Tag Archives: Content Writing

Why you should pay for good quality content writing

Is quality content writing worth paying for?

Over the years what I have learnt is that it is not difficult for people to understand the importance of quality content writing. Everybody knows he or she needs good content to improve conversion rate as well as search engine rankings.

What is difficult is, convincing people to pay for quality writing.

Yesterday someone who had been inquiring about my content writing services called and told me that he was getting content 60% cheaper than what I was quoting.

Until a few years ago I used to get worried. Fortunately, situation has changed.

If there are 5 clients were more worried about the money they’re spending and less about the quality of content writing, there are also 5 clients who understand that for quality content writing, they need to pay, because it is a job for the content writer they are hiring.

“Good for you,” I replied. “Please hire him or her.”

Of course, he was trying to bargain because even when I curtly told him to go to the writer who was charging a lot less, he asked for my samples and insisted that he was more interested in getting his writing done from me.

Why it’s worth it to pay a good content writer for quality content writing

As rightly explained in this blog post, your content is long-term investment.

It is going to be there all the time.

If you’re serious about your business, if you’re confident about your proposition, if you know that you are providing value for money, it needs to show through your content.

Frankly, everybody can write.

But when you’re writing for a business website, it is less about writing and more about communicating, and communicating convincingly.

When you work with an experienced content writer like me, the writer brings along the entire package of experience, knowledge and ability.

When you are writing for a business website or even an email marketing campaign, it isn’t just about writing. Even an 8th grader can writer.

It’s those sentences. Those pauses. Using right words at right places. Knowing when to use shorter sentences and when to use longer explanations. The call to action words.

There are scores of things that you use when you are writing for a business website to make the right impact.

You cannot immediately learn these things and then start writing. You acquire them through years of practice and writing for real businesses.

The above blog post lists the following reasons why it is worth it to pay to an experienced content writer for quality content writing:

Good content generates business on an ongoing basis: As explained above, quality content is a long-term investment. It goes on generating business for you. If it is written well, for years it will draw customers and clients to you. You pay for it just once but it gives you repeat business.
You get well-researched content: Research is essential to quality writing. Whenever you make claims in your writing, you need to back those claims with credible data and research. You have to quote your sources, and those sources themselves must be credible. An experienced content writer is used to the rigors of writing high-quality, research-based content.
Quality content conveys personality: People should be able to recognise your content by its quality. A capable and experienced content writer knows how to adapt to your personality, or the characteristic of your brand and then write content accordingly. Without personality, your content will be unable to engage and draw audience to your website.
SEO (search engine optimization): SEO is and the way it used to be. There was a time when you could use some keywords and search terms by splattering them here and there and you could improve your SEO, this no longer works. SEO these days depends on the quality of your content, its relevance, and the purpose it solves. Only a good content writer can deliver content that gives you lasting SEO benefits.
You get a higher conversion rate: Ultimately, the only thing that matters is conversion – how many people become your paying customers and clients. There is no use improving your search engine rankings if you don’t improve business. Only an experienced content writer can achieve this for you.
Sounding like a human: Most of the cheaper content writers seem like machines. The use poor grammar. The use half-baked sentences. They simply use key words here and there thinking that it will improve your search engine rankings. They don’t communicate. They don’t convey your passion. They don’t talk to your audience. They don’t engage in conversations.

These days I don’t argue much with people who tell me that they can get cheaper content writers.

Well, maybe this is a business model and maybe it even works for them.

But if you’re looking for quality content writing, you must know that it comes at a price because the person who is writing that content does it for a living.

Does quality content writing worth paying for? Definitely.

How to optimize content writing for voice search

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Optimizing content writing for voice search

You can optimize your content writing for voice search by using shorter, relevant sentences. Stick to the point. Address the main issue immediately.

Google Assistant, Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, voice search is everywhere these days.

It is very important that your content writing is optimized for voice search.

With voice search, a user doesn’t have to be using a PC or a laptop or even a mobile phone.

For example, using Google Home or Amazon Echo, you can just speak into the device and search for the information you are looking for.

Voice search technology uses the basic search engine. For example, if you use Google Assistant to search for something on Google, the most relevant information is brought up according to the way it has been indexed and ranked by the Google algorithm.

It is not a different technology as far as the data goes. The same data is used, but now, it is found according to the expression spoken into the device.

This Forbes article says that voice search will dominate SEO in 2019, and whenever there is SEO, there is content writing. The article goes to the extent of saying that by 2020, 50% of the online searches will be made through voice search. There will be 67 million voice-assisted devices operational just in the US by 2019, according to Adweek. In his keynote in 2016, Sundar Pichai said that 20% of mobile queries were already voice searches.

Naturally, Google is paying more attention to voice search optimization.

Remember that Google wants to find only the best information for its users. If it cannot do so, there are many competing search technologies people can move onto.

So, naturally, it goes on improving its algorithm to find only the best results for text as well as voice searches.

The above-linked article further says that by January 2018, on an average there were 1 billion voice searches every month.

Shift towards voice search began to manifest many years ago. The Hummingbird update from Google began to focus on user intent and the contextual meaning of the keywords and search terms instead of exact words.

Here is a very nice description of how Google voice search works. It’s slightly old, but the concept is explained very nicely.

When you are speaking into your phone or any other device, you may not use the exact terms. When you are writing, you have the time to think and manipulate your words, and you do it even unconsciously, without making extra effort.

When you say things, you’re more spontaneous. The way you search becomes conversational.

Are you making your content voice-search ready? What does it even mean? Won’t your current content work?

Whether your existing content works or not is never guaranteed, even in the conventional search. Search engines keep on indexing and ranking newer content which is either better than your content or smarter at getting itself ranked higher.

All you can do is, do your best. Provide the best content you can.

Still, there are some things you can do to optimize your content writing for voice search. Here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Use conversational, longer search expressions when optimizing your content writing

People use longer, precise expressions when searching with their voice.

When you are searching by typing, you may search for “best content writer”, but when you speak into your phone, you may search for “find me the best content writer who can improve my SEO” or, “find me a content writer who regularly writes for web design companies”.

This is one thing.

Use conversational language. Avoid creating very complicated sentences. No matter how smart artificial intelligence gets, if you create very complex sentences containing multiple phrases and clauses, it may not be able to interpret what you’re trying to say, properly.

Even in normal language (ignore Woody Allen) people speak in shorter sentences. Mostly in phrases unless they’re speaking about something very specific.

Provide an answer in minimum number of words

Backlino in its voice search SEO study found that on an average, an answer dug out by voice search is 29 words long.

This is interesting.

What it means is, when you are providing a very specific answer to a very clearly-defined question, try to contain it within 29 words.

Just as we don’t speak very long sentences, it becomes difficult for us to comprehend longer sentences. Create your sentences in such a manner that one sentence expresses one thought and one answer is for one question.

When you write something, say it loud and see if it is easily understandable. If not, rewrite.

Make use of “what”, “how”, “who” or “when” whenever possible

Question-based content is better suited for voice search. Most of the people, when using voice search use expressions like “what”, “how” and “who”. For example, “How to optimize your content writing for voice search?”

Although, you may go on explaining your chosen concept in a couple of thousand words, but somewhere, preferably in the beginning, provide the answer to the question in the headline that can be easily picked by the search engines.

Focus on providing the answer rather than obsessing over optimization

Optimization should be a byproduct of good quality content that delivers value.

Your content writing is affected if you are continuously thinking about optimization rather than addressing the problem at hand.

Remember that when people are using voice search they want to find an answer to the question and if you don’t provide that answer, they are going to move on, and depending on their interaction with your content (whether they move on or stick around) is going to have an impact on your current rankings.

Focus on the core issue at hand and do your best to deal with it.

Write for the mobile phones by default

When you write keep in mind the mobile layout, you automatically write shorter sentences that are to the point.

Remember that on mobile phones people don’t prefer to read long sentences and bigger paragraphs. They want to quickly scroll up or down.

Similarly, when mobile devices read your content, it is easier to speak up shorter sentences.

People are usually distracted when they are using their mobile phones. They don’t specifically sit on desks to browse their mobile phones. They’re moving, they are chatting, there are even watching programs on TV when checking your updates. Write accordingly.

Concluding remarks on optimizing your content writing for voice search

Of course, the keywords you want to optimize your content for need to be taken into consideration when writing content for your website or blog, they should be integrated naturally rather than being forced.

Focus on value. Focus on quality. Focus on what you are delivering to your readers. Make sure you provide them what they are looking for. This is most important.

How is AI going to affect content writing and content marketing

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How AI helps in content writing and content marketing

Aside from the fact that AI one day may take over the world and cause extinction of human beings as a species, for the time being it can also empower content writing and content marketing.

In this context when we talk about AI (artificial intelligence) we mean the ability of the AI to precisely analyse and predict user behavior and then enable us to create/write content accordingly.

For example, wouldn’t it be nice if there is a software tool that can tell me exactly how many visitors and consequently, leads I’m going to get from a particular blog post based on the content that I have prepared?

Or, which topic I should cover on Wednesday and which on Monday?

AI is already telling Amazon which colour T-shirt a customer is going to purchase if he or she has purchased a blue colour T-shirt.

This article talks about 5 ways AI will bring joy to content marketers and the author mentions Rand Fishkin’s 10x content.

According to the 10x content concept, your content must be 10 times better than the content that is currently featuring on Google’s first page, to be there.

How do you achieve that? The author of the above article says that AI can help.

AI can help you know what information your customers need so that you can provide them that information without them having to look for it.

This is a concept that is also covered in my recent blog post titled How to optimize your content for Google Discover. This is more or less same as writing and publishing content Google things will be needed by your audience before your audience begins to look for it.

What would be the real world example of such content?

Suppose you want to improve your search engine rankings? Publishing high-quality content is the most important aspect of improving your SEO. You may know it, you may not know it, or you may not be ready to accept it. But, if on social networking websites you’re talking about improving your SEO and you’re looking for information on how to improve your SEO, it also means that you need to publish quality content.

Again, whether you know it or not, the AI on your mobile phone or embedded into your browser will know it, and will automatically start bringing up content that insists that high-quality content writing and content publishing can help you improve your SEO.

As a content writer and a content marketer, AI can tell me if you need content to improve your SEO. It will also tell me whether you are actively or passively looking for a content writer or not, and accordingly, I can create content to target you.

In email marketing, AI is already telling us which is the most appropriate time or day to send email messages.

Nice quote in the article:

AI is Dr. Watson, doing all the legwork so that you, the skilled Sherlock Holmes, can put everything together masterfully.

How to generate more leads with content writing

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How to generate more leads with content writing

In this post I’m going to throw some light on how you can generate more leads with content writing consistently.

Every business wants to generate more leads. A lead is when a prospective customer or client approaches you (through your contact form, through a phone call, through an email, through an advertisement or whatever mode of communication) and shows interest in your product or service.

Leads may have different meanings for different business models. Generating leads doesn’t necessarily mean people coming to you to buy your product or service. A lead can also be when someone subscribes to your email newsletter. A lead can also be a casual inquiry.

Basically, whenever someone shows interest in your business for the sake of buying one of your products or using one of your services, he or she is a lead.

Businesses eagerly pay for leads. There are many websites that sell you qualified leads – people leave their requirement on the website and then the website contacts you telling you that someone needs your product or service. Then it is up to you whether you make use of that lead and do business, or squander it away.

Why generating leads are important for your business?

It’s easier to sell to people who are interested in buying from you, compared to those who are not interested. Hence, there is a greater chance of a lead turning into your customer or client, if you strategically lead your lead to the ultimate point of making the purchase. Leads are easier to convert.

It is very difficult to get noticed on the Internet these days. For every business there are thousands of contenders. If you use advertising, your competitors can too. If you think you can improve your search engine rankings there are thousands of others who think on similar lines and may even outrank you in a matter of a few weeks or a few days.

Hence, there is a constant cat-and-mouse game going on and the more businesses try to vie for attention, the more noise they create, and the more noise they create, less it becomes possible for prospective customers and clients to understand their marketing messages and even if they can understand, it becomes difficult to distinguish one business from another.

A lead immediately changes the scene. You’re not vying for the attention of your customer or client – he or she is already interested in you. Your business or your brand has got his or her attention despite all the noise. This is a major gain. It’s like in a crowded party full of strangers someone has walked up to you and have started a conversation.

Content writing and how the process of generating leads has changed

I specifically mention content writing because this is what I provide – content via writing. For your case, content can exist in any form. It can be videos, it can be images, it can be infographics, it can be slideshows, it can be Instagram posts, whatever works for you. So, when I see content writing, you can call it video publishing or email marketing, or whatever comes to your mind.

Marketing and lead generation have changed

In the olden days, marketing was all about telling people how great your business is and what they stand to lose if they don’t use your product or service. Advertising and marketing was unscientific. It was like throwing lots of gooey mud on the wall expecting that some of that goo would stick.

Marketing these days, especially after the advent of the Internet, is more customer-centric. Through your content writing, you don’t promote your interest, you promote your customer’s interest.

Amazing writer

For example, when you’re reading about my content writing services, do you want to know what an awesome writer I am, or do you want to know how I’m going to help you generate more leads and consequently, more sales? Obviously the latter.

You couldn’t care less if I have written books or if I have earned citations for my pros. Yes, it may reassure you that I know a thing or two about writing, but your primary concern is, whether I can help you generate more leads and grow your business.

So, when I write, I’m constantly addressing your concerns. If you’re reading this blog post, you want to generate more leads. You don’t want traffic, you want people on your website who would buy from you or subscribe to your newsletter or do something that makes you money. Can I do it? This is what you want to know.

This has changed across the board. No matter how big a business you are, if you don’t impress your customers, they’re not going to give you a second glance.

So, how does content writing help you generate more leads?

You want to be a part of your customers’ lives. This can be achieved by providing highly useful and high quality content on an ongoing basis using the channels your prospective customers and clients use. You cannot simply tell them to do business with you because one, there are many choices available these days and two, there is always this other business that is more eager to engage, interact and provide a meaningful relationship rather than always wanting to sell.

It’s very logical.

If you have a business, you don’t need to repeatedly tell people that you have a business, your customers and clients know it. If you have a product or service to sell, provided there is no ambiguity in your messaging, everybody knows that you have a product or service to sell. You don’t need to repeatedly tell people how great your furniture is, how exceptional your web designing is, what an awesome make-up artist you are or what a prodigal content writer you are.

I’m not saying you should never tell people what a great business you are running, but you don’t need to do it constantly.

But if you don’t do it constantly, you fear losing your customers and clients to your competitors. What you do then?

You publish content that is useful to your prospective customers and clients. This way, they want to hear from you rather than you wanting to talk to them.

People who positively receive your content are also your leads. They may not buy from you immediately, but if you constantly engage them, if you provide them value through high-quality content writing, then when they eventually need the products or services that you provide, they’re going to come to you.

Another benefit of content writing is that it improves your search engine rankings. Search engines are continuously looking for new content to index and rank. As their crawlers find new content, they push the older content down and if the newer content is good, they push it higher. This is an ongoing churning that is happening every second.

Higher search engine rankings can bring you practically unlimited leads.

To generate qualified leads, you may decide to focus on the following channels:

Your business blog and content marketing through it
Website optimization and usability improvement
Search engine optimization
Social media marketing
Email marketing
Press releases

Content writing plays a pivotal role in every channel. You need well-written content for your website so that you can clearly communicate your message, people can understand it, and then decide to do business with you.

Search engine optimization is not possible without well-written, optimized, relevant and quality content.

Even if you write just 2 sentences, your social media marketing is incomplete without good content writing.

Email marketing and press releases solely depend on high-quality content writing.

All these are lead generation channels.

As you can see in the above image, unlike the older ways, you don’t go to your customers and clients and urge them to buy from you.

You create funnels through high-quality content that you disseminate using the channels your prospective customers and clients use.

Whether it is personal branding or business branding, your brand should be familiar to them and they should respect your brand. They should value your content. They should be able to use your content to improve their business and enrich their lives.

Many of my clients think that this is a long shot but it is not. It is a sure shot way of generating more leads following a well-defined path. Give them value through quality content writing and content marketing and they will buy from you.

How to publish quality content regularly on your website

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Publishing quality content regularly

Regularity is as important as quality if you want to get benefit out of your content marketing efforts.

When you regularly publish quality content on your website it gives a message to your visitors that you’re constantly updating your website and hence, they should keep track of it (a motivation to sign up for your email updates).

Search engine crawlers – this is something that I have observed but I don’t know if it actually happens or not – also take note of your publishing schedule, and start crawling your website accordingly.

If you publish content regularly, your website is crawled regularly.

The more you publish, the more reason you give human visitors as well as search engine crawlers to access more content.

The more you publish, the more search terms you cover.

The more you publish, the more content you make available that can be shared on other websites and blogs, and on social media websites.

But it is easier said than done.

There are two obstacles to publishing content regularly:

Great ideas for publishing new blog posts
Making sure that the quality is up to the mark.

B2C content marketing challenges chart

So, regularity and quality are both indispensable. One or the other tend to suffer when you try to maintain a balance.

The quality aspect can be easily taken care of.

Be genuine.

Try to provide something valuable, something meaningful, something you think can really help people.

This will ensure that you publish quality content.

Quality means meaningfulness.

Meaningful means something that really helps people.

What helps people?

Take the example of my business: content writing. How can I help you? There are two ways I can help you:

Help you write better content yourself
Help you decide whether you should hire me as your content writer or not

But, why should I help you write better content because this means you won’t hire me?

You may or may not.

If you want to write on your own, you will do it anyway.

If you don’t find the information on my website, you will find it somewhere else.

You’re not looking for a content writer, at least not right now.

Right now, you want to write on your own, and you’re just looking for some good start, or some insight that can help you write better.

Right now you don’t want to hire someone, and if I don’t offer you help, you will get that help from somewhere else.

So why should I provide you that help?

If nothing else, it generates goodwill for me.

In the future, if content is needed by you or by someone you know and if that content cannot be written without the help of a content writer, you would rather hire me than someone else.

Then comes the second point: helping you decide whether you want to hire me as your content writer or not.

How do you decide that?

You want to know how I write. You want to know how I express ideas. To help you with this

I publish dedicated pages on every possible question or doubt you may have regarding my content writing services.
I regularly share my knowledge with you through my content writing and content marketing blog.
I provide you samples of my work.
I improve my search engine rankings so that you can find me for relevant keywords and search terms.

This gives me plenty to write about.

This brings us to the question of how you can publish quality content in your website or blog regularly, for your particular business. You can do the following…

Maintain a list of topics

There are many tools you can use these days to maintain a list of topics. You will be creating topics according to the topics, and consequently, the keywords that you want to cover.

Remember that topics must be consistent with the central theme of your website or blog. If you are a mobile app development company them most of your topics must be about mobile app development and related fields.

You can use a simple note book to jot down content writing ideas. You can use something like Google Keep. You can use Evernote. You can use an Excel sheet. Or Trello cards. Whatever you find convenient. But, definitely have a system of maintaining topics.

Use something you can immediately use. As you write more and more and get into the habit of thinking proactively about your content, ideas will suddenly come and if you don’t record them immediately, you may lose them.

Always be on the lookout for topic ideas

Don’t start thinking about what to write when you start writing. One option is keep your ideas repository nearby. Another option is to constantly be at the lookout. Check you Twitter timeline to see what the others in your stream are publishing. Subscribe to feeds and use something like Feedly. Subscribe to email updates that send you new blog posts and articles about your industry right in the inbox. Use Google Alerts. Interact in the forums, or at least follow the discussion threads.

If you have had an informative conversation with your client, even that can be a source of a great topic (you don’t have to reveal the name of your client).

Respond to articles and blog posts published somewhere else

Agree with something published in another website or blog? Disagree? Got something if your own? Why not respond through your own blog post or article?

In fact, this is how initially blogging spread…long time ago when it wasn’t yet associated with content marketing and SEO. Someone wrote something on his or her blog and then the others responded through their own blog post, linking to the original post. It doesn’t just make blogging interesting, it also gives you new ideas on an ongoing basis.

Repurpose your existing content

Content grows on content. Your existing content is teeming with new content writing ideas. Take for example this subtopic “Repurpose your existing content” – I have previously written a complete blog post just on this topic – How to repurpose would content.

Creating your blog posts out of existing blog posts and articles is just one way of repurposing your existing content. You can also create

Infographics
Random images to post on Instagram
Slides
Small e-books by combining multiple blog posts
YouTube videos
Social media posts

Read books and magazines in your field

Developing and expertise, in-depth knowledge in your field is very essential to creating quality content. Books, at least it is assumed, are often written by experts are people who have done lots of research and have come up with new insights into your profession. They give you lots of food for thought. You can find lots of topics in these niche books an marketing d magazines.

Hire an experienced content writer

“Experienced” is the key word here. Everyone can write occasionally. But if you need to publish high quality content on your website on an ongoing basis, it is better to collaborate with an experienced content writer rather than trying to do it on your own. You may be an expert in your field. You may also be able to articulate your thoughts through writing. But can you do it consistently? Do you have enough time to follow a schedule?

Remember that regularity is very important for successful content marketing. If you publish content haphazardly, although over a long period of time it will definitely benefit you, it will depend on chance. But if you regularly publish high-quality content following a strict pattern, the benefit will be more consistent, more predictable. This is something a content writer can provide you.

Maintain a content publishing calendar

Content publishing calendar

A content publishing calendar is basically a topics and ideas list, but with dates and timeframe attached to every stages. A calendar tells you what you will be publishing on a particular date. This instills a sense of organization into your publishing process.

You also spend some time with your content writer deciding on various topics, deciding on when certain topics should be drafted and scheduled. The more you get into the habit of organising and scheduling, the better will be the inflow of ideas.

Curate content

Content Curation

Curation is also a good way of publishing content regularly without running out of it. Curation means finding well-written blog posts and articles on other websites and then linking to them from your own website with small input from you. It takes just a few minutes and before you know it, a repository of quality content begins to build up under your domain.

Concluding remarks

Just like in any form of marketing, successful content marketing, requires consistency. A pattern needs to exist. If you decide to publish something every Wednesday, then it should be published every Wednesday. If every 15 days you want to publish a long blog post, then you need to stick to this schedule. As mentioned above, if you cannot come up with original topics regularly, you can link to content published elsewhere. Make sure the content that you publish – whether you publish original content, or you curate it, make sure that it helps your visitors.