Category Archives: Content Writing

Just hired a professional content writing service? How to benefit the most

How to benefit from the content writing service you have hired?in the taken

Have you just hired a professional content writer and wondering how to benefit from his or her content writing service?

Deciding to hire a professional content writing service is a good decision for your business. Your content quality is going to improve remarkably. You will be able to publish high-quality content regularly.

You may like to read: 5 reasons you need to hire a content writing service.

Just because you have hired a professional content writing service does not mean your job is over.

Remember that the content writer writing for you, no matter how good he or she is, does not have the sort of business experience that you have in your field.

After all, why do you want to publish content on your website or blog?

Why do you want to publish content?

An unabashedly simple answer would be to improve your SEO.

Nothing wrong in that, but simply improving your SEO doesn’t get you business.

Providing quality content to your prospective customers and clients does.

Hence, you don’t want content just to improve your SEO, you also need content to constantly engage your audience.

You want to share your knowledge with them.

You want to tell them that you are capable of delivering what you are promising.

You have to showcase your successes.

You have to explain how you deal with challenges.

You know how you can deliver your promises.

You know what your successes have been.

You know what challenges you have overcome.

You need to share all this with your content writer.

Listed below are a few steps you can take to derive full benefit from your professional content writing service:

Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve through the content writing service you have hired

Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your content writing projects

This is very important.

Again, of course, you want to improve your search engine rankings, and who doesn’t?

But this is not the only reason why you have hired a professional content writing service.

Content writing and content publishing is all about creating a formidable brand presence.

When people visit your website or blog, they should get an impression that yes, this is a serious business website I’m visiting.

Businesses and individuals want to partner with thought leaders who have an authority over their field.

I have explained in this blog post how to build thought leadership with authoritative content writing.

Take your own case: assuming you’re looking for quality content that can help you establish yourself as a leader in your field; would you go with an inexperienced, unknown content writer or someone who is known for a unique writing style and has made a name for himself or herself as someone who can deliver results?

If you want someone to hire you, do you really feel that you deserve to be hired?

If the answer is an emphatic yes, this should reflect through your writing.

Hence, have a clear roadmap.

Why do you want content?

Do you want to improve your conversion rate?

Do you want to create an engaging presence on social media?

Do you want to run a successful email marketing campaign?

Do you want people to download your case studies?

Do you want to improve your search engine rankings for relevant keywords and search terms but at the same time, also improve your conversion rate?

Get actively involved in the process of content writing

Get involved in the process of content writing

The content for your website is not a commodity.

It is not a product.

It is not something that you pay for, get it, and publish it, assuming that your content writer is going to write exactly what you’re looking for.

In many cases, clients send me just a list of the web pages they want.

They are so disinterested that even for the main website content – homepage, services page, about us page – they want me to come up with good, convincing content.

Disinterested in the sense that they simply want to fill up “impressive” content without wanting to say something unique.

They think that since I’m a good content writer who can incorporate important keywords and key phrases and at the same time keep my writing professional, all they need is just to tell me what pages they want, and I can handle the rest.

Also, since they have internalized the notion that they are not offering something unique and hence, what needs to be written for their website can be picked from other, similar websites, their own input is not needed.

Sure, if I have experience in a field, for example web design, Internet marketing, digital marketing, software development, mobile app development, and even content marketing, I don’t need much help and I can come up with convincing content on my own, but if you want something unique, something that helps you stand out, then you must get involved.

You must present your unique perspective.

You must help me render a unique voice to your website content.

How can you do that?

Tell me what makes you special.

Don’t use general expressions.

What’s so special about you?

What defines you?

What motivates you?

What sort of team members do you have?

What types of projects you have worked on so far?

What are the tools – digital, physical and intellectual – that you have but your competitors don’t?

These are important bits of information.

Have faith in your content writer once you have hired a professional content writing service

Have faith in your content writer

You may say that this runs contrary to the concept of getting involved with your content writer or your content writing service, but it is not.

Sure, your input is needed.

But an experienced content writer knows what works and what doesn’t.

This is why he or she is a professional content writer and you have hired him or her.

In case you have hired a content writer just so that he or she writes what you feel he or she should write, you need a steno, not a writer, and especially not a professional content writer.

If you’re going to control how the content must be arranged, how the sentences must flow, and what words to use (aside from industry-specific words and phrases), you just need a driver, you don’t need a guide.

You need a mason, not an architect or engineer.

An experienced content writer knows how to write for different industries.

He or she knows what works and what puts people off.

He or she also knows what is good for your SEO, but at the same time, is also good for your conversion rate.

The point is, trust your content writer.

Focus on providing value rather than simply filling up your website with content

Provide true value through content writing

You will be wasting the skills of your content writer if you simply want to fill up your website or blog with “SEO friendly” content.

When people visit your website, every word counts, every sentence counts and so does every paragraph.

Even when they’re not consciously doing it, people are constantly evaluating the way you talk to them.

Also, when they come across your links on search engines (maybe even at 53rd position) they expect you to give them what you have promised in your listings.

For example, if you have found this particular link on Google when you have searched for “how to make best use of the content writing service you are working with”, or something like that, you should be able to learn exactly that.

You shouldn’t feel cheated.

You must feel well served by the link.

This is the entire purpose.

When people come to your website, they should have a sense of respect for you.

They must value your knowledge and your wisdom.

They must feel that you have their good in your heart.

This can only be achieved when you deliver value through your content writing.

Content writing rules to convert your social media followers into customers

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Photo by Negative Space from Pexels

Whether you run a small local business or a big international company – you need to grow your social media presence. You should use social media platforms to connect with your customers, raise brand awareness, and boost your leads and sales.

In this article, we will consider seven simple rules on how to convert your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter followers into loyal customers. Follow these rules, and you will achieve all the marketing goals you have set.

Know your audience

Let’s start with the basics. If you want to write a remarkable social media post, you should analyze your audience first. You should conduct a little research to understand who exactly will read your texts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

It is worth mentioning that there is a difference between the audiences on your blog, your website, and social media. Not all people who read your blog posts follow you on Facebook, and vice versa. So even if you have a clear understanding of who your general target audience is, you still need to analyze your social media audience.

Avoid sales clichés

Don’t use sales clichés when writing captions for social media posts. The phrases like “save your time and money” and “hurry up to place your order” do not work on Facebook and Instagram. If you want to turn your followers into customers, you should make sure that your social media posts do not sound like an ad copy.

Try to understand one important thing. If you want to achieve great results, you should focus on the process of content production, not on advertising. Create a good social media post – and it will bring you more customers than any paid ad can do.

Personalize your message

If you want to move leads down the sales funnel, you should personalize your social media posts. You should use the words “you” and “your” where possible and discuss the issues that worry or interest your audience the most. Make your followers feel like you have written the post personally for him – and you will win his loyalty.

Photo by Kerde Severin from Pexels

Provide a value

If you have a goal to convert social media followers into brand advocates, you should create content that adds value to your target audience. To achieve success in the long run, you should focus on the needs of your customers rather on your products. In other words, you should provide your target audience with unique, valuable content first, and advertise your products second.

Let’s imagine that your company sells bakery accessories.

If you want to boost sales, you shouldn’t write a post that explains why your baking pans are better than items offered by your competitors. You should share a quick, step-by-step recipe of the delicious sponge cake instead. If you get your followers interested in trying out the recipe, they will visit your website and buy the necessary accessories.

Proofread your texts

Some content creators believe that social media users do not care about the correctness of grammar and that proofreading is not important. But in fact, bad grammar has a negative effect on social media promotion. Mistakes and typos in Tweets and posts distract users from the core message and make people doubt the trustworthiness of content in general.

Fortunately, today, you can proofread your social media posts fast and easily without spending a fortune. You can use affordable online grammar checkers. Or, in case if money is no problem for your company, you can hire a freelance proofreader.

Keep it simple

When writing for social media platforms, you should strive for simplicity. You should avoid using sophisticated words and rarely-use idioms. And you should keep your sentences short and concise.

Why it’s so important to keep social media posts simple? Firstly, people use Facebook and Instagram to entertain themselves, and they are not interested in reading long, complex texts.

Secondly, you should understand that your social media content attracts not only English native speakers but also users who speak other languages. And if you want to make your content accessible for overseas customers, you should simplify your writing to facilitate the translation process.

Be honest with your followers

If you want to improve customer trust and loyalty, you should be honest and sincere with your followers. You should share your business insights, brand story, and information related to your products on social media.

You can be sure that your audience will appreciate your openness a lot. Your customers will reward you with increased loyalty and high sales.

Bottom line

Do you struggle to get more clients and increase sales? Follow the content writing rules that are given in this article. Craft social media posts that speak to your target audience, and you achieve results you expect.

When it comes to writing and publishing content, does quantity ultimately lead to quality?

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When it comes to writing and publishing content does quantity lead to quality

It is often advised that instead of relentlessly writing and publishing content on your website or blog, you should focus on quality and meaningfulness.

In his latest blog post, Gary Vaynerchuck has raised a valid question, “Who decides the quantity?”

Then the blog post further asks, can quantity lead to quality?

When it comes to filling up your website and blog with quality content, this is a pertinent question to ask.

But, as an experienced content writer who routinely comes across clients who don’t want to spend much on content writing, I know the answer.

Quantity differs from person to person. It also depends on how much effort and time you’re spending on writing and publishing your content.

When a client doesn’t have a big budget, I always suggest him to focus on quality and not on quantity.

For writing for my own Credible Content Blog, I try to maintain a balance between quantity and quality, although, I wouldn’t say that when I am shifting towards quantity I compromise on quality. No, on my blog, it doesn’t happen.

I can totally understand where Gary is coming from. And I totally understand that unless you don’t bother about quantity, you don’t know how to attain quality. As they say, it is difficult to grow your business if you are counting every penny.

Again, clients who are paying for every blog post and web page, would beg to differ.

If money is not a problem, I’m totally fine with going with quantity, as long as you are not publishing trashy content that is going to get you penalized by search engines and social networking websites.

Quantity doesn’t mean writing and publishing inferior content. It just means publishing lots of content that does not require lots of research.

Take for example this blog post. I suddenly come across a post from Gary, link to it, and share a few thoughts from my side. This post doesn’t require lots of research and time. Nonetheless, my blog has new content. I would call it quantity.

Also, when you are continuously writing and publishing content for your blog or for various channels, and if you have enough time and money, you get to play around with different ideas. This is not the case if time and budget are limited.

My personal experience with my personal websites and blogs has been that quality does lead to quantity as long as you stick to the bare minimums. The bare minimum means not going overboard with keyword-centric content and not diluting your core topic.

For example, my core topic is content writing. Then it is content marketing. Digital marketing affects my business, so sometimes, I allow guest bloggers to write on digital marketing. SEO, yes, as long as it is related to content writing.

But, it doesn’t mean that I publish whatever content ideas that come to my mind. That I would call wasteful quantity.

Quality content writing must be mixed with quality images and graphics

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Mix quality content writing with quality images and graphics

The Internet after all is a multimedia experience. Although most of the information on the web exists in the form of text (written information), visual information has the proverbial edge – one picture is worth a thousand words.

In terms of SEO and unobtrusive communication, compared to writing, video and images haven’t arrived yet. Even if you want to rank images and videos well, you need to depend on the surrounding text.

You may also like to read The importance of visual content in your content marketing.

But content writing – no matter how awesome it is – on its own, has its limitations these days.

If people come across just text on your web page or blog post, they feel intimidated.

A good image gives a welcome break, and so does a captivating video. There is a mix of people who prefer video over text and text over video (and images and graphics) and since these days any person can turn out to be your customer or client, you don’t want to lose out on various media-opportunities technology gives you these days.

Writing text has never been difficult, provided you know how to write.

Until a few years ago, coming up with business-worthy images and graphics was a taxing exercise but not anymore. With a decent camera you can click great photographs. You can mix your photographs with different other graphics available on free stock websites with the help of Photoshop and other image editing tools.

For a few months I have been using Filmora and Movavi for creating videos. Before that, I was also using PowerPoint to create videos. In PowerPoint there is a feature that allows you to export the slides into a nifty movie. These days, I use all the three tools. For example, recently I created this video using Filmora:

Along with content writing, you can use quality images to improve your SEO

I have observed videos aren’t as good as images for better SEO. Videos are good if you simply want to upload promotional videos on YouTube and other social media websites but other than that, when it comes to featuring on search results, I’m not impressed.

Images, on the other hand, do quite well on search engines. Surprisingly, Bing image search is better than Google image search. Even the quality of images and graphics is better on Bing.

Anyway, most of the SEO tools these days advise you to throw in a good mix of images and text. Preferably, one image or graphic after every 300-500 words.

A good thing about strategically using images along with content writing is that the images give you an opportunity to use your primary and secondary keywords.

You can name your images including your keywords. You can use alt text for keywords. You can also use captions.

Surrounding your images and graphics with keyboard-rich content helps Google and Bing figure out what you’re trying to say through your images and graphics.

Some concepts are better explained with graphics: for example infographics.

You can use words, you can use icons, you can use arrows – there are scores of things you can use to explain concepts that are difficult to explain using plain content writing.

Sometimes I also use images for humour. For example, if I tell you to smile. Instead of showing a human smiling, you are sure to smile if you see a dog smiling or a cat smiling.

Smiling dog

I was writing about anger. Instead of showing an angry person, I showed an angry baby. With little bit of fun and cuteness, I was able to put my point across.

Angry baby face

This post titled 5 ways graphics can post content marketing success says that using images and graphics also increases engagement and shareability. Your readers are more prone to sharing your content if they find captivating images.

Images can also be used to draw people’s attention to your content. When you share your links on social media and social networking websites, you must have observed that the biggest rectangle is assigned to your image. The headline appears over the image. So, the first thing people see about your content is your image.

Images and graphics also give you an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competitor, as rightly suggested by the above link. Visual imagery is very powerful. And the good thing is, you can create highly unique images with little bit of creativity and some good tools.

Are you writing content for voice search?

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According to eMarketers, at least 40% people in the United States use some sort of voice assistance while surfing the web, once a month. This is 2019, and 111.8 million people (just in the US). By 2021 the figure is expected to increase to 122.7 million people using voice search. Are you writing content targeting these people?

200 billion voice searches will be done by 2020

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I have written multiple times on writing content for voice search, including How to optimize content writing for voice search and How to write content for voice-activated devices.

If you recently said, “Okay Google, find me this information”, then you will understand what I’m trying to say.

There are certain businesses that are very straightforward. For example, if you’re looking for a content writing service for your business, you will probably tell Google to “find a content writing service for my flower delivery business”, or something like that. Or you can search for “why does my business need a professional content writer?”

But, if you have scores of products and services, you need to write content in such a manner that no matter what people say into their “smart” devices, using voice search, they are able to find your website in such a manner that they understand that you are in the business of providing what they need.

Writing content for traditional search is not very different from writing content for voice search as long as you are addressing the core issue and you write your content in a conversational manner. After all, people use voice search as if they are having a conversation with someone.

When we are talking to someone in a conversational tone, we don’t use stiff language. We use words that we don’t normally write.

Our school and college train us to use different tones when we are speaking and when we are writing. Even when you don’t write the way you wrote essays in school and college, you may use monosyllables or simply the service names when using your fingers to type.

On the other hand, when you are speaking into your voice assistant, you will speak complete sentences, and sometimes even slightly complex sentences with unrelated phrases.

A big reason why we tend to speak longer phrases for voice search is that it’s easy to speak than write, especially on mobile phones and especially on devices like Amazon Echo where there is no system of writing.

Writing existing content for voice search

If you already have lots of content written for your website or blog (or both) the idea of rewriting existing content for voice search may seem overwhelming, but actually it is not.

In fact, if you already have lots of content, you have an advantage. You just need to make some structural changes and add some phrases at strategic places to make it friendly for voice search rankings.

For example, make a list of phrases people would use when using voice search. Then use these phrases in the headlines and sub headlines. Insert sentences carrying these phrases whenever they sound logical and relevant.

Add a couple of extra paragraphs using those phrases.

You can also create or write additional webpages and blog posts specifically targeting phrases for voice search. Just make sure you don’t end up duplicating your content.

Writing new content for voice search

Of course, being a professional content writer, I would suggest that if you need quality content writing for voice search, you should work with a trained content writer. But, if you’re not in the mood of hiring one, or if you don’t have the budget, you can first record your voice before writing.

Whatever you want to write, first, have a conversation about it with one of your colleagues or your friends and record the conversation.

Don’t worry about grammar and wrong usage of words. Simply have a conversation.

Then, when writing content, listen to that conversation and try to use as many words you hear in the conversation as possible. I have found that this is one of the best ways of content writing for voice search.