As A Serious Blogger, You Must Cater To These Three!

Visit any cyber cafe in Bengaluru in the afternoon and you will see at least one person seeking help from the cafe-guy to fill up an online application form for a job or something. Many of those who come are even graduates.

That’s the state of computer literacy in Bangalore - the Silicon Valley of India - one of the most technologically advanced cities in the country. I wonder how things are in the rest of India, the majority of which is underdeveloped in many ways.

Yes, the Internet and mobile devices have become cheaper and there are probably more smartphones in India than toilets. But that doesn’t mean everybody knows how to use them properly.

Making a TikTok video is one thing but being able to understand and use the Internet properly is an entirely different thing.

Still now, a vast majority of our population uses the Internet only for the purpose of entertainment, be it for watching YouTube videos, for social networking, for chatting over WhatsApp. So, when it comes to other tasks, tasks that are probably more important, they have to rely on others who are in the trade.

The point I am trying to make is that for whatever reason, computer literacy is very low in our country despite people having access to the necessary technology.

And it is these people, who form the majority, that I think about when I write an article.

At Embibe, we believe in the democratization of education. Our core vision is to improve learning and life outcomes.

This, I believe, should show not only in the products and services that we offer but also in every single communication that goes from our side.

As an Editor of Embibe’s Content Marketing team, I try to ensure that our blog articles too are written in a manner that really helps our target audience and ensures learning and life outcomes.

Let’s take an example. Let’s say we are writing an article on “How To Fill Up UPSC IAS Application Form?”

Now, as the title implies, it should provide accurate information on how to go about filling up the application form for UPSC IAS exam. And it should be presented in a manner that any graduate (the minimum educational qualification required to be an IAS officer) can follow it (even if that person is not used to working with a computer) and fill up the application form on their own without having to rely on anyone else.

This means the article should provide step-by-step instructions along with the necessary screenshots to refer to. An article written in this manner will definitely be a one-stop solution for the people looking for information on the same.

Catering to the core need of your target audience is the very soul of the responsibilities of a content writer.

Blogging Is A Big Responsibility

Content Writing, especially writing blogs, is not a menial job.

It’s not like you copy stuff from other websites, paste it in your WordPress Editor, rephrase things, and hit the ‘Publish’ button. And if that’s what you do, you are not a Content Writer. You are not a blogger.

Blogging is a big responsibility.

Even if there are separate individuals/teams in your organization to look after the technicalities and stuff like SEO, even if there are editors to review your articles, the process of just writing is no less important than any of these things.

If anything, it is the most important of all.

Because the stakeholders are many.

Writing quality blog posts requires focus and stamina to do proper research.

It requires one to put their maximum effort in order to create the most useful and relevant content.

The content that you produce must serve the very purpose that it intends to.

The importance of serious blogging can be understood if we know the stakeholders and their relationship with the content that you create.

As a blogger, you are answerable to the following three and must cater to them in every piece of article you write:

A. Your Audience

Just because blogging is done for the purpose of marketing, it doesn’t mean you should resort to the unethical or mindless promotion of the organization and its offerings.

You should sound authoritative. Your content should make sense. Your readers should get a satisfactory answer/solution to what they are looking for, as elaborated in the introductory example.

Also, if your content helps and educates them in the truest sense of the word, then it’s inevitable that they will trust you, as an organization too and what you are offering.

That’s why I believe blogging is not just mindless marketing.

Also, if your readers do not find your content useful, they won’t visit again, even if you rank in number 1 position. This, in turn, will impact the SEO Ranking of the site negatively.

B. The Organisation You Work

Now that you have answered the question your audience is asking, educated them by providing with the most useful and relevant information and built trust, it is time to introduce your audience to the mission and vision of the organization, and how the company and its products, if any, can help them solve their problem.

After all, there is a reason why the organization has a blog - to provide information, help/educate the target audience, and most importantly, promote themselves.

There are two types of people who would land on the blog:

People who are already aware of the organization and what it does.

People who have a problem (that your company has a solution for) and are looking for a solution online.

The former already know what exactly your organization has to offer. But they still might visit the blog to check what’s new, what’s happening now.

The latter, on the other hand, probably stumbled upon your article on Google while they were looking for a solution to a problem.

Your blog content should educate both these categories of people about how you, your company can help them.

What Embibe does is revolutionary. There is no other product in the market that identifies the minutest gaps of a student as they prepare for their exams. And in a country like India where we still don’t have the right infrastructure in educational institutions, where the teacher-student ratio is extremely low, Embibe can be a game-changer.

In fact, we have scores of stories (with data) to validate how our AI-powered tool can guarantee learning and life outcomes.

Most remarkable of all is when back in 2018, tribal students from the remotest areas of Rajasthan, who had no prior knowledge of engineering and medical entrance exams like JEE and NEET, and who didn’t know how to use computers, showed remarkable improvement in just 10 days and eventually, after just 9 months of preparation with Embibe’s AI-powered recommendations, cracked the exams. As the face of the company, it is our duty to educate our audience, honestly and sincerely, about the power of this tool, tell stories, provide data to substantiate your claims, and market yourself in the process.

And that’s what I try to do.

C. Search Engines, Especially Google

The better the article (properly optimized, quality content providing valuable and useful information), the smarter the search engines become.

See, Google has always maintained that what matters the most is how helpful your content is and whether or not people find it useful.

The Google algorithm or algorithm of any other search engines, at this point, is not as smart and sophisticated as a human being - it doesn’t really read, process, and understand the message conveyed in an article like a human, to decide whether or not the content is useful.

It picks up various signals like SEO and backlinks to determine the relevancy of an article and ranks accordingly.

But with every passing day, it is becoming smarter, thanks to Artificial Intelligence - which basically mimics “cognitive” functions associated with the human mind, such as “learning” and “problem solving”.

Like any other AI, the Google algorithm learns from what is fed to it, i.e. the content that you produce and how people take it.

Of course, at this point, you can manipulate all these things to a great extent. But cheating the very platform through which your content gets noticed wouldn’t be the right thing to do - not only because it is unethical but also because sooner or later, it is going to backfire.

So, yes. As an Embiber aligned with its mission and vision, I feel I need to cater to these three.

But I guess, it holds good for bloggers and content writers in any other company or industry as well. As a blogger, you are answerable to these three. Ethical blogging demands you cater to all three of them.

This isn’t an easy task and needs rigorous dedication and most importantly, the will to contribute towards a better future for all - your organization, your audience, and the search engines.