Informational Text: Tell Me All About It!

Sometimes copywriters, who order informational texts, find themselves in a dead-end: what is this type of work, what is it like? It happens that instead of informational texts they write news, advertising or selling – and all because the authors are not familiar with this genre. How not to lose face if the customer wants to receive the informational text?

First of all, you need to understand how informational text differs from other kinds of copywriting.

Informational text definition

They are written in the third person. If, for example, advertising text can be written in the first person, the information narrative is always conducted in the third person. In them, the author never expresses personal opinions. The reader refers to this text to get any specific information – so provide it!
The title of the informational text should accurately reflect its essence (for example, “How to choose an iron”), the rest is not so important. The headlines of such texts are subject to slightly different requirements – they must be, among other things, catchy and memorable.
Humor in the information text is a completely unnecessary thing. In principle, humor in any text should be treated with caution and used only if it is adequately perceived by the target audience.

What is informational text? The main purpose of the informational text – to contain a detailed story about any subject or problem. Why such texts may need the owner of the site.

Types of informational text

What are the four categories of informational texts?

Descriptive. They contain detailed information about the product, talk about its properties. They can be useful for creating a description of a complex product, a story about its work and characteristics. They should contain a description of the properties of each product and, if necessary, a comparison of similar products so that the reader can easily draw conclusions about what this particular product is more suitable for.
Tip. These texts describe how to choose from a number of products that are ideal for the purposes of the buyer. This also includes articles that will be a step-by-step guide to the use of the product.
Test-drives. Readers are very fond of texts that tell about the features of the use of the product, about how it “behaves” in different conditions, compare it with other similar products – the so-called “test drives”.
Advertising texts. The text contains the necessary information for the reader, but it also fixes in the minds of the consumer information about the company.

Informational text: How to study the topic and collect the facts?

Informational articles are used both for informational purposes and for website promotion. In the second case, the text of the article uses key queries – words and expressions that orient the text to read and analyze it by search engines and further ranking of the site.

Plan for writing an informational article:

Writing an article begins with the collection and analysis of the material. To achieve the best quality results, it is necessary to select 5-6 sources, the information in which corresponds to the topic of the future article and is the most relevant and meaningful.
After collecting the material it is useful to plan a future article. If there are strict limits on the amount of text, think about how much space will occupy the main part, and how much – the introductory and final.
It is important to determine the audience of the article. It is obvious that in a text intended for the general public, the use of professional terms or reference to facts known only to specialists in a particular field will be inappropriate.
Any text starts with a title. The title of the informational article should be capacious, accurately reflecting the topic disclosed in the article.
The style of the informative article is concise and laconic. An informational text is built on facts and can be written in narrative or descriptive form, or use both methods. It is impersonal and does not contain any author’s remarks, assumptions or conclusions.
If the volume of the text exceeds 2000-3000 characters, the article should be divided into thematic blocks with subheadings, and each block – into paragraphs. It is recommended to use numbered lists.

Of course, like any text intended for publication, an informative article should be written in a competent language. This should not be neglected, especially since the proofreading of the article of average volume and correction of possible typos and errors (including stylistic) takes no more than 10 minutes. Also, you can use a content matrix.

Informational text: Content matrices

The content matrix can be a table where you can clearly see the main theme of your concept. The main task is to fill the table cells with the main phrases used on this resource.

What is the content matrix for?

When you think that you have already written about everything that is possible, revealed all the topics that could only come up with themselves, but you realize that this is not enough and you need to write more, in this case, this method will be very useful. Since you will be able to look more deeply at this topic and develop it more widely.
In cases where you are not familiar with the new topic of the task that you were given to write an article.

How to create a content matrix?

For example, take one of the common types of matrix. First, in Excel, divide the table into 4 columns:

In the first column, you specify the name of the main subject of your article.
In the second column, you will list the purpose of the subject, which is mentioned in the article.
In the third column, specify the material from which the subject of the article consists.
In the fourth column, you specify the problem of using the item (or for what reasons and how the item can be used).

How to fill in the content matrix?

Below I will present to you the most common categories of topics on which make up such a table.

The first category – various business areas, categories of certain goods and services. The main mistake that many who work with such a matrix for the first time make are to take all the common key phrases on their topic. This is not the best option, because, in the end, they themselves know what crazy theme you have in the end.
The second category will be the parameters of goods or services. Here can be presented with different properties or parameters of certain products. For example, in the case of goods: quality, material, composition, manufacturers and so on. And in the case of services, it can be stages of service delivery, terms of implementation, which is included in the service and so on.
The third category – the target audience. Here you can specify such columns as gender, age, origin, the field of activity and so on. This category is especially important in those matrices where there is a place to be a different age audience.
The fourth category is the use of goods or services. Here you can add columns with the purpose: where, how and who can use a particular product, and under what conditions. In each of the individual situations will, of course, different parameters.
The fifth category is sales. Here you can place parameters such as: how did you know about the product, what was done and so on.
The sixth category – emerging problems. It usually prescribes the main issues that have been voiced by customers; problems that need to be solved; objections of customers that need to be worked on.
The seventh category is the purpose of the article. Everything is quite simple. Prescribed areas such as interest, sales, training, information and so on. That is all that could answer the question: “why is this article necessary?”
The eighth category – interesting facts. This category includes everything that can be associated with the existing fact of activity or product. For example, news, trends, amount of traffic, history of occurrence and so on.
The ninth category – related topics. This may include the intersection of several topics. For example, if your resource is dedicated only to the sale of beds, here you can add such a direction as the interior. This will allow you to increase the focus of your topic, but the new topics of the article will not be much distracted from the main idea.
The tenth category is the concept of format. In addition to writing an article, you can also post videos, podcasts, information graphics, and so on. This will help to increase the coverage of your readers, as well as to diversify the concept of the resource.

Informational text structures

The correct structure of the informative article is based on the implementation of three elements:

The question or problem. In fact, this is an introduction where you need to determine the purpose of writing and the main idea of the article;
Disclosure of the topic of the article. The main part of the presentation – here in a brief and concise form is fully considered the essence or solution of the question;
Conclusions. The summing-up will allow to draw a line under consideration of a question or a problem or to outline steps for further study.

The classic structure looks like:

Header
Lead
The first subtitle
Text
The second sub-heading
Text
The third subtitle
Text
Conclusion

You know, that title — hook for the reader. The title plays an important role in the question: whether the article will be read. Therefore, the title should reflect its essence.

As for the headings, in the informational text they can be in the form:

incomplete sentence with subtitle
full sentence.

Let’s analyze which types of leads exist:

A simple lead — introduction, consisting of 3-5 sentences. The big introduction does not enter into the text and confuses the reader.
Lead question. One or more questions, the answers to which the reader will find in the material.
Lead problem. The author describes the problem and then asks a question. The answer to it again is the article.
Lead example. Here on the basis of history, an interesting fact.
A definite lead. The author indicates his position, which is not going to be revised. If the reader agrees, proceeds to further study.

The conclusion should relate to the entire theme. The reader quickly navigates in a well-structured text. The headline should “hook”. They are simply issued in the form of an incomplete or complete proposal.

How to write an information text on the site?

First of all, you should create the plan of publications; distributed project; collected the keys. Secondly, you need to explore the interests of the TA. The step-by-step recommendation looks like this:

Formulate the topic of the article.
Go to forums and social networks.
Study relevant topics.
Write out important thoughts and ideas in the document.
Clean them and compile.

Thirdly, you should gather expert information. Well, when you are on the subject. You understand what you are doing and you know interesting things. Using the information collected at the last stage, you will tell a lot of interesting things to readers.

Fourthly, you can write an article. Write all the ideas that come to mind. After this stage, you need to subtract and dry the article. It’s time to make a tasty dish out of informational meat.

Put the text for the day. Do other things. And then go back to it and start cutting without any regrets.

Finally, you should add internal linking to the text. Make links to thematic and interesting articles for users. Put down links to commercial sections. The priority is naturalness and convenience for the reader.

This is the basis for creating a relevant and interesting article. Pack the information correctly and get good behavioral factors. After coming to a high position.

Final word

In general, there are 2 styles that are most often used in writing informational articles – it is narrative and descriptive.

In the first case, the narrator tries to build the facts in chronological order, and in the second – to describe the subject, phenomenon or event so that the reader first received general information, and then the details.