Are you still wondering whether your small business needs to hire a content writing service or not?
When it comes to expense such questions are understandable. After all, there are very few people who actually grasp the importance of quality content. It is very difficult to spend money on something you don’t get.
I have personally seen that people don’t want to spend as much money on content writing as they spend on a typical weekend outing. This is primarily because they don’t realize how important professional content writing is for their small business.
Why is effective content writing important for your small business?
Despite the fact that everybody wants well-written content for his or her website, very few give a serious thought to its effectiveness. Very subtle things in your content writing can motivate people to do business with you, or send them away to one of your competitors.
What makes people do business with you after coming to your website? It’s your content. If your content writing cannot convince your visitors, they’re not going to do business with you.
A small business does not have a brand presence like a big business. All you have is, your ability to convince people.
This is why, it is very important that your website has engaging content that informs people, educates them and eventually, convinces them into doing business with you.
You need to convince people, and you need to be in front of them all the time.
If you haven’t been living in a cave, you must have noticed that people these days spend more time on social networking websites. They exchange views. They post updates on what they are buying and what they are eating. They share opinions with each other. They access timely information. Even when they are interacting with companies and businesses, they prefer to do so using social platforms.
Most of the news these days comes to you from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
But timelines move fast. If you post something on Facebook, let’s say, within seconds your Facebook contacts may miss your update because lots of people are updating their timelines with great speed. So, you need to post regularly.
But then, nobody wants to incessantly see your promotional offers. They’re either going to block you, or mute your updates. People have also developed ad blindness.
People are looking for valuable content. People want something that can inform them, update them, make them more knowledgeable, help them improve their lives, enrich their lives, or generally entertain them. They don’t want to know about your latest menu unless they want food. They don’t want to know about the shoes you are selling in your shop unless they want to buy shoes.
People want to know about your business only when they actually need your business.
The paradox is, at the time of need, they forget that you can give what they want. Despite being in your contacts list, they end up buying a product or a service for someone else because it slips out of their mind that you offer the very same product or service.
It’s like people in my contacts list are looking for a content writing service and they don’t realize that I provide such a service.
This is where a professional content writing service can help your small business. It can help you publish highly engaging content that doesn’t put off people but at the same time, keeps them informed.
Read The importance of content writing for small business.
As a small business, you can improve your SEO with the help of a content writing service
It makes more sense these days to improve your SEO by hiring a content writing service rather than hiring a plain old SEO service. In fact, most of the genuine SEO services these days improve your rankings through high-quality, engaging content.
With every new ranking algorithm update Google is giving more importance to quality content. Long gone are the days when putting your keywords here and there and getting a few backlinks could get you good search engine rankings.
Of course, keywords and backlinks still matter, and they matter a lot, but eventually, it’s the quality of your content that decides your rankings.
There are 3 attributes that Google these days considers in order to rank your content:
- The quality of your content
- The frequency with which you publish new content and update existing content
- The formatting and keyword arrangement of your content
Again, quality backlinks matter and you cannot get good search engine rankings without quality backlinks. But backlinks won’t help you if you don’t regularly publish quality content.
If you can devote enough time writing high quality content on an ongoing basis, then good for you. But if you want to focus on your primary small business and let a professional content writing service handle your content, it is always better to hire an agency.
Engaging content can improve your website conversion rate
Better search engine rankings are of no use if your content doesn’t convert well. Your content should be able to reduce your bounce rate. This can only happen with professional writing.
As I have mentioned above, your text should be able to convince people into doing business with you. It should be reassuring. The language should be friendly and conversational. People should be able to trust you. The tone should be casual but professional. No grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. The writing should be genuine. It should neither be very long nor very short. It should be precise. It should make an impact.
If you are a seasoned, talented writer, great! If you have a knack for publishing great content on an ongoing basis, good for you.
Otherwise, hire a content writing service for your small business.
Now we finally come to 10 reasons why your small business should hire a content writing service rather than hiring an in-house team of writers.
1. A content writing service can help your small business bring marketing costs down, drastically
Are you spending lots of money on advertising and marketing? What about PPC campaigns like AdWords?
Although conventional advertising cannot be completely discounted, it comes with its own set of cons.
First of all, for a small business it can be very expensive. Just imagine, if you are using AdWords, or Facebook advertising, or LinkedIn advertising, you are paying for every click.
You can never be sure whether people who actually want to do business with you are clicking your ads, or all sorts of people.
On the other hand, if you create a presence for yourself through the strength of your content people recognize you for the value you provide. You create a presence on various channels and when people click your links, you are not paying for every click.
With targeted content writing you also improve your search engine rankings. Your small business links begin to appear in search results and you don’t have to pay for every click.
When people are using search engines, they pay less attention to advertisements and paid links, and more attention to links that appear naturally and organically, on the strength of their worthiness.
Wondering how qualified content writing drastically brings down your advertising and marketing costs? I will give you an example using my own current blog writing rates.
Currently I charge $25 for a blog post. Every week you want me to write 3 blog posts for you.
So, every month you are spending $300 on 12 highly optimized and engaging blog posts that are continuously improving your search engine rankings.
Due to your blog posts that are regularly published you begin to create a presence on social media too. People start coming to your website without clicking your PPC campaigns. You begin to generate free traffic.
Have you ever noticed your conversion rate? How much do you spend per conversion? How much are you spending every month on your PPC campaigns?
In your PPC campaign your cost will increase as your traffic increases.
With content marketing, your cost remains the same while your traffic increases. Suddenly, even if a single blog post sends you 10,000 visitors everyday, aside from that measly $25 that you paid me, you’re not going to spend anything else.
2. You get high-quality, engaging content non-stop
If you want to switch to content marketing from conventional advertising and marketing, you need to publish high-quality content non-stop.
This is because everybody is publishing high-quality content. All your small business competitors.
Sometimes, even those who are not directly your competitors, might be publishing content that can take traffic away from your website.
This is why you need to cover all your bases with all possible case scenarios, and do it on an ongoing basis.
Only a professional content writing service can provide you professional quality content week after week, month after month, without mitigating the overall quality.
When you hire a content writing service for your small business, can focus on your business rather than worrying about access to good quality content.
3. You don’t need to hire people and give them employment benefits
Hiring an in-house team of content writers can be expensive. You will have to provide them all the employment benefits you are bound to provide by the law of the land.
If you hire a content writing service you are not bound by such laws. You don’t have to pay for anything else.
4. You don’t need to get into legal troubles in case you need to fire your content writing team
The success of your content marketing efforts depends on the quality of your content and if your content writing team cannot provide you quality content that is engaging and effective, and also search engine optimized, you are wasting your small business resources.
You have no choice but to fire your content writing team so that you can try out other content writers. This can get you into legal troubles. You can’t just fire people. Small businesses are more vulnerable to such cases.
On the other hand, if you hire an outside content writing service, there are no such obligations. Don’t like the work? No sweat. Just switch your content writing service. It’s as simple as that.
5. You save on precious office resources
Office resources can cost you money. With your employees you will have to provide them both hardware and software. They will also take up your office space. There will be wear-and-tear. They will be using your stationery, electricity, heating or air-conditioning and furniture. They will be using your telephone and Internet connection. Basically, they will be using all your office resources.
A separate content writing service will be placed somewhere else and people working over there will be using their own resources.
6. You spend money on just content writing
This point is just an extension of the points above. When you hire a content writing service for your small business, you are just paying for content writing and nothing else. Isn’t it wonderful?
7. You don’t need to monitor the activities of your content writing team
Monitoring your employees can be a big problem. How are they spending time in your office? Are they checking their personal emails? Are they wasting their time on Facebook and Twitter? Are they seeking out new employment opportunities using your Internet connection, computers and laptops? Are they distracting or harassing other employees?
There can be scores of such things you will need to monitor if you hire an in-house team of content writers.
With an outside agency, there are no such headaches. All you are bothered about is whether you are getting your quality content on a regular basis or not.
8. You can easily change your content writing service if you are not satisfied
Changing a content writing service is very easy. All you have to do is, stop paying and then contact another agency. Unless you have signed a legal document that strongly binds your small business to your current content writing agency, there is nothing to hold you back.
9. Quality control is not your headache
For a successful content marketing strategy, there should be no compromise on quality. Even if you don’t have a well-defined content marketing strategy and you need a content writing service to improve your SEO, quality is non-negotiable.
Read What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?
A professional content writing service like Credible Content has an inbuilt mechanism to ensure quality. I make sure that
- Your content is well-written, factual and without errors.
- Your content is optimized for the selected keywords.
- There exists no plagiarism and duplicated information.
- Your content is engaging, conversational and topical.
If I don’t provide you quality content, you will no longer like to work with me. It is as simple as that. So, I have to ensure quality.
10. You have easy access to subject matter experts
Sometimes you need subject matter experts – people who really know their stuff – to write expert-level content.
Being an established content writing service, I am in touch with writers from various fields of expertise almost from all over the world.
Even if right now I don’t have a writer specifically for your needs (it rarely happens) I can arrange such a writer.
On your own, getting a good writer as well as a subject matter expert would be a great problem.
Successful content writing is personality-based, to be frank. Only an experienced content writer can get under your skin and then directly address your audience. Your content writer should be able to empathize with your customers and clients because they are the targets. You’re not getting content for your website or blog to make yourself happy; you want to make your prospective customers and clients happy.
If you can do it on your own and write engaging content for your small business, well and good, otherwise, I suggest that you hire a professional and experienced content writing service to carry out your SEO and marketing campaign.