Author Archives: Amrit Hallan

About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

How to know if your content writer is effective for your business

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Let’s suppose you have hired a “rock star” content writer for your business website or your blog and you are really excited about your future prospects. You realize content matters and you take your content marketing efforts darn seriously. But you’re either not confident about your written skills, or you cannot persistently generate quality content for your website or your blog. So understandably, after lots of scrutiny you have decided to work with the content writer who sounds really promising and can actually deliver the message you want to deliver.

But how do you know if your content writer is really effective and helping you take your business forward and ultimately improving your bottom line? Frankly, gauging the efforts of a content writer is not as easy and tangible as evaluating your SEO efforts or click-through performances. Content writing is a process and it gradually takes effect and sometimes there aren’t even direct effects. You just know that something good is happening but you cannot really pinpoint what is the cause and since you recently hired a content writer so he or she must be the cause. Could be.

Gauging the effectiveness of your content writer

It is same as evaluating the performance of any other marketing and promotional activity. Before starting working with your content writer study your analytics. Take note of how your particular keywords and key expressions are performing and what is your conversion rate presently. Google Analytics allows you to study individual pages contentwise, hitwise and even conversionwise. Here are a few improvements you should notice if you have an effective and competent content writer working for you:

  • Your search engine traffic increases after a couple of weeks of regular content posting
  • Search engine traffic on important keywords and search expressions increases compared to the period prior to hiring the content writer
  • In case of a blog there is increased engagement: people respond to your blog posts and express themselves
  • Your content begins to go viral on content sharing websites
  • In 3-4 months people begin regularly sharing your content through their social media profiles
  • Your customers and clients are well-informed even before approaching you
  • More people are doing business with you

These are some good benchmarks to know whether your content writer is effective for your business or not. This exercise may become difficult if you are running multiple promotional activities at the same time, but even then you can define parameters to track individual activities.

Content that is not optimized does not add value to your marketing

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Have you been publishing exceptional content but still aren’t getting the sort of attention it deserves? Then it is not reaching the right people. People who really want to read your content never come to know of its existence unless you promote your content through proper channels. This can be achieved by optimizing your content for search engines as well as social media.

Optimizing content for search engines

I know this particular topic has been beaten to pulp by practically every “expert”, but surprisingly the majority of content publishers have no idea how to optimize their content for search engines. Search engine optimization is as important as generating quality content and publishing it regularly, if you want to target search engines for qualified traffic.

Here is how to optimize your content for search engines

  • Make a list of keywords and key phrases you think your prospective customers and clients are going to use in order to find your product or service on various search engines. It is very important that you leave your own judgement aside and think from the point of view of your customers (or clients). You can ask the help of your existing clients, you can use various keyword analysis tools available on the Internet and you can also hire qualified SEO experts to compile an exhaustive list of keywords and key phrases to focus on while creating your content.
  • Use the keywords and key phrases prepared in the above-mentioned list within the content you regularly generate. You can focus on three or four keywords at a particular time and keep generating content centered around them unless your search engine traffic has improved. Make sure you use your keywords and search terms contextually instead of simply stuffing them here and there. There is no well-defined density of keywords but use them as naturally as possible.
  • Use your primary key phrase in the title of your webpage or blog post. Your webpage title or blog post title is very important and that is why it appears highlighted as well as hyperlinked in the search engine results. Normally when people are using search engines they rarely use a single word or a keyword; they always use a phrase or a combination of different keywords. That is why construct a phrase that encompasses the real essence of your webpage or blog post and use that within the title.
  • Organize your content under various tags. Search engines look for the appropriate keywords within particular tags, such as

These are some fundamental search engine optimization vis-a-vis content steps that you can take in order to make sure that you can drive maximum traffic from search engines to your website or blog.

Optimizing your content for social media

The sharing dynamics of social media are a bit different from search engines. You have to focus more on the viral aspect of your content. So in order to optimize your content for social media it must be easily shareable, it must be highly interesting (not that your user content shouldn’t be highly interesting and informative), and it should be as concise as possible. This is not the case with every social media user but since almost everybody has highly active timelines they rarely get a chance to go through lengthy blog posts and articles. They are more inclined towards sharing videos, images, quick tips, slides and presentations.

Also, make your content easily shareable by using all the tools and add-ons available to you. You should also have a vibrant presence over selected social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, for example and consistently interact with your friends and followers so that whenever you post your content or updates they check it out in as many numbers as possible.

Optimizing your content is not a quick job. It happens over a long period of time. Whether you’re optimizing your content for search engines, for social media websites, or preferably, for both, it takes time and effort and above all consistency. Ideally the effort must begin even before you start implementing your content marketing strategy so that you have a ready platform by the time you start promoting your content.

Writing content for B2B websites

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Most B2B websites – if they want to incorporate content marketing into their overall marketing strategy – should have lots of informative content on their websites aside from the usual business content.

A slight problem is some executives and decision makers are too busy to go through lengthy chunks of text and some want to do lots of reading before they can decide in your favor. So you have to keep your business partners in mind while creating content for your B2B website.

To handle this problem you can either organize your content in such a manner that it can be contracted and expanded according to convenience, or you can create excerpts and detailed descriptions separately and your prospective business partners can go through them according to their preference. But be sure that even in your excerpts you provide all the necessary information that they require in order to make a decision. Preparing an excerpt doesn’t mean you leave the critical details.

You also need to be well versed with the language within your business sector. Professionals working within your particular niche are used to certain jargons and terminologies and they also have phrases that make them feel more comfortable while going through your content. If you really want to convince them that you are the person or business they ought to be working with then you have to speak their language. It is not as difficult as it sounds. If you are a professional well-versed with your industry lingo there is no problem, but if you’re totally new a little bit of research can help you. A language is after all a language, you just need to use some words here and there to convey that you are writing as an insider.

In order to achieve this you can create a separate list of words and expressions that are common in that particular business. Then practice using those words and expressions while creating random sentences and paragraphs (but make sure that they make sense). Very soon you will feel comfortable talking in a language particular to a B2B section.

This will also help you search engine optimize your B2B content because professionals belonging to that business use particular terminologies and search expressions.

Writing content for B2B websites is not markedly different from writing for other websites (technology, general interest, news, etc.) you just need to get acquainted with the language and you must also know what the decision-makers want to read before going ahead with the business.

Creating productive content

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Content marketing demands that you continuously create and publish quality content for your website. The primary purpose of creating content for your website or blog is making your visitors more aware of the qualities of the product or service you provide.

Somewhere publishers forget this basic purpose and simply start publishing content for the sake of improving search engine rankings, covering all the keywords and creating link bait content. Although these reasons are not out of line the problem manifests if these are the only reasons for which content is published. They might think they are doing something great for their business but actually they are not achieving much. There is a difference between random, aimless activity and actually being productive.

In order to carry out a more effective content marketing campaign you need to create productive content. What makes your content productive? It should achieve the following for you:

  • Educate your visitors about what you are offering
  • Make you stand out in comparison with your competitors
  • Inform your visitors of new developments vis-a-vis your products and services
  • Establish yourself as an authority in the subject dealing with your business and consequently help people trust you
  • Provide help textually, in audio or visually as much as possible so that they don’t have to call you or write to you in case they are facing a problem regarding some purchase or the usage of your product or service
  • Organically improve your search engine rankings so that people can easily find you for the right keywords
  • Maintain fruitful buzz around your online presence whether it is your own website/blog, on other websites or blogs (people linking to your content) or on your social media profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and YouTube
  • Act as a PR tool in case there is a misunderstanding or a communication gap, or even a smear campaign against your business

The features listed above make your content productive. They actually achieve the objectives defined in a well laid out content marketing strategy. Simply creating content based on your keywords and key phrases might get you some good traffic but you won’t be able to convert that traffic into business.

Creating productive content obviously requires more effort and sometimes also money, so you don’t need to rush. Take your time. Rather than publishing 5 blog posts or articles in a week, publish just a single article, but make it highly useful and productive. I guarantee you it will fetch you multiple times more traffic than your 5 articles/blog posts per week.

When do you outsource to a content writer instead of hiring one full-time?

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You obviously need high-quality content if you want to base your marketing on the content that you publish on your website and your blog. In fact your entire content writing strategy hinges upon the ability of the content writer (or a team of) that works for you.

Most of the businesses don’t think of hiring a full-time content writer at the time of assembling a team of workers. In more than 90% of cases the need for a professional content writer is perceived at a much later stage when decision-makers realize that the content published on their website or blog is going to be an integral part of their overall web marketing strategy. Mostly it is an afterthought.

But the good thing is most of the businesses are eventually realizing the overwhelming importance of high-quality content. Consequently they are always looking for experienced and well qualified content writers who can not only provide well-written content but can also help them improve their overall search engine rankings.

Anyway, after realizing that you need an experienced content writer do you

Hire a full-time in-house content writer or outsource your work to a freelance content writer for an independent content writing agency?

Despite being an independent content writer I never force my opinion on prospective clients because eventually it is your internal business policy that decides what sort of content writer you are looking for. The purpose of this blog post is not advising you whether you should outsource your content writing work or not, it is about when to outsource your content writing work.

Here are a few case scenarios in which you would outsource your writing job to an independent content writer:

  • You don’t have a big budget: Hiring a full-time content writer can turn out to be a costly affair. Whether that person is writing or not you have to pay him or her a fixed amount by the hour. On the other hand if you outsource your content writing to an independent content writer you simply have to pay for the work that you get done.
  • You don’t have the needed infrastructure: When you hire a full-time content writer he or she is going to need a computer or laptop, a separate workstation and some comfortable space. He or she will be using electricity, office equipment and other resources. Even for a single page of content you will end up spending a lot. This is not a problem with an independent content writer. He or she can work remotely on his or her own computer without putting a strain on your resources.
  • You don’t want to restrain yourself with a particular content writer: Working with an independent content writer doesn’t mean that you cannot get full-time services. After you have tested out multiple content writers you can even hire an independent content writer as a full-time writer. The problem with hiring a full-time content writer at the outset is you might end up with someone you don’t want even after investing lots of money and time.
  • You want to access the global talent pool: No matter where you are located these days you can hire exceptional talent from any part of the world while sitting in your basement. Whether you are in Uzbekistan, Mongolia or USA you don’t have to settle with whatever talent you can locally avail.
  • You are looking for a content writer who can work independently: An independent content writer is used to working on various assignments on his or her own. You don’t need to breathe down his or her neck in order to get what you are looking for. After giving basic instructions (provided you have found yourself a qualified content writer) you can easily depend on your content writer to come up with just the stuff you want for your website or blog.

These are just a few reasons why you would outsource your work to a content writer rather than hiring a full-time content writer. Can you think of more reasons? Please share them in the comments section below.