Category Archives: Business Development

How I plan to promote my content writing business during the Coronavirus outbreak

Content writing in the times of the coronavirus

After originating from China the Coronavirus has taken the entire world in its grip. Thousands of people have died. More than 200,000 are quarantined or being treated as I’m writing this. Businesses are being shut down. People are losing jobs.

During such a human and economic disaster, how do you take care of your business? My content writing queries are going down; what steps am I going to take to see me through this lean period?

Businesses depend on each other. I provide content writing services but I can provide my services only to those businesses who are in a position to spend money on marketing, branding and SEO. When they are grappling with the question of survival, they aren’t much worried about marketing.

Even the markets to which they need to market themselves aren’t responding, aren’t in a position to respond.

Nonetheless, a good thing about the Internet is that you can work from home, and you can provide your services to different parts of the world.

Although many countries are struggling with the pandemic, there are many other countries who haven’t been as affected as some countries have been. Till the world realigns itself, you need to continuously find opportunities, as little as they are.

Below I am listing a few things I’m going to do to promote my content writing business even during the Coronavirus outbreak. Maybe you can apply some of the things that I mention here to benefit your own business.

Don’t worry much

Worrying is a natural reaction. Whenever we are alarmed we worry. Worrying kept us safe when we were living in jungles and caves. Even at the slightest of sounds and movements in the bush, we simply bolted without spending a single second on second-guessing. Hesitation could get us killed.

We live in relatively safer times. Even when long months of recession gawk at us, worrying isn’t going to help much. It stunts our thinking. It even harms are immune system.

Find out ways to get rid of your worry. If you cannot do it yourself, talk with someone close to you.

Network with other business owners

You may not just get new business, you will also provide support to each other during hard times. Maybe you know something that the other person doesn’t know and the other person knows something that you don’t know. You can both help each other.

Also, you can refer a new business to each other – something that you may have ignored in the past.

Work on improving your online presence

Yes, it also involves publishing more content on your website. Remember that no matter how dire the situation becomes, there is someone out there always looking for you.

I’m still getting a lot of content writing queries from all over the place. Even from Europe and America. So, if on an average I’m getting 2 content writing queries, if I can improve my SEO and make it easier for people to find me, I can increase that number to 3, or 4, or 6.

I have been buried under lots of work. I’m still working for a few clients and I know I have plenty of work for the next two months,

I’m also going to get lots of free time to add extra content on my website and blog, which I have been ignoring in the recent months because of my work. I’m going to use this extra time as an opportunity to improve my search engine rankings and add more content to my website.

Explore untapped opportunities

Are there some opportunities you have been ignoring? What about your mailing list? Haven’t you always wanted to have your own mailing list? Maybe this is a time you can start focusing on building one.

What about LinkedIn? Personally I have always wanted to spend more time promoting myself on LinkedIn but there hasn’t been much motivation which, I’m sure, is going to manifest now.

Improve conversion rate

Although I’m constantly working at improving my conversion rate so that I get more content writing traffic that converts rather than bringing those people to my website who simply want to learn how to write better content (no harm in that, though), there is always scope for improvement.

You can use Google Analytics to take note of what type of traffic your website or blog is attracting from Google and how much of it brings you actual business. Study the keywords that convert and then generate more content around those keywords.

Decide to outsource

If you haven’t been outsourcing, this is a good opportunity to consider. To be frank, my entire business depends on people’s tendency to outsource their content writing needs.

Businesses and people don’t hire me full-time. They contact me whenever they need quality content to improve your conversion rate or SEO.

You can outsource many things. You can outsource content writing if you don’t want to spend time writing and creating content for your website or blog.

You can outsource graphic design or your web maintenance or your SEO. What about accounting and bookkeeping? I’m writing content for a website that does precisely that – take care of accounting for many businesses.

Outsourcing saves you time and money, and it also gives you greater choice. You are never stuck with a single employee. You can dip your feet in the global talent pool.

Audit your content

For a small business having 50-60 web pages and an equal number of blog posts, this shouldn’t be a tough job.

What does content auditing mean?

It means going through individual content pieces and improving them. Improvement may involve rewriting their titles and descriptions, improving content quality, making your content simpler and concise and pretty much, incorporating improvements that make your content better. Content auditing also improves your SEO.

In the end, I suggest, don’t worry about the sky falling unless the sky is actually falling. Use the time. It might be a blessing in disguise. Maybe the collective destiny of the world wants you to turn over a new leaf and start exploring opportunities that you have been ignoring so far.

Why I don’t take up low paying content writing and copywriting assignments

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Why I don’t take up low-paying writing assignments

…even if I’m not currently working on some paid assignments.

Continuing the string of thought from a previous blog post, If you don’t want to pay even a decent amount for writing services, you don’t need a writer, does it make sense when I don’t take up low paying assignments even when currently I’m not working on a project? Am I wasting my time? Isn’t some money better than no money?

This logic was presented to me yesterday by a client. He asked me if I was busy with an assignment. I was not.

“So,” he asked, “why don’t you accept my assignment? At least I will be paying you something.”

There are multiple reasons why I don’t accept low paying assignments. But one of the biggest reasons is, I would rather spend my time promoting my own services rather than writing content for individuals who don’t appreciate the value of a good writer.

Although, when I am sending an estimate to my clients, I mention them how much I’m going to charge per word or per page, in reality, I am charging for my time. Over the years I have come to realize how much I need to make per hour when I’m working, so, I have converted my hourly need into a per word or a per page figure for the benefit of those clients who feel a bit uncomfortable with the concept of paying by the hour.

Low-paying content writing and copywriting assignments doesn’t mean less work

You will be surprised to know that the clients who didn’t want to pay what I asked were more demanding and were more callous about my time compared to those clients who readily paid my rates.

It’s quite logical, actually.

When you don’t want to pay a justifiable amount for a service that is very crucial to the growth of your business, you don’t value the service and to be frank, you don’t even value your own business. You don’t hope to do well.

Since you don’t appreciate the time being put (because you’re not spending much money and hence, you don’t have much stake) you don’t mind wasting time of your writer. You come up with weird suggestions. You want a long copy, and then suddenly you want a short copy. Then you don’t like the tone. You want some sentences changed and then you realize that the previous sentences were better. This goes on and on until the writer is totally frustrated and gives up. Then you don’t pay because you say that the writer didn’t deliver what you had asked for.

It’s a no-win situation for both the parties. The write-up is important for your website (assuming you take your business seriously) but you don’t get it. The writer has put in lots of effort, the effort he or she could have spent working on a rewarding assignment, and now, his or her effort is totally wasted.

Low periods are a good time to promote your business

As an entrepreneur I need to promote myself continuously. Even if there is a lag of 2 weeks, the queries begin to dwindle. I need to publish content on my blog and website regularly otherwise I begin to lose my search engine rankings because content writing is a high-competition field.

By the grace of God or the positive powers of the universe, I’m not having to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Over the years I have been able to create a presence for myself through which, clients want to hire me for high-quality writing. By the time they come to my website, they are already impressed by my search engine rankings and the content they have found at various places, written by me. So, when they come to my website, they are already looking for me.

I’m not saying this comes easily. I have to strive all the time. I don’t mind that.

Consequently, when I take up low-paying assignment, rather than making money, I’m losing it. This is because the time that I spend promoting my business by publishing content on my own website is more valuable than the money that I make from low paying assignments.

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.

How to generate more leads with content writing

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How to generate more leads with content writing

In this post I’m going to throw some light on how you can generate more leads with content writing consistently.

Every business wants to generate more leads. A lead is when a prospective customer or client approaches you (through your contact form, through a phone call, through an email, through an advertisement or whatever mode of communication) and shows interest in your product or service.

Leads may have different meanings for different business models. Generating leads doesn’t necessarily mean people coming to you to buy your product or service. A lead can also be when someone subscribes to your email newsletter. A lead can also be a casual inquiry.

Basically, whenever someone shows interest in your business for the sake of buying one of your products or using one of your services, he or she is a lead.

Businesses eagerly pay for leads. There are many websites that sell you qualified leads – people leave their requirement on the website and then the website contacts you telling you that someone needs your product or service. Then it is up to you whether you make use of that lead and do business, or squander it away.

Why generating leads are important for your business?

It’s easier to sell to people who are interested in buying from you, compared to those who are not interested. Hence, there is a greater chance of a lead turning into your customer or client, if you strategically lead your lead to the ultimate point of making the purchase. Leads are easier to convert.

It is very difficult to get noticed on the Internet these days. For every business there are thousands of contenders. If you use advertising, your competitors can too. If you think you can improve your search engine rankings there are thousands of others who think on similar lines and may even outrank you in a matter of a few weeks or a few days.

Hence, there is a constant cat-and-mouse game going on and the more businesses try to vie for attention, the more noise they create, and the more noise they create, less it becomes possible for prospective customers and clients to understand their marketing messages and even if they can understand, it becomes difficult to distinguish one business from another.

A lead immediately changes the scene. You’re not vying for the attention of your customer or client – he or she is already interested in you. Your business or your brand has got his or her attention despite all the noise. This is a major gain. It’s like in a crowded party full of strangers someone has walked up to you and have started a conversation.

Content writing and how the process of generating leads has changed

I specifically mention content writing because this is what I provide – content via writing. For your case, content can exist in any form. It can be videos, it can be images, it can be infographics, it can be slideshows, it can be Instagram posts, whatever works for you. So, when I see content writing, you can call it video publishing or email marketing, or whatever comes to your mind.

Marketing and lead generation have changed

In the olden days, marketing was all about telling people how great your business is and what they stand to lose if they don’t use your product or service. Advertising and marketing was unscientific. It was like throwing lots of gooey mud on the wall expecting that some of that goo would stick.

Marketing these days, especially after the advent of the Internet, is more customer-centric. Through your content writing, you don’t promote your interest, you promote your customer’s interest.

Amazing writer

For example, when you’re reading about my content writing services, do you want to know what an awesome writer I am, or do you want to know how I’m going to help you generate more leads and consequently, more sales? Obviously the latter.

You couldn’t care less if I have written books or if I have earned citations for my pros. Yes, it may reassure you that I know a thing or two about writing, but your primary concern is, whether I can help you generate more leads and grow your business.

So, when I write, I’m constantly addressing your concerns. If you’re reading this blog post, you want to generate more leads. You don’t want traffic, you want people on your website who would buy from you or subscribe to your newsletter or do something that makes you money. Can I do it? This is what you want to know.

This has changed across the board. No matter how big a business you are, if you don’t impress your customers, they’re not going to give you a second glance.

So, how does content writing help you generate more leads?

You want to be a part of your customers’ lives. This can be achieved by providing highly useful and high quality content on an ongoing basis using the channels your prospective customers and clients use. You cannot simply tell them to do business with you because one, there are many choices available these days and two, there is always this other business that is more eager to engage, interact and provide a meaningful relationship rather than always wanting to sell.

It’s very logical.

If you have a business, you don’t need to repeatedly tell people that you have a business, your customers and clients know it. If you have a product or service to sell, provided there is no ambiguity in your messaging, everybody knows that you have a product or service to sell. You don’t need to repeatedly tell people how great your furniture is, how exceptional your web designing is, what an awesome make-up artist you are or what a prodigal content writer you are.

I’m not saying you should never tell people what a great business you are running, but you don’t need to do it constantly.

But if you don’t do it constantly, you fear losing your customers and clients to your competitors. What you do then?

You publish content that is useful to your prospective customers and clients. This way, they want to hear from you rather than you wanting to talk to them.

People who positively receive your content are also your leads. They may not buy from you immediately, but if you constantly engage them, if you provide them value through high-quality content writing, then when they eventually need the products or services that you provide, they’re going to come to you.

Another benefit of content writing is that it improves your search engine rankings. Search engines are continuously looking for new content to index and rank. As their crawlers find new content, they push the older content down and if the newer content is good, they push it higher. This is an ongoing churning that is happening every second.

Higher search engine rankings can bring you practically unlimited leads.

To generate qualified leads, you may decide to focus on the following channels:

Your business blog and content marketing through it
Website optimization and usability improvement
Search engine optimization
Social media marketing
Email marketing
Press releases

Content writing plays a pivotal role in every channel. You need well-written content for your website so that you can clearly communicate your message, people can understand it, and then decide to do business with you.

Search engine optimization is not possible without well-written, optimized, relevant and quality content.

Even if you write just 2 sentences, your social media marketing is incomplete without good content writing.

Email marketing and press releases solely depend on high-quality content writing.

All these are lead generation channels.

As you can see in the above image, unlike the older ways, you don’t go to your customers and clients and urge them to buy from you.

You create funnels through high-quality content that you disseminate using the channels your prospective customers and clients use.

Whether it is personal branding or business branding, your brand should be familiar to them and they should respect your brand. They should value your content. They should be able to use your content to improve their business and enrich their lives.

Many of my clients think that this is a long shot but it is not. It is a sure shot way of generating more leads following a well-defined path. Give them value through quality content writing and content marketing and they will buy from you.

Why I’m negotiating with my clients less and less for better content writing

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Saying “no” to negotiations

Around a year ago when I changed my targeting I became quite open to negotiating my rates with my new clients. I was too eager to take up new assignments because I was trying to get into an entirely new market.

Since then, two things have happened and now I’m negotiating with my clients less and less.

Lowering the rates more than I can comfortably offer reduces the quality of my work.
I have got enough work on the rates I need to deliver quality.

Why negotiations are harmful for quality content writing?

I’m not saying negotiations are always bad – every business, every company does them and besides, everybody is entitled to a good bargain.

In my case, I always offer the best rate I can offer. I always feel uncomfortable offering a higher rate assuming that the client will ask me to lower it and then I should say something like, “Okay, fine, I will do it at a discount for you.” Feels like cheating. Doesn’t sound dignified.

This is why, I charge just the right amount I think I should be making while delivering high-quality content writing.

The rates that I charge allow me to spend good time writing good content. If a charge less, then I have to make it up by focusing more on quantity and less on quality which is not good for my clients, and more importantly, not good for my own skill.

Yes, it puts off many clients, but then, there ARE clients who find my rates fine and eagerly pay me what I ask.