Category Archives: Content Strategy

What is quality assurance in content writing?

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What is quality assurance in content writing?

What is quality assurance in content writing?

Quality assurance may have simpler meaning and it may have a bit evolved meaning in terms of content writing.

It goes without saying that the quality of your content must be good in the sense that it should be easy to read, there should be no spelling and grammar mistakes, and the flow must be engaging. Your readers must be able to make sense of what you’re writing.

If you want content writing to be an integral part of your content marketing, then it becomes an ongoing activity. Content marketing is not a singular campaign. It is an ongoing thing.

Since it is an ongoing thing, you need to have a strategy, you need to have benchmarks, and you need to have a quality assurance mechanism. What’s that?

  • When you are writing and publishing content as per your content marketing strategy, you need to ensure you publish content regularly – out of sight is literally out of mind on the streets of content marketing.
  • You maintain a publishing schedule and publishing calendar.
  • The voice of your content represents your brand’s voice.
  • You have sourcing guidelines when you use data in your blog posts and articles.
  • The titles or headlines are as per your engagement, branding and search engine optimization needs.
  • Every piece of content takes your content marketing a step forward.

You may have budgetary constraints but don’t allow them to compromise on your content writing quality.

If it comes to choosing between quantity and quality, go with quality. It is fine to publish just a single blog post every month if you cannot spend more money, but make sure that that single blog post adds value to your content marketing efforts and isn’t just there to fill up random gaps or just to cover keywords.

You should document your quality assurance guidelines. This way, whenever you have a new blog post or an article, you can quickly run it through the guidelines to make sure that most of the conditions are met.

Quality also matters when you’re posting on social media. Just because you are publishing 50-100 words, it doesn’t mean that the content that you publish on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram is less important. They say that you should let your hair loose on social media and social networking websites. Although this is fine, every message represents your brand. So, keep that in mind.

Your content writing quality assurance must include your vision

Content writing quality assurance shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should represent your overall business and content marketing vision.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a client, and he has a very clear idea of what he wants to publish for his blogs. He doesn’t want to follow the hackneyed path. He knows how he wants to engage his audience and for that, what type of content he must publish (and I must write). This clarity should be there in your content writing quality assurance guidelines.

Should the creativity of your content writer be sacrificed at the altar of quality assurance?

Not necessarily. Remember that your content exists to engage and inform your audience. Therefore, choose a content writer with whom you can feel the synergy.

Having a clearly defined set of quality assurance guidelines doesn’t mean you don’t let your content writer do his or her own thing. In fact, an effective content writer is always quite individualistic.

Clients who have been working with me for a couple of years keep coming back to me not just for my content writing skills, but for the way I write. But, it doesn’t mean I write something that is not going to add value to their content marketing efforts write in a manner that goes contrary to their vision or quality assurance guidelines.

How do regular content writing and publishing give you a higher conversion rate?

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For the past 20 or so days I have been regularly publishing updates on LinkedIn and Instagram – two platforms that I have ignored so far.

Yesterday I was checking the stats of my Instagram account.  Suddenly, the visibility of my content has grown by 17,000%. Of course, from 0 to 20 or 25 views, in terms of percentage, means quite big, but even these 20 or 25 views are better than zero views.

I can see the same trend on my LinkedIn account. Views of my profile have increased. More people are seeing my updates though, engagement is negligible but that is natural because I have just started.

Visibility is particularly important to build trust on the Internet. Whether people are interacting with you or not is another matter (and something that should not be disregarded), it is important that they come across your updates.

Your conversion rate on the Internet depends on three factors:

  • Visibility
  • Familiarity
  • Trust

Visibility

You need to remain visible. Whether people are searching for information on Google or scrolling through their social media timelines, they must come across your name or the name of your business.

Please keep in mind that when I talk about visibility, I don’t mean you should relentlessly publish content without paying attention to whether people care about your content or not.

They must find your content relevant. They must derive some value out of it. Otherwise, it becomes white noise, and they don’t even notice you.

Familiarity

Assuming you are publishing relevant content, and if people regularly notice you, they become familiar with your name. It is our primal instinct to be comfortable around people and things that are familiar.

Trust

When you provide them information they appreciate, and when you regularly provide such information, they begin to trust you. A positive association is formed.  When they need the product or the service that you provide, they rather get it from you than from someone they don’t know.

Whether it is search engines or social media platforms or even your email updates, regularity and consistency always lead to a higher conversion rate.

Regularly writing and publishing content is critical

Stop publishing your updates for a couple of weeks. Unless you have formed close friendships and unless you provide content people need for their day-to-day survival, they are hardly going to notice your absence. This is a harsh reality.

Even the search engines like Google stop crawling your website or blog after a while if you don’t publish fresh content regularly. Your search engine rankings begin to drop. Even for the search terms you were ranking higher just a couple of weeks ago, you begin to lose traffic.

Be regular. Be consistent. Remain relevant. You will enjoy a higher conversion rate.

5 Benefits of Content Curation

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Benefits of content curation

Benefits of content curation.

You curate content when you link to high quality content from other websites and blogs through your own website or blog.

If you’re sharing links from other websites and blogs, from Twitter and Facebook, in a manner, you are already curating content.

To improve engagement and for better SEO, you’re often advised to publish original content regularly.

Unless you’re a big organization and you have a dedicated team of content writers, publishing original, quality content regularly can be quite difficult.

It is not just about writing and publishing, you constantly need to come up with great topics and writing ideas and then publish quality content.

Sometimes, content curation can help you.

Just like you, many people in your industry – whether they directly compete with you or indirectly, or not at all – are publishing quality content.

This is valuable information, and your visitors can benefit from this information.

Just because information is appearing on another’s website or blog, it doesn’t mean your visitors should be deprived of such information.

At the same time, if you are publishing useful information on your own, you don’t want to link to another’s website.

I recommend content curation to my clients when they cannot come up with an interesting topic or when for the time being, we have exhausted all our options.

Content curation happens in 2 manners:

You create a list of all the blogs and websites covering the topic under which you are curating content.

For example, “The top 5 blog posts on the benefits of content curation” and then including links from other blogs with small introductions.

You can simply talk about one topic from one blog and then add your own comments.

In both the cases you are curating content because you are picking up someone else’s thoughts and your either expressing those thoughts as they are or adding your own take.

I normally prefer creating dedicated blog posts for dedicated links. I have rarely created a “list” of other links.

Below I’m listing 5 benefits of content curation.

1. Gives you an unending supply of content writing ideas

Among the top challenges faced by content marketers is producing content consistently and on top of that, making sure that the content remains engaging and valuable.

B2B content marketing challenges

B2B content marketing challenges.

It is important to publish fresh content regularly on your website. There are multiple benefits of publishing regular content on your website or blog.

If you don’t publish content regularly, your current search engine rankings immediately begin to suffer and there is a drastic reduction in the number of people coming to your website.

Your business suffers.

The problem is, regularly coming up with fresh content writing ideas is a big challenge.

Although there are different ways to come up with great content writing ideas every day, sometimes, it is simply not possible.

In such circumstances, through content curation, you can have practically an unending supply of content writing ideas.

Maintain a list of your industry blogs. You can use a content aggregation service like Flipboard, Feedly or Google Discover to track topics.

Whenever you cannot come up with a great content writing idea, quickly go through these content aggregation services and curate something.

2. Drive thought leadership with content curation

Build thought leadership with curated content

Build thought leadership with curated content.

Thought leadership isn’t always about writing and publishing high-quality content of your own.

This blog post rightly suggests that your audience judges you based on the content you share.

Another interesting point mentioned in the above link is that if you never curate content, your website or blog becomes an echo chamber, and you don’t want that.

People want to know what you think of others’ opinions.

For example, on my blog I have multiple times written that I don’t agree that you always have to write 3000-5000-word blog posts for better search engine rankings, as is often suggested by top SEO and content marketing companies.

For better search engine rankings, focus on a topic and provide highly valuable and niche information on it. Even that improves your SEO.

Hence, this is a difference of opinion.

You need to be cautious if you want to build your thought leadership by making content curation an integral part of your overall content marketing strategy.

Always link to high quality and authoritative websites and blogs posts, preferably to thought leaders who are highly regarded.

I’m not saying you don’t link to lesser-known people – make a judgement call. Being an authority yourself, you can easily find out if the content you are curating is worth linking to or not.

3. Improves your SEO

This is something that I have personally experienced.

Suppose I’m looking for some content curation opportunities and on Google I come across a blog post that is ranking at the top.

I write a similar blog post and then link to the blog post that is ranking high, of course, with my own thoughts added to make sure that I’m publishing an original blog post.

I have observed that my blog post with the curated link either begins to appear just below the main link or somewhere on the same page.

Of course, there are lots of other factors that help you rank well, but it certainly helps you improve your search engine rankings if you create/curate content based on blog posts that are already ranking high.

4. Makes your content diverse

As I have mentioned above, you don’t want your blog to become an echo chamber of your own thoughts.

When you curate content, you treat your visitors with diverse opinions or different chains of thoughts even if you don’t agree with them. This gives you a richness.

If your regular visitors are getting bored of (they do) simply reading what you have to say about different subjects, this will give them a breath of fresh air and then they will be ready to come back to your own thoughts.

5. Helps you improve your topic density or keyword density

When you curate content you mostly curate content that is from your own field or profession.

For example, if I’m curating content I am mostly interested in topics related to content writing, copywriting, SEO content, content marketing, email marketing, writing tips, and so on.

My audience comes to read these topics. Consequently, I’m not going to curate content on real estate unless it has got something to do with my profession.

All my topics are going to deal with my profession – writing, content writing and so on.

This increases my keyword density.

Similarly, if you are a financial coach and you curate lots of content on financial coaching, you’re going to increase your keyword density for financial coaching.

Concluding remarks

Normally, when you search for “content curation” and its benefits, you mostly come across blog posts talking about sharing content on social media and social networking websites.

Yes, that too is content curation, but it’s better use is when you use content curation to generate high-quality content for your own blog.

More Content Means Greater Success

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More content means greater success

More content means greater success.

All the digital marketing experts advise you to publish as much content as possible.

You cannot hope to achieve great SEO results unless you are prepared to publish content on regular basis.

Famous Digital marketing expert Neil Patel rightly says in this interview that if you don’t create enough content, your competition already is.

On the Internet, it is all about building a platform for your audience.

I’m not talking about big businesses – businesses like Amazon and Google don’t need to create an audience because they have already spent years and billions of dollars creating an audience.

I’m talking about small businesses – businesses like yours and mine.

Not enough people know you.

Even if they know you, they don’t know you enough to trust you.

Even if they trust you, they don’t trust you enough to spend money on your business.

To make people trust you, you need to be in front of them, for the right reasons.

If you offer them quality content on regular basis, they begin to trust you.

Regularly publishing content also improves your search engine rankings.

When you publish quality content regularly, search engines like Google begin to like you.

When the search engines like you, they quickly crawl, index and rank your content so that your target audience can find your content.

When your target audience regularly finds your content on Google, their trust level increases.

Sure, you can also advertise but very few people trust advertisements these days.

On the other hand, if your listings appear naturally (organically) in search results, people know that your content is featuring there because Google has evaluated, and the Google algorithm thinks that your content is valuable.

All these things add up.

Yes, publishing high-quality content with greater frequency may seem daunting, but you cannot avoid it.

If you don’t preserve your audience, your competition will take it away.

Anyway, I just wanted to post the twitter link to the interview.

A short interview, but some good anecdotal advice.

Should You Take A Strong Political Stand As A Business?

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Should you take a strong political stand as a business

Should you take a strong political stand as a business?

If you go through different social media timelines of people from the USA, it is not just about politics (due to the impending presidential elections), it seems like the clash of the belief systems.

One of the people I have been following for more than a decade was exhorting other companies not to do business with the Republican party.

People in his timeline accused him of acting like a fascist and trying to curb democracy.

I remember even in the previous elections, famous investor Peter Thiel openly supported the candidacy of Donald Trump and earned the wrath of his “liberal peers”.

Anyway, they have published a podcast on the Content Marketing Institute titled Should your brand enter controversial conversations?

Although, in the podcast they don’t necessarily talk about political and ideological controversies and they’re mostly talking about taking a divergent stand from established norms, this brings to my mind, as a business, should you openly voice your political opinions and openly declare that you are not going to deal with people and businesses to display a contrarian bent of mind, politically and ideologically?

Here is a Twitter thread I recently posted:

Depending on which side of the spectrum you stand, you will have your own opinion on who was being controversial – me, who had just expressed my opinion a couple of years ago and then moved on or the prospective client who insisted that he would only do business with me if I agreed with him.

I lost money and he lost a chance to work with a good content writer.

The point is, he took a stand and I took a stand. We wanted to conduct a business but because of our respective stands, we, or rather he, chose not to conduct it.

I often say that social media is the traditional “chaupal”.

In Indian villages, they used to have a “chaupal”, a place where people from the village would gather every evening to talk about various issues.

Through social media we have created global chaupals.

Since we don’t have to move from our chairs (or wherever we are sitting or standing) and we are not physically confronting the other person, we can be more reckless and direct compared to the real world.

For example, you can abuse a politician without running the risk of being roughed up by his or her security guards or even by his or her acolytes.

But the topic here is, should you, as a business, participate in controversial or politically and ideologically charged up topics?

I would suggest, use your judgement and evaluate how it is going to affect your business in the short-term and long-term.

Again, the main discussion of the above podcast is not about taking a loud stand on a political and ideological issue but expressing a counter opinion, for example, Google starting a new university-level course that aims to replace the conventional university courses that people have been doing for a couple of centuries.

Coming back to taking a strong stand on political and ideological issues.

If you think that it is worth taking the risk, go ahead.

Otherwise, focus on your business. Even within your business, there are thousands of issues you can deal with.

I will give you practical advice.

In the current political scenario, the world is heavily polarized between the side that likes to call itself “liberal” or “left-liberal” and the other side that is opposed to this particular notion of being “liberal”.

One side is certainly better organized, better networked and works like a swarm. It is more powerful and has the ability to cause irreparable damage to your business.

It controls most of the business and corporate world.

The other side is not strongly networked, and it doesn’t act like a swarm. It can be loud and sometimes it can even be crass, but its actions are more random and less strategic.

This other side cannot provide you the sort of support that the first side can provide to its followers and supporters.

Another thing I have observed about taking a stand is that you cannot take a partial stand.

Once you take the plunge it is normally very difficult to turn back.

This is not true for the first category that I have mentioned above. Since they are better organized, they also know how important it is to support each other, a characteristic that is missing in the other side.

Hence, carefully weigh your options before deciding to take a strong political or ideological stand especially when you need to deal with different people in the industry.

Take care of your business first.

You can take a stand only from a position of strength.