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 engage your social media fans and followers

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Social networking (or call them social media) websites are extremely crowded. Although there are hardly 33-40% social networking users who actually use the websites to interact on an ongoing basis, since everybody is talking with everybody and everybody is talking about everything under the sun, to really make an impact, you need to engage your fans and followers on an ongoing basis, so that they remember you; and not only you, but also what business you do.

Here are a few activities you can carry out in order to engage people on social media and networking websites:

Participate in relevant discussions

Using various Twitter and FaceBook search tools you can find out what people are talking about and then participate in the ongoing discussions in a fruitful manner. Agree with them, add your two cents, disagree with them (give reasons), and seed new thoughts. Don’t worry if you don’t have anything constructive to add…just follow the discussion attentively and soon your thought process will be triggered.

Ask questions and offer answers

We remember people who make us think and a question mark normally does. Whenever you ask a question it offers someone an opportunity to show his/her knowledge. Similarly, when you post an answer in response to someone’s question, he/she is surely going to read it and if your answer is impressive, many more people are going to get curious about you, and consequently, you’ll make a mark.

Share your knowledge and wisdom

As you keep working you’ll excel in your field. You have a collection of experiences, opinions and tips that you can easily share with your followers and fans on a regular basis. Remember that “regularity” is the key here. Unless you’re already quite well known, you need to be “usefully visible” on a regular basis if you really want to engage your social networking fans and followers.

Regularly publish new content on your blog or website

It’s good to post links whether they’re from your own website/blog or from other sources, content on your own website brings in direct traffic and it helps people formulate opinion about you. Whether they like your content or not, whether they agree or not, an opinion is very important.

Communicate on their blogs and websites

When people post links to new articles and blog posts on their websites, if possible, leave a comment and let it be known that you are a visitor from the mutual social networking website. Whether people admit it or not, everybody likes it if visitors leave comments and appreciate what you’re doing.

Be helpful within means

Social networking doesn’t always have to be you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-yours; you can help totally unrelated persons without expecting anything in return. For instance, if you know A offers content writing services and B needs someone to write content for his website and they don’t know each other but you do, you can introduce them. If you feel someone has a business link worthy of promotion don’t hesitate to post the link.

Be personal

Your social networking profile mustn’t always be about business. Act like yourself and if possible, use your name instead of your business name. Without getting carried away, show that you are interested in politics, in social causes, in arts, in sciences, or whatever topic interests you. Just don’t overdo it because then a person visiting your timeline at a particular time may not be able to make out what you actually do.

Conclusion

Social media, as the name suggests, is all about being social. In a society we become visible and memorable by doing something that highlights our presence. Of course our contribution must be positive — you’ll prefer to be known as a good-doer and not an evil-doer. Networking works everywhere and politicians, businesspersons and actors spend huge amounts of money to remain visible (and in the reckoning). While talking small strides and not spending much, you can achieve the same using social media and networking.

How to make your content more informative

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There can be various purposes for publishing content on your website or blog but when you want to generate business from your content, you need to impart the right information as clearly as possible. What’s right information depends on how your customers and clients perceive your content, not you, unless there is a parity.

Whenever you are writing content (or working with a content writing service) for your business you should step into your customers’ shoes. This means not only presenting the greatest benefits of your product or service, but also addressing their concerns before they raise them themselves. This means highlighting even the negative aspects of your product or service. But this doesn’t mean you’re conveying something negative about your business: you are simply informing your visitor so that he or she can make the right decision. Here are a few things you can consider to make your content writing process informative:

List all the benefits: What do your customers gain when they purchase your product or service? Don’t go on a boasting binge. For instance, if you want to avail my content writing services it doesn’t matter much to you if I’ve done my higher studies in linguistics or if I read abstract literary classics in my spare time. You are interested in knowing whether I can consistently provide you quality content or not, and if yes, what system I have in place to ensure it. Additionally, what benefit you get by working with me and not by working with another content provider?
Who might benefit the most: Don’t try to sell your product to everybody under the sun (although this seems very desirable). When you are selling, you’re not selling a product or a service, you’re selling a benefit, a usage, a value. So whereas selling combs to bald men may seem quite smart, you are simply cheating people and when they realize it they’re going to have a really bad feeling about your conduct. Help people make a better purchase decision.
Clearly mention if there are any drawbacks: You may think, what am I talking about? Am I trying to help you increase your sales or lose your prospects. The truth is, if you think there are too many drawbacks then may be you should reconsider your offer, and if you think their are more benefits then drawbacks then your customers are going to thank you for informing them. Don’t let your customers find out what your product doesn’t do — tell them on your own and also tell them when a particular feature will be available in case it is currently missing.

So what exactly is content strategy?

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The dictionary defines strategy as “a series of maneuvers or executions performed in order to obtain a specific result or goal.” This pretty much explains what content strategy is, nonetheless, lets define it in the context of achieving your business goals.

Strategy basically involves:

Where you’re coming from
Where you’re going
How you’re going

Most of us know (I’m talking about averagely intelligent and intelligent individuals) where we are coming from and where we want to go. How we are going to go is the tricky part, the core of your strategy.

Assessing the need for strategic content writing

Why do you need to publish content in the first place?

To create buzz
To build a community
To inform

Both are very important. Buzz doesn’t just mean creating noise. It means generating traffic that eventually earns you revenue. Then, your content needs to convert and for this you need to impart the right information. If you want to hire my content writing and online copywriting services, I must inform you why it’s profitable to associate with me. With my content writing and copywriting skills I must be able to inform you and enable you to make an educated decision (in my favor, preferably).

What do you want to achieve through your content?

As mentioned above, you need content to generate traffic that converts. You can get this traffic directly through referrals and social networking websites or from search engines. Ideally, your content should

Increase referral traffic to your website or blog
Improve your search engine rankings
Convert your visitors into business partners, customers, clients or subscribers
Increase your brand awareness

Hence, content strategy means publishing and promoting your content in such a manner that it achieves the intended result for you. This may involve brainstorming on

What sort of content you should publish?
What medium must be used to publish the content?
What keywords and key phrases you should focus on?
What should be the publishing frequency?
How should the visitors be engaged?
How the content should be promoted?
How to increase your conversion rate?

Conveying your ideas better through story-telling

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Does your content or copy tell a story? Story-telling engages your readers. When you’re reading a story, there is something in it that grips you, that exhorts you to read further. You want to know what’s going to happen next. Whether you can relate to the narrative or not (mostly you can) reading a story is always more than reading uninspiring, drab text

Smashing Magazine has an interesting post on creating a better use experience with story-telling.

A good story is like a journey, and when you start reading it, you join that journey. There is a beginning, there are various ups and downs, joys and conflicts, and finally there is an end that changes something inside you. The beauty of every story is that it brings about a change: significant or infinitesimal.

Although the post mentioned above mostly talks about design, you can apply the art of story telling better on content writing. I’ll soon write about this to further elucidate my point.

Overcoming the “So What?” problem while writing content

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Image source: Global Girl

Don’t know what’s “So what?” problem? It’s when you write something seemingly great and your reader thinks, “So what, big deal!” Alright, there are some readers who have an insatiable penchant for being critical and they will criticize you no matter what, but you can drastically decrease the number of such reactions by devoting enough thought to what you are writing/publishing.

Why do readers reject outright what you have written?

The information you have provided is of no real use
The same information is available on hundreds of other websites and blogs
People have been sharing the same “secret” since 1998, or may be since 1500 BC
You are drawing wrong visitors to your website or blog (you are not creating optimized, seo-focused content)

What sort of content creates the “now this is something really great” effect?

Your content reaches the target audience (or vice versa)
You pack lots of information that can be used in the real world
You are providing valuable information that is not easily available
You are offering easily available information with an interesting twist

Is it always about informing and educating your readers?

Not always, but most of the times. You have to make sure your content solves your readers’ problem, that it provides a solution, that it delivers what your readers want. So what about content writing for businesses and corporate websites?

The same thing applies. If you are providing online copywriting services then you must (ideally) be attracting visitors that are looking for (or may need in the future) a competent copywriter. So if you say you’re a great online copywriter it’s not going to make much of an impact because there are thousands of “great” online copywriters on the Internet; in fact these days anybody who can type starts calling himself or herself a content writer or an online copywriter. Rather, you should immediately address your visitor’s problem (that’s why it’s advised you should have targeted pages) and offer the most apt solution.

Here’s a good blog post by Chris I cam across that talks about solving the “so what?” problem while publishing your content.