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 Internet of Things is going to affect content marketing, especially content writing

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The image shows a picture of Internet of Things

Content writing for Internet of Things

Internet of Things – IoT – is a network of appliances, gadgets and electronic devices that can send signals to each other, interpret data from each other, and then do stuff accordingly.

For example, as you approach, the things inside your house can detect the settings of your mobile phone app. The air conditioning temperature can be set according to your preference. If you prefer to take a bath, the water temperature is adjusted accordingly, on its own. Certain lights can be switched on. Even the lock on your door can be unlocked, if that’s what you want.

It isn’t just that. Your refrigerator can place an order for a can of milk at your preferred online store if it detects that you are running out of milk.

This way, devices and appliances connected to the Internet of Things can automatically take care of lots of things in the background while you go about your own routine.

Yeah, I know, if you’re reading this in maybe 2030, you must be wondering why I’m writing the obvious, but this is not 2030 when I’m writing it, it is 2019.

Where does content marketing and content writing fit into all this?

This ReadWrite blog post explains how IoT is going to affect content marketing, since I provide content writing services, I need to talk about this from the context of content writing.

The blog post refers to a Gartner study that says that by 2020, there are going to be 20.4 billion IoT devices, worldwide.

The success of your content marketing depends a lot on targeting. And what helps you in targeting? The data.

The development of the Internet of Things means that people are not just accessing your data from their mobile phones, computers and laptops. They are using different devices.

For example, someone may be accessing your set of instructions (for example, you provide recipes) from his or her Amazon Echo or Google Home placed in the kitchen.

Talking about Amazon, the company is planning to connect everything from microwave to your kids’ toys through the Internet of Things technologies.

Up till now people have been accessing your content – even your written content – through their computers and laptops or at the most, tablets and mobile phones.

Although the big shift towards using mobile phones is still happening, a greater number of people are accessing your content, reading your blog posts and articles and webpages while jogging or taking care of the kitchen chores.

That is, they are listening.

They are listening, and to retrieve information, they are talking. They tell their device what they want to hear instead of typing in a query.

The Internet of Things, especially when it comes to interacting with them, is usually a very personal affair, and this is why, plain, branded and business content doesn’t do well with the IOT experience.

The content needs to be personal and above all, highly valuable and useful.

The biggest strength in terms of writing content for IOT devices is the data that they provide enables you to tailor your content exactly for the situation your prospective customer or client is.

For example, an IOT device can tell you the current activity someone is engaged in – driving to the grocery store, passing by a restaurant, holidaying in a resort, sitting in the bed, waiting in a line or sitting in the park. You can tailor your content to completely suit the situation of your audience.

This blog post on Read Write gives example of pillows connected to the IOT network – the pillows can send give you data about the sleeping pattern of the person using them. You know when he or she goes to bed and when he or she wakes up. So, you know if he or she is an early riser or a late riser and accordingly you can tailor your content for that specific user. This sounds creepy, as an example.

As a content writer, my main focus is voice-enabled devices that accept questions and provide answers, for example, a chatbot or a knowledge base.

Ultimately, it all boils down to writing lots of useful content and simple, straightforward language, especially language that is used by your core audience.

Do keyword research before writing content

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Importance of keyword research before content writing

Although your keywords shouldn’t dominate your content writing, they are an important part of the entire writing process especially when you are targeting search engines.

For me, keywords keep your writing focused. When you know what words to use, you know what to write and you don’t deviate from that.

Focus is very important when you are writing content to attract targeted traffic from search engines. Keywords keep you focused.

Sometimes clients send me a long list of keywords to be included in a single document. Although, with little bit of creativity, scores of keywords can be incorporated into a single document – provided you have a big document of more than 3000 words – normally I don’t recommend this.

Focus on a single phrase – most of the searches these days are based on phrases rather than keywords – and in that one single phrase, try to include the main things that you’re going to cover in the current blog post or web page.

Also keep in mind that an increasing number of searches are voice searches – people use devices they can talk to, to look for information, for example Google Assistant or Amazon Echo.

Nonetheless, it is important that you do keyword research before writing content.

Why keyword research is important before content writing?

The concept of keyword has changed over the years. In terms of SEO, it doesn’t mean a single word, though, people get confused and assume that they should focus on single words rather than complete phrases.

For SEO and content writing, when you talk of keywords, you can safely assume that they mean even complete sentences.

Back to why keyword research is important…

It tells you what language people use when they are trying to find your service or your product or even when they’re talking to each other on various online forums and social media platforms while talking about your service or product.

Search engine algorithms are becoming intelligent by the day. They are fast moving towards a state of being when even if you don’t use your keywords, provided you stick to the topic, they will be able to make out what you are saying and then accordingly, rank your content.

In fact, this is already happening. When SEO experts and content marketing professionals talk about “searcher’s intent” this is what they are basically saying – your keywords don’t matter much, what matters is, whether you’re solving people’s problems or not, especially problems for which they are searching for solutions.

Nonetheless, keywords matter, and they will go on mattering simply because the words that people use to find you on Google, can be distinct for distinct requirements.

For example, if you’re looking for a content writer for your business, you will not be looking for “content writing” or “how to write content”.

Although, these two phrases do have something to do with content writing, for your particular need, you may look for “content writing for my boutique business” or “content writing service for SEO”.

If you’re looking for a writer to write your product descriptions, you’re not going to search for “professional copywriter”. You may search for “writer for writing product descriptions” or “looking for someone to write product descriptions for me”.

These may seem very obvious observations, especially when you are reading this blog post, but when you need to target scores of keywords because your business depends on traffic originating from those keywords, you need to do comprehensive research.

Again, the purpose of keyword research is not to prepare a long list of keywords and then use these keywords to write content (unless you’re using Google AdWords), the purpose is to use these keywords as a guiding force.

You enjoy better search engine rankings if you write in the language that your prospective customers and clients use.

Why before content writing?

As I have written above, the purpose is not to stuff keywords into your writing, the purpose is to use your keywords as a direction towards creating highly purposeful content in a language that people use, especially people who can be your prospective customers and clients.

When you write content, you should ask yourself, “Why am I writing this blog post?”, or “Why am I writing this webpage?”

Of course, you don’t just want to generate search engine traffic from your content writing because search engine traffic by itself means nothing. If your content can draw people from Google and other search engines but people simply leave your website without doing anything, it is an exercise in futility. This happens when you solely focus on SEO.

The primary purpose of your content must always be to provide information people are looking for so that they can decide whether they want to do business with you.

Take for instance this current blog post. Here I’m explaining to you why it is important to do keyword research before writing content. You may say that by merely reading this blog post how am I conveying that I’m a professional content writer and you should hire me?

Through a search engine or through another website or through Facebook or Twitter, when you come to this blog post and you read, you will know that I understand a few things about keywords and writing content based on those keywords.

The layout of my website/blog is such that you easily know that I provide professional content writing services and if you’re looking for a content writer who can focus on your keywords and despite that, also write high-conversion content, you may like to contact me.

If you don’t get such a feeling (despite requiring a competent content writer) then I’m not doing a good job.

Similarly, the ultimate aim of your content writing is to convince people that you are open for business and doing business with you is a good decision.

Hence, when you’re writing content, your aim must be converting people.

Now, this is where it becomes difficult for content writers who are not experienced. They can either focus on keywords to improve your SEO (which is not a big deal) or write conversion-centric content which, though, does not attract traffic, but if people land on that webpage or blog post, they are convinced.

So, how does one balance between keywords and conversion-oriented content writing?

Use your keywords (phrases, sentences, search expressions) to steer your language so that both search engine algorithms and visitors know what you’re talking about. Don’t simply use them to improve your SEO because that is counter-productive.

Again, take for example this blog post. It talks about why it is important to research keywords before content writing. At the time of writing this, I’m not sure whether people will be able to find this link for the right keywords or search terms, but this is what my intention is – if someone searches with a combination of keywords and content writing and maybe also SEO, he or she should be able to find this link.

But once he or she is on this blog post, only good content writing matters, not what or how the keywords have been used.

Is user generated content good for content marketing and SEO?

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User generated content for content marketing and SE

Until a few years ago, there was lots of buzz about user generated content. I remember lots of websites used to talk about it. Social networking was catching up and lots of content was being generated by users, without getting paid for it, for websites like YouTube and Digg.

Even smaller websites were encouraging people to leave comments in the comments section and online forums hoping that it would improve their SEO due to highly focused content generation.

User generated content can consist of reviews that people leave on your website, videos, photos, questions and answers and comments. With every new question, with every new comment, a new URL is generated, and it gives Google and other search engines something new to crawl and index.

One thing is undoubtedly clear: user generated content is one of the fastest and cheapest ways of generating targeted content and consequently, boosting your content marketing. Through user generated content

You are letting your users, visitors, customers and clients tell your story and participate in your evolution.
You let people talk about your brand instead of the marketing message coming from you.
Other people, not directly connected to your business, increasing your brand presence.
People themselves talk about the pros and cons of working with you.
User generated content, especially if it is favourable to your business, provides you ongoing social proof.
Your prospective customers and clients find user generated content more trustworthy. According to a Nielsen study 92% of consumers trust organic, user generated content more than traditional marketing messages.

It also gives the search engines lots of content to crawl and index, on an ongoing basis.

This Search Engine Land blog post says that though user generated content can help you, it can also be counter-productive and hence, whenever you plan to make user generated content an integral part of your content marketing strategy, you need to make sure that it helps your SEO efforts, and doesn’t hurt them.

How to incorporate user generated content into your content marketing?

Using user generated content for content marketing isn’t a random exercise that you can immediately kick-start by installing a few plug-ins into your website. You need to keep in mind that unsupervised discussions can take tangential turns and turn into uncontrollable disasters.

But the question of uncontrollable disasters happens only when you have enough content to cause you trouble. So, first, you need to figure out how to make people, how to enable people, to generate content for your brand. Here are a few things you can do:

Allow people to leave comments: This facility might already be there on your blog or website if you’re using a content management system like WordPress. Many Webmasters turn this feature off because of the comment-spam problem, but if you can establish a mechanism to monitor your comments, this is one of the finest ways of getting user generated content on your website.
Install a discussion forum: Online forums and discussion boards are one of the oldest mass conversation channels on the Internet. Even when there were no browsers, there were discussion boards. Online forums can have very rich SEO-centric content especially when your forum catches on and people begin to use it on a regular basis. Again, spam can be a big problem.
Allow people to post blog posts on your website: Many websites allow visitors to set up an account and post content. You can let them submit entries as drafts and later you can review them and publish them.
Start a review section: In this section people can leave reviews on your products and services, just like Amazon has it.
Start a Q&A section: Questions and answers are favourites of the search engines. This is because most of the searches were carried out in the form of questions – you ask a question and Google provides you the answer. In a Q&A section the questions and answers are already there.
Allow people to upload images and videos: This can be an expensive affair because images and videos mean more online storage space and more bandwidth. But if you can afford it, you can generate lots of traffic to this type of content. One-fourth of Google searches are images.

The main problem with user generated content is of course, moderation and protection against spam. Spam bots can post thousands of comments in a single day, bringing your entire website down and irreparably harm your SEO. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why people shy away from installing online forums on their websites. Otherwise, you would find them on every website.

My personal suggestion is, stay away from installing an online forum unless running a forum is your primary activity or you have a dedicated department to oversee the conversations.

The most useful forms of user generated content in terms of both content marketing and SEO are inviting people to write blog posts for your website and encouraging them to participate in the Q&A section. This way, you can control the flow and direction of your content.

Dealing with writer’s block as a professional content writer

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Content writing and writers blockCo

As a professional content writer, you need to write every day because if you don’t write, you don’t get paid.

Your client who wants to publish his blog post or webpage or landing page or press release or whatever, couldn’t care less about your writer’s block, in case you are having one.

If you have committed to deliver the document by Wednesday, you must deliver the document by Wednesday, writer’s block or no writer’s block.

What is writer’s block?

Frankly speaking, as a writer I have never believed in the concept of writer’s block. You write, or you don’t write.

Yes, you are distracted sometimes. You are demotivated. Thousands of other thoughts barge into your mind and you cannot focus on writing. You also lose confidence sometimes.

You suddenly begin to hate every word you write, and you begin to feel that you are the worst writer in the world and people are going to laugh at you or ridicule you when they read your writing.

Every artist, and in fact, every professional goes through such phases.

Surely, writing is different. It is not physical. It is not worldly. Just imagine, you don’t just imagine, you also put your imagination into words and then put those words on paper or on screen and even if there is a slight disconnect, the entire imagery collapses.

So yes, if writers think that writer’s block is a unique phenomenon that manifests just among writers, I don’t disagree.

Do I get writer’s block as a content writer?

I do, but at least in my case, I firmly believe that it is my own doing.

There is a writer who writes stories: JK Rowling or Narendra Kohli.

Then, there is a writer who writes content for websites, information articles, blog posts and even opinion pieces and articles for newspapers and magazines.

Content writers and journalists are less prone to being hit by writer’s block because usually, there is a lot to write.

For example, as a content writer, I don’t have to wait for an idea. I’m given a brief by the client and I know exactly what I must write and what I have to achieve through my writing.

With a writer, the problem is rarely about writing – it is like driving a car, once you know how to drive, you know how to drive, and you don’t even have to think about it – it is what to write about.

For example, if a great writer like Narendra Kohli has to write, he first needs to come up with the story, come up with the characters, string the stories and the characters together, and then write the story, without getting distracted, even for months. It can be a humongous task.

A content writer, on the other hand, solely needs to focus on the current job at hand that is, maybe 500 words long, or 1500 words, or 3000 words max.

The topic is there, and in most of the cases the information can be found no matter how hard it is to find it.

So, where does the question of writer’s block arise in the case of a content writer?

Distraction.

Distraction is the biggest writer’s block in the life of a content writer.

This distraction comes through social media and social networking websites, through emails, through social networking apps, through phone calls and through whatever the connected world throws at us these days.

How do I deal with writer’s block as a content writer?

It’s easy, actually. Since, I know that I get writer’s block when I’m distracted or when my passion has been consumed by a subject that has got nothing to do with my client’s work, all I have to do is, create an environment where external messages cannot reach me.

I have mentioned this in my previous blog posts also, to stop social media distractions, I use ColdTurkey to block websites like Twitter and Facebook.

I mostly get distracted when there is lots of political noise, for example the ongoing elections in India. I cannot keep myself away from knowing what people are talking about.

So, along with activating ColdTurkey I also keep my phone in another room. This prevents me from unconsciously picking up the phone to check updates or to post something that comes to my mind.

Even after taking these measures sometimes it becomes difficult to write.

In such cases, I just start writing. Over the years, I have experienced that when I stick to my writing for at least 20 minutes, without giving up and without getting distracted (and without finding an excuse to abandon something that is taxing my mind), the writing begins to flow smoothly.

Another thing that helps me get over my writer’s block is I start writing in monosyllables or single sentences. It’s easier to write a word than a sentence.

Usually, the thoughts are there. Sometimes the information is lacking. Sometimes, there is no conviction, especially when one is not sure whether the information at hand is correct or not.

At that time, it’s better to write very short sentences, sometimes even a single word. It is better than doing nothing.

Eventually, and this has been 100% true, the words automatically begin to fill in the document turns out to be fine.

How I save time while running my content writing and consulting business

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Saving time while running my content writing and consulting business

I must confess that I’m not one of those highly organized and focused online marketers and entrepreneurs writing books and publishing podcasts on how well they optimally manage their time.

What happens at my desk is quite random. I’m not saying that it is ideal and I’m continuously trying to improve it, but having somehow successfully run my content writing and content consulting business for the past 12 odd years, I can at least say that within that randomness, there is some sense of regularity that keeps me going.

I was reading this blog post in the morning, 5 Practical Time Management Tips for the Chronically Time-Poor, and I was just wondering, do I have a take on this? Do I manage my time in a way I can share my experience with my readers?

What do I do to save time, or better put, organise my time? On an average day, I need to take care of the following:

Work on content writing and copywriting assignments from clients.
Reply to email queries from existing clients and new clients.
Update existing website pages.
Write blog posts for my content writing and content marketing blog.
Engage people on social networking websites.
Broadcast email campaigns.

Now, I don’t do all these activities every day. Regrettably, sometimes highly important activities like publishing new content on my blog, updating my content and broadcasting my email campaigns don’t happen for days, even for weeks. Sometimes I get distracted, sometimes there is too much client work.

Distractions can take their toll and how I try to put a leash on them

Talking about distraction – we have a politically charged up atmosphere in the house. My wife is very political. Being a writer first and then a content writer, I definitely enjoy writing political, cultural and social blog posts and consequently, end up spending lots of time tracking such conversations on Twitter, and even reading opinion pieces and news reports.

Our brain has limited resources. This is truer if you are passionate about something so much that you end up spending all your brainpower on a subject that has got nothing to do with your professional work.

This happens unfailingly: when I check my Twitter timeline in the morning, the entire day spirals down.

Multiple times I have experimented, just to see whether my conclusion is right or not, and unless something exceptional has happened (a client whose business is going to collapse unless I immediately submit some documents), within a couple of hours I feel drained, demotivated, and confused. I cannot focus on content writing.

Hence, I stay away from Twitter during workdays.

For this, I use ColdTurkey. It blocks the websites you want to block and once it is activated, you cannot even accidentally open those websites. Once activated, the program is so rock-solid that unless you reset your operating system, it is not going to allow you to access those websites. You cannot even uninstall during the period when the websites are being blocked.

I have used the program in various ways. Last year, I had set it to block all the social networking websites from 7 AM till 7 PM, Monday to Friday.

This was good, but the problem is, for work also sometimes I need to access websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, especially when I’m posting content for my clients.

Now, I use 2-hour blocks. When I need to focus on something, I activate ColdTurkey for 2 hours and just focus on the work.

I keep on expanding this 2-hour block if I don’t need to access the websites.

Taking care of distractions gives you lots of time in a day. Still, you need to manage your time to make sure that you are able to achieve whatever that needs to be achieved.

I don’t check emails in the morning, instead I focus on my task list

I have been playing around with task lists ever since I started doing my own business. It doesn’t matter what app or what medium you use to manage your tasks (these days I use Microsoft to-do list). I have experimented with them multiple times and now I have concluded that creating very long task lists is always a waste of time.

Anyway, before that, the topic of not checking emails in the morning.

Almost every time-management guru advises you to avoid checking emails in the morning, and this is a good advice, especially when you want to preserve your brain resources for creative work and for work that requires uninterrupted focus.

About task list, these days I don’t add more than 5 tasks. I don’t necessarily have to do 5 tasks every day and there can be more tasks, but on the list, if I need to add a task, I make sure that I remove one task (by making sure that it is done). Relentlessly adding tasks is not just distracting, if you cannot tick off all the tasks, it is also demotivating.

Managing energy and priority instead of boxing various activities into various parts of the day

I’m more passionate than methodical. If I suppress my passion, my energy begins to drain out, especially when it comes to writing.

Hence, these days, I work according to the energy level that I have, and the degree of desire that I have to do that work.

For example, writing this blog post is not “work” in the sense that I don’t need to submit it to a client. But I’m writing it the first thing in the morning because I want to write it. Previously it used to fill me with guilt that instead of working on a client assignment, I was working on my blog, which shouldn’t be a priority. That was counter-productive.

Of course, I know there is work to be done and clients are waiting to receive their blog posts and articles, but I also know that if I don’t work on this blog post, there is a 90% chance I won’t be able to work on it, and then, I won’t even be able to focus on the client work.

On the other hand, if I’m able to complete it, or at least, write all the thoughts that are coming to my mind, I will know that I have done something that I want to do, and now, I can fully focus on the content writing project at hand.

So, I don’t have any elaborate time saving or time management technique I can write about. These things help me:

Removing distractions.
Strategically using my energy levels.
Not checking emails and social networking updates first thing in the morning.
Having a clearly defined task list not going beyond 5 tasks for a day.
Giving priority to writing that energises me.