How to Write Authority Content that Drives Business Deals

Now that we know what authority content is, let’s see how we can use it for actual business purposes. Since this is the most challenging type of content a company will ever produce, learning how to write authority content should be high on the to-do list of every marketer or copywriter.

Why should you care about putting effort into writing authority content instead of the same old blogs? Good question – one that I’ve heard so many times.

Here’s a very simple answer: authority content SELLS. Products, services, B2B, B2C – you name it, authority content can sell it.

When 61% of consumers make decisions based on blog posts, there must be something there, right? Most likely, not just any type of blog posts. Authority ones.

Image via nichehacks.com

If you’re still not convinced that you should learn how to write authority content (or get a copywriting firm to write it for you), let me draw your attention to the following Technocrati study. It turns out that 54% of consumers agree that the smaller a community, the bigger the influence of its leaders.

Image via Technocrati

How is this linked to authority content? Here’s the link: remember when you were investing thousands of dollars to grow your social media communities? Turns out you can do more for less. Forget about vanity metrics like the number of followers and likes and focus on those buyers that truly matter. Create a community that’s glued together by authority content and you’ve just managed to keep your most valuable leads close to you.

Let’s see how you can make this happen.

How to Write Authority Content – a Step-by-Step Guide

I’ve covered writing the perfect blog post before. But as you might have guessed, writing authority content is more than crafting a great blog post. This doesn’t mean that authority content can’t be a blog post. It can come in any shape, from articles to infographics and white papers. The important thing is what they contain.

1. Research Your Competitors

You can’t learn how to write authority content without a solid knowledge of what your competition does. Luckily, you don’t have to spend ages on your competitors’ websites to learn that. You have BuzzSumo to do the grunt work for you.

In its free version, the BuzzSumo tool can help you find out which pieces of content in a certain niche got the most traction – visits and social shares. I searched for “Korean beauty tips”. As you know, this is already a very competitive niche.

Authority Content on Korean Beauty

The free version of BuzzSumo returns 10 results. Go through all of them and see what they did right and what they did wrong. In my example, there is a huge difference between the first two articles. The first one got 1.7k shares, while the second one got only 542. The first thing to do here is find out why.

What’s missing from the second blog post? What did the first one do better? For optimal results, I would also head on to their respective Facebook pages. If the first one has a significantly bigger community, that could explain the difference in number of shares.

Twitter is also a good place to see what’s trending in your niche. It’s as simple as going on the “Trending” section. You will find out what people are discussing right now – an invaluable inspiration tool. Provided, of course, that you can produce content fast before the subject grows cold.

2. Stay on (a Single) Point

I’ve seen countless experienced copywriters kill a perfectly good content piece and turn into an average blog post just because they digressed from the subject at hand. For instance, I could also turn this article into a huge one by adding how to promote your authority content on social media. But I won’t do that. The topic is “how to write authority content” and we’re going to stick to that and nothing else.

And, equally important, choose narrow subjects. Instead of “how to write good content” I chose “how to write authority content”. And I’ve also covered how to write blog posts, high-converting white papers and many other. But each of them has its own article.

And this is purely a ROI-centric decision.

Over time, I discovered that “specialized leads” are the best kind of leads. When you write a piece of content focusing on a single, narrow topic, you know that only people who already know about your field are going to search for it. And they are the most likely to become paying customers.

Think about the Korean beauty example above. Focusing on “beauty tips” – a broader topic – would definitely attract more views. But people who search for “Korean beauty tips” are already savvy on this matter. They already know about the power of Korean beauty. They just want to know how to leverage it for themselves.

And it’s your job to show them that through authority content.

3. Use Visuals

Did you know that the human brain is more likely to understand and remember a piece of information if it’s presented in a snapshot or a video? It might be tragic for copywriters (I know I feel this way), but it’s the truth.

Image via neurosciencemarketing.com

Even if it’s not writing per se, creating engaging images is an important part of learning how to write authority content. But don’t worry; you don’t have to become a graphic artist. Simple screenshots (like my example above) or using friendly tools like Canva can do the trick in no time.

4. Do thorough Research and Quote Your Sources

As you can see, this article is brimming with outbound links. They add credibility to any piece of content. In fact, you can’t properly learn how to write authority content if you don’t know how to research a certain topic.

Here’s an example: I’ve known for ages that images in text work like a charm. I could have just written this down. Or say that I know from my own experience. I’ve been in marketing and copywriting for more than 10 years, so that has to count for something, right?

Well, it does. But it’s not enough. It’s certainly not as powerful as quoting neuroscience specialists. They truly know what happens in our brains.

Better yet, the more sources you quote, the more search engines are going to trust your content, too. So, aside from getting readers to love you, you’ll get search engines, too!

5. Go Long Form and In-Depth

The era of the 500-word blog post is gone. Now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that long form content has the best chances of becoming authority content.

Yes, the attention span of the average Internet reader is still decreasing. But you are aiming for the specialized and qualified leads with your authority content, remember?

My advice to my clients is to never write blog posts below 1000 words and to aim for 2000+ as often as possible. Once again, both search engine and readers love that. A higher word count gives you the opportunity to explore the subject at length, add your keyword often without making the text sound unnatural and position yourself as an authority leader in your field.

You may be asking why I don’t suggest higher word counts – closer to 3000 words, as Neil Patel suggests. It’s quite simple – people tend to add fluff to their articles just to hit the required word count.

I’ve seen it in plenty of SEO writers and in a lot of so-called authority figures.

But if you truly want to learn how to write authority content, forget about the word count at first. Simply write as much as you need in order to exhaust a subject. Quote your sources, make your point and deliver valuable information throughout the copy.

This is what makes authority content, not fluff.

Recently, I have begun adding a new question to my screening process when I hire SEO copywriters. “Can you send me a link to a piece of authority content you wrote?”

Of course, when I get the link, I will find out the number of visitors and shares it had. That’s good to know. But it’s not the most important thing.

I don’t necessarily want my writers to know how to write authority content from the get-go. I can teach them how to do that.

What I want to know is whether they know what authority content is or not. I appreciate an honest answer like “I haven’t had the chance to write authority content yet” more than a link to a 300-word blog posts with no links and no research.

Heck, if you don’t know what authority content is and you get this question, Google it! Like I said before, a good copywriter has to know how to do research!

6. Empower Your Audience

Even if Wikipedia ranks first for almost any Google search term, don’t think that this is the type of authority content you are looking for to aid your business goals. A good, ROI-oriented copywriter knows how to empower their audience.

When someone finishes reading your authority content pieces, they should have learned a lot more on the topic. This is the only way you can demonstrate world-class knowledge.

To that end, your authority content needs to contain:

• Quotes and data (we’ve already covered that)
• Actionable items (speak in the second person – “you can do that”, “you can use this tool for research”)
• Examples (the power of example doesn’t just work on kids)

You will find all three of these ingredients in this article. If you’ve gotten so far, you should already have a pretty good idea of how to write authority content or of what to ask from the professional writing services you work with.

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