if not, you will not only struggle to rank on SEs, but your readers will click away with a bad impression of your company. So, how do you ensure that your article is well-written?
Working out the structure of your article before you start writing is a great place to start, as it helps you to determine the overall takeaway of your article, which will provide clarity and conciseness to your writing.
In terms of technicalities, here are a few things to look out for:
Sentence length
You should vary sentence length, with some long and some short. Too many long sentences can become wordy and hard to read, but too many short sentences may end up seeming almost monosyllabic.
Language choice
Where possible, you should use the simplest word choice. Even if you’re writing for HCPs with a formal tone, SEs reward articles that are not too convoluted, as not all readers possess the same depth of vocabulary as you. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use technical language when needed.
Typos and spelling errors
We all do it, but multiple proofs from multiple people can help you to avoid them being published online for all to see.
We use Grammarly to check through all of our documents as well. You can either have it as an extension on your computer, so that it checks everything as you’re writing it, or you can upload documents to the online version to check all at once.
Difficult concepts
Make sure you take your time to fully grasp difficult concepts, as this will help you to explain them better. Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” This is something we live by at Podymos, as it’s so true!
Unnecessary words
Try to avoid using unnecessary words. For instance, the word ‘very’ is often overused when it doesn’t really add anything to your writing. Other phrases like ‘in order to’ and ‘all of’ can often be left as ‘to’ and ‘all’ without changing the meaning.
Use headings
Unfortunately, despite all your hard work, readers are unlikely to read every single word that you’ve painstakingly crafted. Internet users typically scan copy to save time and find exactly what they are looking for, which is why main page copy needs to be so concise.
Having descriptive headings throughout your article will help readers find what they need, making your content much more useful.
It will also give your article a better chance of appearing as a featured snippet, also known as position zero. This ends up being the first result you see on search engines and often shows a breakdown of the headings so that the user knows what is contained on that page. When a featured snippet appears on a results page, it will be clicked more than the other results.
Abbreviations
Often when writing for medical device marketing, there are a lot of long words and phrases that can be abbreviated. It is okay to do this, but ensure that the word or phrase is written in full, with the abbreviation in brackets the first time it appears. That way, readers know exactly what to expect.
Content needs to be trustworthy
When it comes to making decisions, the most important aspect to help your audience decide whether they do or don’t want to work with you is trust. Your articles can help to convey trust by demonstrating how knowledgeable you are.
To help with this, you should use references or external links to show that you have read around the subject. When writing about medical devices in particular, references must be included with every claim; see our guide to the EU MDR for further details.
References and links also signal to SEs that your article will be of more value to readers, as it indicates that it is well-researched. So, while it is regulation to include references, it is also beneficial for SEO purposes.
You should also ensure that your content is not biased in any way and that your article is written to be genuinely helpful to your readers, rather than promoting your business. You must be transparent; otherwise, readers will see through you, and the trust is gone. This means presenting both sides of the argument, even if it doesn’t reflect well on you.
Useful tools for writing high-quality content
We find that a lot of work needs to go into writing content in medical device marketing, but there are a few tools that we use to make it more efficient:
Coggle: A mind-mapping tool to help you get all your thoughts down and structure your article.
SemRush: Can be used for keyword research and creating content templates based on keywords. This has paid features, but the free version can add a lot of insights into your audience. Additionally, if you want to branch out with the paid version, it will analyse each of your articles and provide you with an SEO score and guidance on areas to improve.
Grammarly: You can use this once your article is written to check for spelling and grammar errors. This is also great for gauging the reading age of your article.
Zotero: This will help you to keep track of your claims and references.