Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

When do you need content writing services?

When exactly do you need content writing services? When you need professional results out of professional writing. Websites no longer remain the way they used to be a few years ago. With the onslaught of blogging and social media websites, those 12-page websites are no longer viable. You constantly need to publish high-quality content on your website as well as your blog to give enough fodder to search engines and social media enthusiasts. No website can dream of succeeding today without publishing good content persistently.

A content writing service can provide you quality content on an ongoing basis at a great rate. Is it expensive? Depends on what sort of service you are looking for. Most content writing services — especially the ones operating from India, the Philippines, China, etc. — come quite cheap and they even provide great content, but I don’t promote myself as a provider of "cheap content writing services" per se.

I do provide bulk content writing at quite low rates but the quality is not good. It goes without saying that even low-rate content comes with spelling and grammatical errors. I do understand that the real benefit of hiring a content writing service is that you can get good-quality content continuously without feeling the pinch and that is why I’m constantly trying to find out ways to provide bulk content writing services at highly competitive rates. This involves closely working with writers that can write a lot in less time because the faster you can write, the more you can earn without charging much. Working on that.

OK, so coming back to the main question:

Why do you need content writing services?

Here are a few reasons:

  • You need good-quality content on an ongoing basis. As I said, it does you no good to just have 12-20 pages on your website and then wait for the business to pour in. A lot of search engine traffic is lapped up by websites that constantly publish new content, because basically that is what the search engines are looking for. They crawl and index millions of pages on daily basis to make sure their users don’t get stale content every time they search for a particular topic.
  • You want to improve your search engine rankings. Suppose you are a professional content writer working alone or running a service. With thousand of websites providing the same service, how do the search engines know that your website must be highlighted when people are looking for a good content writing service? They go through your various pages and then evaluate your significance both according to quantity as well as quality. Lots of content definitely improves your keyword density and also increases long tail traffic to your website.
  • You want to run a successful blog. Your blog not only improves your search engine rankings it also helps you establish your authority. If you continuously publish useful posts (related to the theme of your business or passion, of course) you develop a dedicated fan base that eventually gives you loyal customers and clients. Some also prefer to sell advertising once their blog traffic picks up.
  • You want to increase traffic from social media and social bookmarking websites. Content thrives a lot on social media and social networking websites. If people find your links useful they love to promote it and bookmark it.

Well-written content is the backbone of the entire Internet activity. May it be videos, images or text, it’s basically content that gets promoted and consumed. As a writer, for me what matters is the written content, and fortunately for me and other content writing services providers, it’s the written content that rules the roost.

Why your website or blog needs unique content

Why your blog or website needs unique content

Why your blog or website needs unique content?

What is unique content when it comes to your website or blog?

Here are a few definitions of unique content:

  1. It is valuable and informative content that is original, and is difficult to find on other websites and blogs.
  2. Unique content is your website and blog content that is completely different than its other versions that may exist elsewhere.
  3. In terms of SEO, unique content is original. It is not duplicate. It offers useful insights in such a manner that these insights are difficult to find on other websites and blogs.

There are basically two reasons why your website or blog needs unique, fresh content:

  1. The search engines prefer unique content compared to commonly and easily found content.
  2. People who are active on various social media and networking websites prefer to promote something unique, something highly useful and something that attracts immediate attention.

Search engines looking for unique content

Search engines are looking for unique content

Search engines are looking for unique content.

Original content improves your search engine rankings because search algorithms, especially in Google, rate original content highly.

Websites that routinely publish duplicate content are penalised.

What is duplicate content?

It is identical content that already exists either on your own website, or another website.

Why would you publish duplicate content from your own website?

Let’s suppose I want to optimize two pages: one for online copywriting and one for content writing.

Although there are some broad differences between online copywriting and content writing, maybe (hypothetically) I feel the services are more or less the same and hence, I end up assuming that the content too is more or less the same.

What do I do?

I create one original page for content writing.

Then I create a duplicate page where everything else remains the same, but content writing is replaced by online copywriting.

I feel I’m smart. I think I have outsmarted Google.

The Google AI analyzer can process billions of parameters per second.

It can analyze millions of permutations and combinations of your words and phrases to know if you have written and published duplicate content.

It can read between the lines. It can read between the words. It can correlate millions of words, expressions, phrases and sentences before you can read the sentence.

Publish fewer pages and blog posts, but publish unique content.

It is do or die for the search engines when it comes to finding unique content

Various search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! are constantly competing with each other.

Just because they get millions of visitors daily don’t assume they have it easy.

Even a small fluctuation means millions of ad dollars lost.

So they are constantly trying to improve their ranking algorithms and trying to find and index content that is unique.

The uniqueness and the usefulness of the content they find for their users keep those users from switching over to another search engine.

Why would the users use a search engine that finds the same stuff that can be found on scores of other websites?

Hence, in order to get higher rankings you have to make sure that the content published on your website or blog is unique as well as highly relevant.

Social media users want to promote unique content

Social media users are looking for unique content

Social media users are looking for unique content.

Nobody likes to promote content that is being promoted by 500 other users.

Social media websites can bring you tons of traffic if you can lure their users to your website by providing highly interesting, topical and relevant content that they cannot find anywhere else.

But do they promote your links just for altruistic reasons? Not at all.

Take for instance Twitter and Facebook.

Why do people keep posting interesting links on these websites?

They want to show that they can locate and share interesting stuff.

They want to be useful to their followers and fans.

This way, if they are posting 10 useful links from other websites and blogs, they can also post a few from their own website without looking spammy.

Besides, on Twitter, interesting tweets get retweeted and this is beneficial both to the owner of the link and the one who tweets it because both gain exposure.

Then there is conventional logic too.

When you publish useful content on your website it tells your visitors that you take pains to keep them informed.

If you share important information with them you establish yourself as an authority, and in more than 99% cases authority brings respect and trust, and respect and trust leads to loyal customers and clients.

20 benefits of writing and publishing unique content on your website or blog

Benefits of writing and publishing unique content

Benefits of writing and publishing unique content.

  1. Writing unique content enhances your website’s visibility in search engine results.
  2. Publishing unique content attracts organic traffic and increases website engagement.
  3. It sets your website apart from competitors, establishing your brand’s authority.
  4. You build trust with your audience, establishing you as a reliable source of information.
  5. Your target specific keywords and improve your website’s SEO ranking.
  6. More people share your content on social media which further expands your reach and increases brand awareness.
  7. Unique content boosts your website’s credibility and encourages repeat visitors.
  8. You get an opportunity to showcase your expertise and position yourself as an industry leader.
  9. You generate loyal following and build a community around your brand.
  10. More targeted traffic and better conversion rate.
  11. Writing unique content encourages backlinking, improving your website’s authority.
  12. You can tailor your messages to your target audience better, increasing relevancy and engagement.
  13. Publishing unique content fosters a positive user experience, keeping visitors on your website longer.
  14. You educate and inform your audience and build brand loyalty.
  15. Unique content provides fresh perspectives, attracting new visitors and encouraging return visits.
  16. You can adapt your content to the evolving needs and interests of your audience.
  17. More opportunities for guest posting and collaboration with other industry influencers.
  18. You generate more leads and sales, positively impacting your bottom line.
  19. You establish a strong online presence and expand your digital footprint.
  20. You create a valuable resource that can be repurposed across different platforms, maximizing your content marketing efforts.

How do you write unique and relevant content?

Writing unique content

Writing unique content.

  • Conduct thorough research to identify trending topics and keywords before writing unique content.
  • Write unique content by providing fresh insights and perspectives on industry-related subjects.
  • Incorporate unique personal experiences and anecdotes into your writing to make it more engaging and relatable.
  • Develop a distinctive writing style that sets your content apart from others in your niche.
  • Utilize storytelling techniques to captivate your audience and make your content memorable.
  • Incorporate data, statistics, and research findings to add credibility and relevance to your writing.
  • Present alternative viewpoints and challenge conventional wisdom.
  • Stay updated with the latest industry news and trends to ensure your content remains relevant and timely.
  • Conduct audience research to understand the needs, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
  • Tailor your writing to address specific problems or provide solutions that your audience is seeking.
  • Incorporate relevant keywords naturally into your content to optimize it for search engines.
  • Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to structure your content, making it more readable and scannable.
  • Include relevant visuals such as images, infographics, or videos to enhance the value and appeal of your content.
  • Write relevant content by addressing frequently asked questions or common concerns in your industry.
  • Use case studies or real-life examples to demonstrate how your content is applicable to real-world situations.
  • Craft compelling headlines that accurately convey the unique and relevant aspects of your content.
  • Optimize your meta tags, meta descriptions, and URLs with relevant keywords to improve search engine visibility.
  • Interlink your content with other relevant articles on your website for better indexing, to avoid writing duplicate content and to provide a better experience to your readers.
  • Engage with your audience through comments and social media to understand their feedback and refine your content.
  • Analyze your content performance regularly and make the needed adjustments to ensure it remains highly unique and relevant.

How to regularly come up with unique content writing ideas?

How to regularly write unique content

How to regularly write unique content?

  • Follow industry news and trends to stay informed and generate fresh content ideas.
  • Conduct keyword research to identify popular topics and create unique content around them.
  • Engage with your audience through surveys, polls, and comments to understand their interests and needs.
  • Utilize social media platforms to discover trending discussions and adapt them into unique content.
  • Attend industry conferences, webinars, and workshops to gather insights and inspiration for your content.
  • Keep a running list of ideas by jotting down thoughts and observations as they come to you.
  • Brainstorm with colleagues or other professionals in your field to generate new content ideas collectively.
  • Analyze your existing content to identify gaps or areas that require further exploration or elaboration.
  • Draw inspiration from everyday experiences, personal stories, or challenges you’ve overcome.
  • Explore different content formats such as videos, infographics, podcasts, or interactive content to provide unique perspectives and engage your audience.

The value of your content in the context of social media

There was a time when in order to promote your content you had to focus on search engines and external links. Even today both these entities matter a lot but there is a third force that could prove to be far more penetrating when it comes to distributing your content: social media.

Some prominent examples of social media are blogging, Twitter.com, FaceBook.com, Ning.com, Youtube.com, Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com. Some of these are interactive tools and some are social bookmarking and recommendation websites but their basic function is helping people promote and generate content.

The compelling reason for having great content, and lots of it

These days it is an aberration if an organization or a professional individual providing services on the Internet does not publish a blog. A blog helps you communicate with your audience unhindered by geographical and technological barriers. Blogging has almost become a “traditional” content publishing platform as many people are quickly switching over to micro-blogging. Nevertheless, blogging still rules when it comes to publishing and promoting content; in fact most of the links being promoted on the social media and bookmarking websites belong to blogs.

So what is the value of your content in the context of social media and what all should you consider while creating and publishing content? It is very similar to creating a viral marketing campaign.

Your content on social media websites thrives upon the users’ tendency to recommend interesting and relevant links to their followers and friends. In fact some users produce no original content; they simply forward and promote other links with their own comments sprinkled here and there.

There are two interesting features of users active on social media websites:

  • They promote content
  • They discuss content

In order to leverage the power of social media, first of all you have to create content on a regular basis and the content must be interesting and valuable enough so that they feel compelled to share it with their friends and followers. On websites like Twitter.com people tweet your link and then their followers retweet it if they feel like it and that is how your content spreads. The same thing happens on FaceBook. On Digg.com the users “digg” your link if they like it and the more “diggs” your link can garner the more prominent spot it gets on the website. In the case of StumbleUpon the more thumbs-ups you can get, with greater frequency your link is put in front of its users.

In the case of bloggers if they like your content they link to it and write about it. From there, further, other bloggers and social media users can write about your content, link to it or promote it.

Does your content always have to be likeable and acceptable? Not always. Sometimes people will write about your content, link to it and promote it to show disagreement or express a totally different point of view. Just make sure that whenever you are publishing highly controversial and contradictory content you are sure of what you are doing. This is more important amidst social media websites where it takes a long time to build reputation and very little time to dismantle it.

The moot point is if you want to generate and publish content for the purpose of spreading your ideas and getting more business you have to work on it keeping social media in mind. The power of social media is so great that some Internet marketers have already started claiming that you no longer need the whimsical search engines to get quality traffic. In fact the traffic that you get from social media websites and blogs is more targeted because it is promoted by real people rather than ranking algorithms.

There was a time when the search engines like Google asked for more and more content so that that content could be indexed and ranked. There was a lot of talk, there still is, about creating content that is search engine friendly as well as human friendly. Sometimes if you didn’t face much competition you didn’t even have to generate lots of content. But this is not the case when you want to promote your website through social media websites. You constantly have to publish content that creates buzz among social media circles.

This trend spells trouble for organizations and individuals that have always been downplaying the value of quality content. On social media you cannot create a credible presence unless you have credible content.

Of course, by simply creating and publishing great content you cannot become a social media darling; you need to have a following. It is very hard to make people listen to you if they haven’t listened to you in the past, and that too, repetitively. People on Twitter and FaceBook sometimes have thousands of followers and they themselves are following thousands of people. This means a continuous stream of messages in front of them. How to develop a following that eagerly listens to you? This topic is beyond the scope of this blog post but yes it is an important part of leveraging social media. You cannot hack into that. Either you have to be a celebrity or a well-known person in your niche, or you have to build your followers from scratch and this may take many months. Collaborating with people who are already highly active on various social media websites may help.

Writing for traffic or for the right audience?

You many often come across blogs and articles telling you how to get spikes of traffic by writing content that pulls people towards your website or blog. They advise you to use “highly compelling” titles and submitting your link to social networking and social bookmarking websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, Digg and Delicious. I wonder how much this sort of traffic helps your business. Mind you I’m not questioning the process and I’m not even suggesting you not to indulge in such activities, I’m just thinking about it.

For instance I provide online writing services, so I would, ideally, like to draw traffic that can fetch me more business. This doesn’t mean I don’t want other people to visit my website. After all I share my thoughts on various subjects on this blog for instance, and I’d love it if people from all over the world access my blog and participate in various conversations. I feel good when all of a sudden 200 extra visitors come to my website and 5 among them subscribe to my RSS feeds or my e-mail updates. Even if they never do business with me, it is exhilarating to see the number rising day bay day. The good doesn’t always come from prospective clients.

When more people, let’s say 2000 in a day, visit your website and read your blog post or article, all of a sudden so many people are made aware of your existence and what you do. If you somehow keep on generating such spikes this number keeps on increasing. Get 4-5 traffic spikes every month and you can easily become a known person.

Does becoming known get you more business? It certainly does. As they say, success begets success. Similarly, traffic begets traffic, popularity begets popularity and trustworthiness begets trustworthiness, and all this is needed to generate more business.

When people know you, they eagerly link to you. I’ve seen even dumbest posts by popular bloggers getting popular. They bookmark you, they forward your links, they follow you on Twitter (want to follow me? It’s @amrithallan) and they add you as a friend in FaceBook. All of a sudden, heavy traffic becomes a regular affair because even the search engines begin sending you 1000s of visitors every day. All this helps you build your brand.

Having said that, slow and steady wins the race. You don’t have to prove anything as long as you meeting your business goals. Just be regular and share your experiences sincerely. The traffic will magically pick up.

Writing an effective press release

press-release Effective Internet press release copywriting can generate lots of traffic and leads for your business. You can distribute your press release through websites or through e-mail. The formats for press releases for websites and for e-mails will be slightly different. You can have a longer press release on a webpage but when it comes to writing a press release for e-mail it needs to be quite catchy and succinct since these days anything related to promotion and business can easily be taken as spam and hence ignored.

The purpose of a press release

A press release is needed to disseminate information regarding a product, a service, an organization or a policy change. Suppose you have just launched a new product in the market. How do you let people know about your new product? In case your visitors have allowed you to send them e-mail notifications you can use their e-mail addresses to send the news. This can be either termed as a newsletter issue or an e-mail press release. You may also have an e-mail list of various journalists covering your area and you can send the press release to them too.

In case you don’t have a big database of e-mail addresses, or you have very few e-mail addresses, the best thing to do is utilize the services of a press release websites such as PRWeb.com. You can even use the various social networking and social bookmarking websites to distribute your press release but a formal agency that specifically handles this task is better suited for this.

Writing an effective press release

It matters a lot how you write your press release. Press release, as the name suggests is a piece of information that you release the news distribution websites and newspapers so that they can feature it under appropriate sections. Online press releases are distributed for raising awareness as well as improving search engine rankings because incoming links from reputed press release websites draw lots of relevance from search engines. Here are a few things that can help you write an effective press release.

  • Beginning with an introduction. People immediately want to know what you’re talking about; what company is being represented and what product or service is being talked about. In a press release you don’t beat around the bush.
  • Keep your language straight. When you’re writing a press release there is no scope for being “creative” in the sense that you have to straightaway mention what’s the big deal about the company, the website, the service or the product being covered in the press release. Don’t be vague because when people read a press release they are simply looking for factual information they can use. They don’t want to see your vocabulary and they don’t want to experience your literary depth. Say what needs to be said and be done with that, in as simple words as possible.
  • Talk to the target audience. A press release is as targeted as it gets. If it is being published in a technology publication you have to keep in mind that people reading your press release will easily understand the jargons and the expressions used while writing literature on technology and technology related affairs. Even if your present unease is going to be published on a generic press release website than too your press release will be published under the most appropriate category. In fact there is a chance that people will be accessing your press release through the RSS reader if they have subscribed to a particular category feed.
  • Quote an important person. People are reassured if somebody important from the organization about whom the press release is being written is quoted. For instance what does the product development manager have to say about the new features being introduced, and how they are at adhering to the quality standards why lowering their prices?
  • Include proper contact information. Most probably people will be interested in the product or the service (well, that is the purpose of the press release), or at least they would like to know some more. Include your website address, the e-mail and if possible, the contact person’s name and phone number along with the timings.

Please remember that a press release is not a sales copy. Wear the hat of a journalist while preparing the press release. Even a small hint of hard selling or a tone of partiality can put your readers off. Simply report, and include all the relevant information that can help the readers decide on their own.

.