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When do you know your business needs a professional content writer?

When you need a professional content writer

When do you decide that your business needs a professional content writer? Considering the cost involved, it is a tough decision to make especially when writing doesn’t seem like a specialty worth paying for, at least at the outset.

Everyone can write and you are absolutely right about this. People these days are writing like they have never written before.

Just look at the number of Facebook posts, Twitter updates and WhatsApp messages and to your pleasant surprise, people you thought could never write a single straight sentence, are often quoting Pulitzer prize-winning writers.

Hence, writing seems easy.

Yup, writing seems easy when you don’t intend to generate business with your writing, and this is when most of the businesses decide to work with a professional content writer.

They don’t want to take chances.

They want their content professional, error-free, accurate and above all, convincing.

When you are writing on Facebook or Twitter, you are just trying to put across a point. You want to share with your followers what is in your mind. If you’re angry or disgusted or happy about something, you want to express your thoughts. How people react to your updates, doesn’t actually matter.

Of course, you don’t want to offend anyone, but still, it hardly matters if someone takes offence and decides to disagree with you.

In casual writing people don’t mind spelling mistakes (blame the auto correct), they ignore grammar oversights (focus on the message, not how it is expressed, et cetera) and they are cool about you using even the wrong words and expressions because after all, it’s social media.

When it comes to a business website, you can’t afford to piss of people.

When people come to your website, you want them to feel good about what you have published over there.

You want to inform them. You want to convince them. You want to engage them. You want your writing to talk to them. Eventually, you want them to spend money on your website – the hardest thing to do.

There are primarily 2 reasons why you need to hire a professional content writer for your business

These 2 reasons are:

  1. Higher conversion
  2. Consistency

When it comes to writing content for your business website you cannot leave things on chance. You want to convert maximum number of people who come to your website.

You may like to read How to improve website conversion rate with content writing.

If you don’t want to visit the above-mentioned link, conversion rate means the ratio of people coming to your website and those who do something that you want them to do, for example, fill up your contact form or download your e-book or subscribe to your newsletter or click advertisements.

Conversion doesn’t happen if your content writing is not of good quality.

If your writing is not good, people assume that your business too is not good. Your product or service may be exceptionally good, but if you’re writing cannot convince people, they’re not going to buy from you.

So, how come a professional content writer can improve your conversion rate and not you yourself or someone who can write decently but doesn’t have the required experience as a web writer or a copywriter?

Exceptions are always there. Whatever I’m writing here, may not directly apply to you, but it may be applicable to many.

When someone comes to your website – whether from a search engine or your link on another website or through your PPC campaign – he or she begins a journey. First, he or she reads your title, the first sentence of your first paragraph, the first paragraph, then the second paragraph, and so on.

How do you make sure that the person doesn’t leave midway?

Are you still reading? It means I have kept you hooked till now.

You write in an engaging manner. You know how to formulate your sentences. You know when to use smaller expressions and when you can get away with a bit longer, a bit more complex sentence structure. You know what information to reveal immediately and when to hold back and build suspense. You know when to use call to action.

Simply put, you know how to hold the attention of the reader. If you can do that and on top of that, if you can deliver an effective message, you are a good writer and you may not have to hire a professional content writer. Otherwise, you need to.

Now, about consistency.

Are you a writer by profession? Can you write consistently?

Suppose you are to publish two blog posts every week; can you stick to the schedule? A professional content writer will.

In fact, most of the clients who claim that they can write on their own, but they are contacting me because they don’t have enough time, give me this reason – they cannot write consistently.

You can write a few webpages and blog posts on your own, but if you need to do it consistently, it takes practice and effort. You need to use the muscle of your mind that you don’t often use.

A professional content writer on the other hand is used to writing all the time.

I am writing all the time. I’m writing for my clients and when I’m not writing for my clients I’m writing for my blog and when I am not writing for my blog, I’m doing journalistic writing. I don’t need to make an effort. Writing comes naturally to me just like accounting comes naturally to you if you are an accountant or painting comes naturally to you if you are a painter. In fact, I’m writing even when I’m not being paid for it because I like writing.

Anyway, you need to hire a professional content writer if you want professional writing for your business website, and you need it on an ongoing basis.

This is, when I’m assuming that you’re comfortable with the language and you can write sentences without spelling and grammar mistakes. There are numerous people who find it difficult to write. For them, hiring a professional content writer is not an option but a necessity.

Does your content tell a story?

We all love stories don’t we? They excite us, engage us, attract us, fascinate us, antagonize us and motivate us. Whenever there is a story we have readers and listeners. Why do stories captivate as so much?

We can relate to them. They strum the chords of our emotions, attitudes, sense of wisdom and life experiences. We share the emotions present in the story one way or the other. That is why we all have our own indigenous folk tales, anecdotes and historical stories; they bind us together.

Stories can exist in any form. They don’t always need to adhere to a particular form of narration. Even a journalistic account of some event unfolding can be a very engaging and enlightening story. This is precisely why free press is curbed by authoritarian and repressive regimes — effective storytelling can move people into doing things they otherwise would never do.

The same concept can be applied to content writing and copywriting. Whenever you are writing you are trying to move people, you are trying to make them do something. Create a story around the product or service you are offering or describing so that people can empathize with you and really absorb its importance.

When you tell a story instead of a monosyllabic harangue about how great your offer is you get your readers’ undivided attention because whenever we are reading a story we always want to know what happens next. Remember the last time you read a page turner? How eagerly you wanted to know what lay ahead.

Of course not all of us are storytellers but describing a product or service in an interesting manner can be easily achieved by creative content writers and copywriters. Your story needn’t always have esoteric characters; you just need to have a theme and you can center your writing around that theme.

When I’m looking for a solution, frankly, consciously, I am not interested in reading a story. I want to know how this particular product or service can solve my problem that I am facing in my business or in my personal life. A story can definitely help me visualize. It gives me a three-dimensional picture of exactly how your offer can make my life easier — it has a live example I can relate to.

Another great benefit of creating a story is that it has a beginning and then an end. The beginning can be the initiation and the end can be a business transaction that takes place between your visitor and your organization. By storytelling you can change the event of buying a product or service into an experience. It is difficult to remember events and it is difficult to forget experiences.