Only Hire Content Writers Who Deliver Quality
Content for the sake of content is no longer enough. Ad blocking on desktop computers, laptops and mobile devices is rising every year like a great solid state cement wall around the cloud that is the Internet. According to Priori Data and Pagefair, an analytics company, more than 419 million people block ads on their smartphones now. And that’s up about 90 percent for the period between January 2015 and January 2016.
All that blocking software is posing a really serious threat when you’re talking about one-fifth of the world’s 1.9 billion smartphone users. In 2016, about a quarter of laptop and desktop users employ ad blockers in the U.S., totaling about 70 million people. And that’s going up too. Content strictly for marketing purposes is now hollow and transparent, and people aren’t buying it any longer. They are, however, buying the ad blockers to keep obvious ads off their screens.
Enter Quality
For website and blog writers, SEO consultants, web designers and marketing pros, that’s a huge challenge. Found a keyword you really love that puts you high up on a Google search? Your customers have an app to block that. Pushing your weekly blogs through social channels? They’ve got their choice of content blockers for that. Think you hire content writers to sway the masses with quick wit and common words that trump the day? Yep, your target audience has got big bad comb-over blocking apps for that.
And don’t forget: all the while the Internet is being flooded with new ad-blocking apps for every possible device, search engines continue to mature and become more discerning. It’s a double-whammy. So what can you do? Actually, there’s only one way around it and that’s through it.
Search Engines Demands Quality
You’ve got to hire content writers who can overcome these growing Internet user habits by creating something we in the content creation biz call: “interest” or “buzz.” Let’s face it, you just can’t get around good content creation that draws you in with its sly character assassinations and good, old-fashioned stories. Stories work in marketing because people like stories.
Good content creation requires imagination, creativity, a nose for the news and a pulse that resonates with readers. When you hire content writers today, you’ve got to love their words, fall for their phrases and relish each and every syllable as if it were a life force. Stories live. Stories breathe life into stale marketing campaigns.
Internet surfers aren’t going to hold still for writing that doesn’t inspire flat-out love and infatuation. Content that tries to pull readers in with keywords that have no relevance will fail. Poor writing that’s hardly decipherable will fall flat.
Hire Content Writers Who Deliver Quality
If your content isn’t good enough to pass the search engine filters and can’t quite get around the ad blockers, it’s definitely not good enough for the masses. If it’s not effective content, it’s not worth anyone’s time.
Break it all down to plain English, which is another enviable virtue that you get when you hire content writers who prize quality. For your customers to spend any time with your content, it must be:
- Unique
- Excellent
- Interesting
- Free of errors
- Valuable — maybe the most important quality
Writing to Connect
Write to your readers like they’re real people. Because they are. Tell your content writers to stop writing to some sentient algorithm. Stop trying so darn hard to write content that ranks. Just give the people what they want — entertainment, information and quality writing they aren’t embarrassed to share or let anyone know they’re reading.
It’s time to push unique content creation to the next level. If you stick with the tricks your SEO guy tries to sell you, you can bet your marketing team a week’s salary that there’s gonna be an app to block it — sooner rather than later. Instead, embrace the evolving techniques and industry-standard practices that are leaning heavily toward customer engagement. In other words: interest them, and they’ll take an interest in you.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.