Effective text planning – What it is and when to use it
Every copywriter aspires to produce polished, useful contents every time. But we can only do so if we are aware of the guidelines for good writing. Planning our content happens to play a key part in this. Let’s have a sneak peek at what exactly is involved in text planning.
What is text planning?
Planning your text comes in between choosing your keywords and writing your content. It involves planning out the best information arrangement before you begin writing.
In other words, we should consider the best arrangement for content to create a transparent text structure as soon as we are aware of the topic of the post and the phrases we will use.
The overall plan for producing material is:
- Article concept
- Analysis and choosing important words
- Text organization/planning
- Creation of text
- SEO improvement
What purpose does text planning serve?
A strong information architecture is necessary for the content to remain engaging and draw readers in.
Additionally, planned texts takes Google robots and other search engines robots into consideration and this results in SEO texts getting better indexed in search engines. This means that the commercial potential of planned texts is higher than that of unplanned texts.
When to use text planning
Use text planning when developing a copywriting plan and a content marketing strategy, before creating a guide, an article, or an eBook, in practically every situation involving writing.
In summary, planning your content is necessary if we want to avoid contents with low visibility (we are now aware that text planning is crucial for both the reader’s comfort and Google’s criteria).
How to plan text
The main instruments copywriters use to achieve text planning are headlines. Based on the hierarchy of the material, they choose the article’s structure. As a result, they make it easier to choose the appropriate content to accompany specific words, ensuring that the overall message is consistent and moves the reader from general to specific.
Think about planning your texts based on a topic like: “What running shoes should you choose?” Some may believe that a ‘small’ topic like does not require sorting, but it does and we can do it in the following ways:
- H1 heading: What running shoes should you choose?
- H2 heading: Summer running shoes
- H3 heading: Summer running shoes – price from N10,000 to N20,000
- H4 heading: Model A (under such sub-topic can we offer a particular kind of shoes with a thorough description that includes information about the manufacturer, user comfort, price etc.)
- H4 heading: Model B
- H4 heading: Model C
- H3 heading: Summer running shoes – price from N20,000 to N30,000
- H4 heading: Model D
- H4 heading: Model E
- H4 heading: Model F
- H2 heading: Winter running shoes
(…continuation to the text structure in accordance with the first H2 heading in the example above).
Take note of how the major headers in the example above introduce the minor ones (H2 introduces H3, H3 does the same for H4, etc.).
Why structure a text plan this way?
If a copywriter doesn’t arrange an article’s proper structure by include different sorts of shoes in the H1 or H2 header, the material will lose a lot of its appeal because apparently different readers will examine this subject from different perspectives and with varied wants and expectations.
With this arrangement, a reader will simply look at the headlines rather than having to read the full text in order to find specific information on summer running shoes that cost between N20,000 and N30,000.
For the writer, there is nothing left to do but conduct research and begin writing, after achieving his/her text plan. After all, you already know which topics and sub-topics to discuss and in what order. Planning the text ahead does not only affect the results obtained but also speeds up obtaining them.
Summary
- Establishing a distinct and free-flowing informational structure is the goal of text planning.
- Such a process affects how profitable the content is for business. It enhances positioning and facilitates reading and information-seeking for readers.
- A hierarchy of headlines addressing the issues presented “from general to specific” should be developed in order to properly plan the text.
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