Flip it: How to use the ‘Inverted Pyramid’ structure in your content writing

Digital content writing – whether that be on blogs, long-form social posts or your site – is crucial to any marketing strategy worth its salt. All copy online needs to be concise and coherent to have the strongest effect on your audience. The Inverted Pyramid technique is less about finding a tone of voice than about structuring your text to enhance the information within. Journalists are the main proprietors of this structure, but you shouldn’t be afraid to nab it for yourself and use it for well-structured content writing.

Let’s start at the beginning – when you’re sitting down to write your piece with a hot cup of tea, the first thing you need to do is focus on the stand-out point of your blog. Summarising this in the first paragraph is often called the ‘lead’. This ensures that you’re doing everything you can to keep your reader hooked to the text. Drop carrots of information around your lead and spark enough interest in your reader while maintaining conciseness.

Your next section is called the ‘details’. Go ahead and expand upon the information you’ve already given and expand, still succinctly, upon your lead. This means your writing is expanding at a flowing pace that isn’t giving everything away immediately, while still being enjoyable to read.

The top of the Inverted Pyramid is the ‘context’. This one is pretty self-explanatory; requiring you to delve into the history of what it is you’re writing about to general comments about your subject. Next time you read an article online, keep an eye out for the structure.

It’s no surprise that journalists use this technique consistently to entice readers into their work. For digital content, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using this technique right away. A great way of infusing it into a blog is to build your text around a Q&A. With a question as your title, it’s much easier to structure your writing. Also, this is inevitably more engaging for people searching for answers through organic searches. Ultimately, when using the Inverted Pyramid method, your title lays the foundation of your entire article – so make sure you get it right.

The benefits of this method aren’t only in smooth reading. Google will look at your page extremely favourably if you have a question header with a quick, simple answer in the first paragraph. Keeping that rigid structure is only beneficial for SEO and should be welcomed best practice.

While the Inverted Pyramid method has its home in journalistic writing, that doesn’t mean we can’t use it, adapt it and make use of it. The best part? Your content will become less clunky and much smoother with more structure. If that’s good for you, it’s good for your readers too.

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