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Why quality content writing matters and how to maintain quality

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Importance of quality content for your business blog

Do you think quality content writing matters? As a business vying to promote yourself through the power of content marketing, how seriously do you take the quality of content that you publish on your blog or website?

As a professional content writer I am routinely approached by clients looking for highly cheap content. This is also because they think that if they suddenly publish lots of content covering every possible keyword their search engine rankings will improve, but at the same time, they either don’t have the needed budget or they don’t have the inclination to spend enough money on getting the content written (because they aren’t sure whether it is going to work or not). Since they don’t want to spend much money on the content (due to whatever reason) they are often fine with publishing inferior-quality content, thinking that once people are drawn to their website, somehow they will end up doing business with them (the same sort of people are fine with spamming people with emails). Unfortunately (unfortunately for them, fortunately for people who take content writing seriously and would like to maintain a reasonable level of quality) this rarely works and even if lots of people end up on their websites, very few actually do business with them.

Regular interactions on social media and social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube may give you an impression that people aren’t much worked up about what sort of grammar you use while expressing yourself. In fact, people who care about grammar in casual conversations are often termed as “Grammar Nazis”. Then why does quality content writing matter especially when it comes to promoting your business and generating leads and sales?

In the business world, quality means seriousness. If you are putting effort in producing quality content writing, it shows that you are serious about your business, and you also respect your customers and clients. If you don’t respect them, you don’t care about the sort of language they are exposed to. If you are not serious about getting business from them, you’re not going to spend much effort and money on getting quality content for your website and blog. You are fine with publishing mediocre content because you anyway have no confidence in your business. This is the message that you send when you neglect quality content writing.

So it has got nothing to do with how well you can write and what an impression you can make on your customers and clients. It is about conveying a message that you take your business very seriously, you take your customers and clients very seriously, and this is why, whatever it is they come across on your website, it is of high quality. When you respect your website visitors (or email recipients) it means you respect your own business and when you respect your own business, you take utmost care that whatever is present on your website is of good quality.

How to maintain the quality of content writing on your blog, website and emails

You can take care of the following in case you want to publish quality content:

  • Hire a professional content writer if you are not comfortable with the language you need to write in.
  • Avoid excessive use of jargon.
  • Always keep the central purpose of your writing in your mind if you are writing yourself and instruct your content writer to do the same in case he or she is writing content for you.
  • Although you don’t need to be a “grammar Nazi” be mindful of your grammar and don’t commit mistakes that reek of carelessness and ill-education.
  • Try to write in the language of the persona you are targeting.
  • Do proper research when writing.
  • Use a conversational style.
  • Continuously solve problems of your prospective and current customers and clients when writing content for your website or blog.
  • Use proper formatting such as headlines and bulleted points to organise main points of your content to make browsing and scanning easier for your readers.
  • Use interlinking (hyper linking to other important pages and blog posts on your website) to avoid content duplication if you need to explain a single point from within multiple pages and blog posts.
  • Try to deal with just one topic on one web page or blog post.
  • Use smaller paragraphs whenever possible and express just one idea.
  • Use images that help your readers understand your content better.
  • Thoroughly proof read before publishing.

Is the rise of content marketing good for your business?

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There is a sharp rise in the importance of content marketing and more and more business organizations are diverting their funds from conventional marketing to content marketing. Is it good for your business? Does it make things more difficult or easier?

It depends on how you look at it. As a small and as a mid-sized business it is perhaps one of the greatest marketing opportunities you have come across and in such a manner that you can compete with the big boys without spending big money.

Content marketing is all about quality and timeliness. Sure, a business with lots of money can generate tons of content in no time and consequently dominate traffic-generating sources like search engines, blogs and social networking websites, how much of that traffic actually converts is another matter. And this is where you can compete.

Of course realistically you will mostly be competing with businesses that lie within your sphere of influence but even that can be a big deciding factor. Then you can gradually move towards bigger, something like, Fortune 500 companies.

The moot point is, when it comes to content marketing, it’s very easy to initiate a strategy and then sustain it over a long period of time. All it takes is perseverance, a little focus, and an understanding of your market. Once you have decided that you are going to focus on content marketing rather than conventional marketing sources, you have to identify which channels you are going to focus upon. Initially, my personal recommendation would be the following:

  • Business blogging
  • Guest blogging
  • Information articles under your own domain
  • Information articles and opinion pieces on other publications
  • Twitter, Google plus and Facebook

These are very easy things to achieve. You can easily set up a blog under your existing domain name and start publishing informative blog posts. You can also approach other blogs who would be interested in posting your opinions and insights.

Aside from regular blog posts, you should also plug content holes within your existing website. Are all the pages your website needs there? Have you described all your services? Have you published testimonials from your customers and clients? Have you listed all the benefits of your products and services? What about your FAQs section? Is it up to date? Carry out a detailed analysis of your existing business content and see where you can update and add.

There are many publications that would be interested in publishing your articles, especially if you can give some expert advice people can use. This is a great way of expanding your brand presence on the Internet.

Twitter, Google plus and Facebook, of course you might already be using. It is a good idea to keep separate accounts for your personal postings and business postings. This way your core message is not diluted. Remember that search engines have started displaying social networking content among normal search results, so you wouldn’t like to appear for unnecessary material.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, the rise of content marketing is definitely good for your business. It helps you reduce advertising and marketing costs. It improves your search engine rankings. It brings you more visibility. It helps you engage your audience. Above all, it significantly improves your conversion rate.