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.

The effectiveness of content marketing can be measured in terms of before and after

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It is not often possible to understand exactly how content is impacting your bottom line: are you doing more business due to your content marketing effort? There is no hard and fast rule and it is extremely difficult to track individual pages and blog posts and then make out how much business they are bringing in. So how do you rationalize the implementation of the content marketing strategy or how do you monitor its effect?

There is one established fact that content marketing works; what you have to find out is whether it is working for you or not. Content marketing is not like a traditional marketing campaign where you just create an ad and then use TV, newspapers and magazines, and websites to disseminate that ad and then analyze various metrics. This doesn’t work in the case of content marketing. More than a push marketing it is a pull marketing and it spreads over the long span of time and effort.

So you can have a before and after scenario that is working for many people with tremendous results. What was your overall revenue before you implemented your content marketing strategy, or what is your current revenue when you are just about to implement content strategy. Is there a change, say, during the past four months, ever since you have been paying close attention to your content marketing strategy? This change, if it is there, becomes your metrics that you can use to gauge the success or failure of a particular content marketing plan.

This works in conjunction with shorter, more focused plans. Take for instance user engagement. You know you can increase your sales by encouraging use of engagement on your website/blog and also on your social media profiles. You also know that up till now nothing much has happened. For user engagement you need engaging content. So focus on this. Try to come up with content that encourages your visitors to engage in conversations with you. What drives them? What motivates them? What excites them?

Not getting enough traffic? It must be an SEO issue but it may also be due to the fact that you don’t have the right kind of content. Even if you feel you have got tons of content are you focusing on the right keywords? Even if you feel that you are focusing on the right keywords are you really covering the keywords that your target customers and clients use?

These are smaller issues (not smaller on their own but in terms of the end result: increasing your revenue) and you can begin with them so that you can measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. When you see more and more people coming to your website and when you see that they are engaging in conversations with you and among each other (talking about your business, or at least its object/topic related to your business) you know that you have an effective content marketing strategy working for you.

Why your business needs a content marketing strategy

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Content marketing fundamentally means spreading your thoughts and messages through targeted content. Strategy comes in when you create content knowing exactly what you want to achieve. Randomly creating articles and blog posts may give you lots of content and it may also get you more traffic but in terms of conversion you won’t see good results because when you don’t know what to do with your content, neither do your visitors. Publishing content without a strategy is like throwing darts in the darkness hoping that one of them will hit the bull’s-eye.

Unless you have a massive advertising and PR budget content marketing is the best tool you have got. It is certainly not a one-week affair. Creating and implementing a content strategy takes time and effort but it is more effective and provides long-lasting results. Your business needs a well-defined content marketing strategy because

It keeps your regular communication focused
It shows your active involvement in your field
It helps you build an attentive community around your business
It turns your website or blog into an information resource
It improves your search engine rankings
It improves your conversion rate
It gets you quality incoming/inbound links
It turns you into an authority figure (authority figures are more trusted)
It gives a reason to your prospective customers and clients to stay longer on your website or blog
It strengthens your brand
It creates new communication channels
It builds a target audience that quickly responds to your questions and business ideas
You get immediate feedback from your clients, customers and visitors
You develop a ready-made product-launch platform

A successful content writer must have a unique voice

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“Are you the same person who wrote content for your own website?” recently a client asked when he didn’t like what I had written, and I must admit even I wasn’t very proud of what I had delivered and was already contemplating revising it. “I hired you because I wanted my content in your style,” he continued.

It happens quite often that my clients hire me when they are impressed with what I have written and how I have written on my website. Even when new writers approach me I focus less on their writing prowess and more on their unique style. I believe that every content writer must have a unique voice, a distinct style of writing. Can it be possible, especially when you are writing for different businesses? After all, why would a particular business want YOUR voice rather than its CEO’s? A valid question.

When I say unique voice I don’t mean you get typecast. A professional content writer must be able to write on behalf of the business he or she is writing for and I will never dispute that. Voice means enlivening your writing. It must feel alive. When it is alive it engages your readers and when your readers are engaged they’re more open to doing business with you. Interestingly, your writing feels alive when you write in your own, distinct style. You simply let yourself lose and grow completely comfortable with your art. Of course before that you should be totally comfortable with the tool you are using, in this case, your command over the language. If you want to feel creative and authentic you must know your language inside out. I don’t mean you should be a walking thesaurus but you should be able to articulate yourself compellingly and convincingly. It is like, if you want to walk on a rope first you should be able to walk on the ground.

So how can you develop a unique voice as a content writer?

Keep improving. Keep honing your skill — this is most important. Never think that you have learned all. People all over the world write beautifully and you can learn from everybody. You don’t have to be perfect. More than being perfect you have to be fluent and you must be totally at ease with words and sentence formation. Amazingly, 80% of writers who approach me for assignments cannot even write a single paragraph without mistakes. I am not saying you have to be perfect or should have a PhD in language, but it really alarms me when someone says, “I would like to wrote web writing for you.”
Write every day. My classical vocal guruji (teacher) used to say that even the maestros begin to fumble when they haven’t practiced for a few days. So practice has to be regular, everyday. Write at the smallest pretext. Write at every opportunity. Even when you’re not getting paid assignments, keep writing. Maintain a blog or an online journal. Participate on online debates over social media and networking websites. Write for news websites. Have illuminating e-mail conversations with your friends and relatives even if they don’t reciprocate. Write as much as you can. The more you write the better you get at it. Of course this needs be combined with learning.
Have daily dose of reading. By reading I don’t mean visiting your favorite blogs (although there is nothing wrong in it), read the newspapers, read well-known columnists, read literary giants and whatever quality literature you can come across. You can sound as “cool” in your writing as you want later on but first you must get your fundamentals right. Only then you will be able to feel comfortable in your art.
Develop an opinion. Unless you have an opinion you cannot develop a unique voice as a professional content writer. Opinion gives you an attitude. It also gives you a direction. It gives you confidence (although overconfidence can be detrimental to your professional and personal life).
Develop an expertise. Merely being a better writer is of no value. You need some knowledge in specific fields. For instance, I am good at Internet marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing strategy and a little bit of web design and PHP programming. You might be good at math, interpersonal skills, Scientology, extraterrestrial life or biology. An expertise may not help you in your day-to-day content writing profession but it will give you a basic idea of what all it takes to properly know something. It gets you used to learning and acquiring knowledge. It also inculcates maturity in your writing and other communications.

I have seen people writing pretty well without having a unique voice but they are mostly copying styles. They seem great until you stumble upon the writing of a person they are trying to imitate.

What all must you consider in order to have a successful business blog

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Do you want to create a successful business blog? Any sort of blog that is published while keeping a sense of success in mind needs effort and dedication. As rightly mentioned on this thought-provoking Successful Blog post, a successful business blog takes

Successful Business Blog

Time
High-quality content
Clearly defined purpose
Identifiable personality
Unique individuality

I would also like to add strategy and marketing, and of course, perseverance, if you want to create and maintain a successful business blog. Many people think that marketing a blog means that you are trying to promote your blog just to increase traffic so that you can either sell affiliate products or ad clicks. Even when you are publishing a business blog you need to market it with ongoing effort so that it gets the exposure it deserves. After all you publish a successful business blog to attract people to your main business.

That is why it is prudent to get help in order to publish a successful business blog. It is better to outsource rather than trying to do it in-house. Of course you can hire a full-time writer/researcher in order to produce regular business blog content but he or she won’t come with an entire package the way a professional content writer who works independently does. Anyway, this decision depends on your overall business approach. The basic objective is running a successful business blog.

Starting a blog and then not managing it properly (for instance, having a bad design, or publishing blog posts irregularly and intermittently) can be counter-productive because it can sully your brand – in fact it is better having no blog at all. On the other hand a well-managed blog can bring you unprecedented business dividends. So you have to chalk out a strategy before starting a blog.

As mentioned above you must realize that once you start publishing a business blog you will need to dedicate some time to it in order to make it a success. You cannot simply generate a post in just 15 minutes and that too on an ongoing basis unless you are a prodigy. Individual posts may take up anywhere between 1-2 hours.

The most important ingredient of your successful business blog is going to be the content that you publish. Blogs are known by the sort of content they have. It should be relevant, well-written and engaging. People should find it useful and relevant. This also covers the purpose of your blog: you have to figure out why you want to publish a business blog in the first place.

You want to communicate to your visitors regularly?
You want to update them about your latest offerings?
You want to keep the buzz alive around your business?
You want to educate your prospective customers and clients?
You want to solidify your social media presence?
You want to improve your search engine rankings?

In fact all the points mentioned above are important and they give a purpose to your business blog.

Personality and individuality always help. People rather prefer to interact with people and not unknown business representatives. Talk to your visitors as a person.

Finally, whenever you plan to start a business blog just start it, don’t think of success or failure for at least 5-6 months. Many business representatives find sharing their thoughts on their business blogs intimidating but it is actually quite fun. You get to know some great people, you make new friends and you create new business opportunities for your visitors as well as yourself. Let it evolve gradually. Every day you will learn something new even if you hire a content writer for your blog.

A successful business blog also requires a sustained effort. Even if you cannot produce quality content always, it is your persistence that eventually pays. In fact your blog readers don’t expect you to produce exceptional blog posts all the time. They just want you to be there in one form or another. Sometimes you can create blog posts of more than 1000 words. Sometimes you have just 100 words to say. Sometimes you just want to post a photograph or share a video. In order to create a successful business blog, there should always be something happening over there.

The connection between content, strategy and social media

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These days having targeted content alone doesn’t help you much. You have to approach it from different directions. There was a time when you could attract targeted traffic by simply having good content on your website or blog. Now you need a strategy and while formulating the strategy you have to keep in mind how you want yourself represented on social media and networking websites.

Combine content and strategy and they give you good search engine traffic and add social media and the combination gives you fruitful engagement with your prospective customers and clients. As mentioned in my earlier post the days of one-directional marketing are over. Now you have to engage people in conversations. It is no use having conversations just like any other person because then you become just like any other person. You need to become an authority figure. People should be able to trust you and trust your judgment. You become an authority figure by continuously sharing your knowledge and wisdom with your friends and followers and visitors. You can do this on your blog and through your social media and networking profiles/pages. When you give unconditionally people trust you. This trust is your capital.

So when you are creating your content strategy you also need to simultaneously create your social media strategy because they are interrelated. By the strength of your content you can build your social media presence and through a credible social media presence you can engage your prospective customers and clients and once you are able to engage them positively they do business with you more eagerly and they have no problem recommending your business to their friends, family and colleagues.

Developing a content strategy

In order to develop a content strategy you must realize what you want to achieve through your content. Identify your audience and identify what that audience is actually looking for. You don’t have to provide exactly that but initially you need the traction so be tactful. You have to be attractive enough to your core audience. As a ground work you must

Identify your core audience
Develop a dos and don’ts policy for publishing content
Create a list of your primary, secondary and ancillary keywords
Decide whether you want longer or shorter articles/blog posts/web pages
Decide whether you will be generating content in-house or by outsourcing
Develop metrics to continuously analyze the effectiveness of your content
Develop long-term evaluation policies

A well-defined content strategy helps you focus better and consolidate your content publishing effort. Since you will be investing money and effort into producing content you have to be particular about exactly what sort of content you want on your website or blog. A list of dos and don’ts helps you keep distractions at bay. Keywords will help you increase your search engine rankings, although you should put more stress on the relevancy of your content rather than the keywords but they definitely help you create more targeted content.

The choice of longer and shorter articles may also affect how well your content performs. You will need to decide whether your audience wants longer web pages or shorter. Here is a nice analysis of the benefits of long and short articles by usability expert Jakob Nielsen. It is an old article but it is still relevant.

Routine analysis keeps you on the right path. Before launching your content strategy you must clearly define where you currently are and where you want to go. Analysis helps you gauge whether you are moving towards your destination or not and you can then make changes accordingly.

Content strategy and social media

People are constantly curating content on social media and networking websites and then talking about that. They find an interesting link, post it on their profile and then their friends and followers comment on it. Their friends and followers may also share the posted content with their own friends and followers and this is how your content may go viral. The more relevant and useful your content is the better exposure it gets on social media and networking websites.

But it is more than that. It is not simply about posting your content. Your content gives you an authoritative presence but you have to strike up conversations with people. Seek feedback and provide answers. Express doubts and show disagreement wherever necessary. The underlying idea is keep the conversation going by seeding new thoughts. This is where your content helps. If you just seed thoughts without backing them with authoritative text people soon begin to lose interest. They need something to read and ponder upon.

Your content begins to make an impact when it encourages people to have conversations. When it stimulates it creates impressions. When they also begin to find your content on search engines the bonding strengthens.

Stay tuned, I will write more on this.