by Mark Bloom | Aug 6, 2019 | Website Content
Quality Website Content Provides You Benefits
As of 2018, almost 200,000 dentists plied their trade in the United States. That works out to 61 dentists for every 100,000 people. Of the total, about 21 percent consider themselves specialists. That represents a competitive environment, even in smaller cities and towns.
For most dentists, any competitive advantage translates into more patients for their practices. Since many people today search for a new dentist online, it makes sense that dentists need a strong presence to make a positive first impression on those searching for dental services. That’s the difference great content for dental practices makes.
How People Find Your Dental Practice
In years past, dentists relied on advertising in local media, including newspapers, billboards and radio and television stations. It made sense, since a dentist is essentially a local business. It’s rare for a person to travel to a different city for a dentist. While these advertising channels still exist, they cater to a shrinking base as more and more people turn to the internet for information and referrals.
It’s much more common today for people to search online for terms, such as:
- Dentist near me
- Top-rated dentist in [your city]
- Tooth implants
- Affordable dental crown
- Best teeth whitening
If your website content for dental practices includes and highlights these phrases, your practice is likely to benefit from higher visibility on the search engines. That means more people will find you. The more people who find you online, the more patients you’ll see coming through your doors.
More Benefits from Targeted Content for Dental Practices
The best website content for dental practices lists common — and sometimes painful — conditions that people in your area search for. If you use your geographic location as a keyword, your neighbors find you. If your site contains the symptoms, causes and treatments for each of these conditions, your site becomes a local and reliable source of all things dental. That builds trust in your business, and people prefer dentists they can trust.
Your site should also list all the treatments you offer. For each treatment, ranging from cosmetic and restorative to prevention and healthy teeth practices, your site assures visitors that it’s effective, not painful and within their reach at your practice. In this way, even if you specialize in a particular branch of dentistry, the content for dental practices reflects that, providing information about the procedures you do best.
Listing conditions and treatments allows your practice to be discovered by more people online. In essence, you’re covering all the bases. No matter what dental terms people search for, they’ll end up finding your practice. That’s how content for dental practices brings more people to your practice.
Ray Access Has Expertise in Dental Websites
Ray Access has completed the content for about a dozen dental websites. These satisfied clients include:
- Family practices
- Orthodontists
- Cosmetic dentists
- Pediatric dentists
- Emergency dental services
All have focused on quality care, and in each case, their website content has reinforced the expertise of the practices. In each case, the practices have benefitted by having content that attracts more patients. And in every case, the patients benefit by having a reliable resource for dental information.
Ray Access performs authoritative research and delivers content that’s guaranteed original. Contact us for an estimate on your website project. Better yet, consider letting the experts at Ray Access conduct a website assessment to determine how your site can be improved.
by Mark Bloom | Jul 23, 2019 | Content Provider
The Senior Market Is Exploding; Are You In?
Seniors represent about 32 percent of the American population. But they control more than 77 percent of the country’s total net worth — about $46 trillion, reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And this population is still growing. By 2030, more than one-third of Americans will be older than 50.
As a result of this shift in demographics, the senior care industry is struggling to keep up. With every new solution — whether it’s assisted living, group homes, stay-at-home care or some combination — new business models proliferate. But despite the honorable intention to help elders live with dignity, senior care businesses have had to fight both a negative public perception and increased competition.
New Marketing Challenges
When it comes to marketing strategies, senior care businesses can reach local markets with print and billboard advertising. But the U.S. population is on the move. Florida and Arizona are popular retirement destinations, and other areas across the South, including Western North Carolina, are rapidly gaining popularity. The point is that many moneyed retirees aren’t staying put.
Suddenly, print advertising has become ineffectual because a senior care facility can’t afford to advertise everywhere their clients are coming from. And the adult children of elders are searching for solutions the way they know: on the internet. So the senior care industry has been forced to move into the online space to compete.
Where to Turn for Assistance and Guidance
Senior care businesses need attractive websites, targeted online ads, effective landing pages and magnetic blog posts to reach their intended market. Each of these strategies require engaging content. To take advantage of the latest explosion of online opportunities, turn to Ray Access.
Ray Access helps your business grow by creating unique copy to connect with seniors and their children. You have to engage the family decision-makers and provide the compelling reasons that make your facilities stand out. That’s how you reach your intended audience and persuade them to contact you. Ray Access has the expertise and experience to create content for senior care businesses that:
- Answers questions potential clients have about elder care in general and about your facilities in particular
- Enables you to stand out as a trusted source in the industry
- Markets your services and facilities as the best solution to elder care in your location
- Connects with families who want the best reasonably-priced facilities for their aging parents
- Engenders trust in your business that you do what you say you’ll do
Understanding How Your Clients Make Important Decisions
The internet has replaced the public library for research purposes. More and more people go online to find answers and look for businesses that offer what they need. So you can bet that seniors and their caretakers are going to evaluate your website before they call. You need to make the best first impression with a modern design and relevant, clear copy.
Your prospective clients search for the breadth of services you offer. Does your website list everything you provide in an accessible and easy-to-understand way? Your website needs to describe your:
- Long-term care facilities
- In-home health care options
- Transportation services
- Local community events
- Assistive technology providers
- Elder care nutritionists
- Specialized physical therapists
- Estate and financial planners
- End-of-life advisors
Improve Your Internet Presence
When potential clients and patients find your business online, your website and your blog must tell visitors that your facilities and services are:
- Up-to-date with access to the latest technology
- Run by experienced, compassionate individuals
- Flexible enough to take care of all kinds of elders’ needs
- Taking new clients
If your website and blog show that you’re generous with your industry knowledge, you create the impression of trust, and that’s the first valuable commodity your website can deliver. Remember, your website is always on. Turn your website into a marketing engine that brings new clients to your business. It’s this second commodity that makes your website a valuable investment in your business.
How a Blog Helps Senior Care Businesses
To succeed in business, you need a website that communicates your value and your values. An effective website, therefore, needs a blog that attracts more visitors. That’s the role of a blog: your promoted articles reach out into the internet with relevant topics that your website hasn’t, or can’t, cover.
With a blog, you can explain to seniors and their caregivers everything they need to know: from the constantly changing technology and complex medical procedures to the latest social findings and innovative living solutions. With Ray Access on your team, you’ll never run out of fresh new topics. Give readers answers to questions and food for thought. They’ll remember you when they’re ready to make a decision. With great copy, your website can:
- Establish your expertise
- Educate your audience
- Share new ideas
- Take a stand on topical issues
- Promote best practices
- Clear up controversies
Online Content that’s on Target
Your website must address topics that interest elders and their caregivers. Let Ray Access transform your website into a trusted source of information that your target audience wants to share. It’s time to grab your share of the senior care market that’s trending upward everywhere, with all ages scrambling to deal with a burgeoning population with specific needs and desires.
Ray Access benefits senior care businesses with:
- A welcoming home page to let visitors know they’ve come to the right place
- Landing pages that improve your conversion rate
- Weekly blog posts that attract a larger audience
- Services pages that communicate your value clearly
- Thoroughly researched medical and psychological treatment pages
- Friendly staff profiles to encourage people to like you
- Press releases to announce new services or facilities
Be the voice of authority with regularly published content. Become the go-to player in the field of senior care, activities and interests. Create a reputation for making complicated subjects understandable. Let Ray Access take your company to the top of all senior care businesses. Contact Ray Access now for an online presence that propels your business into the future.
by Mark Bloom | Jul 16, 2019 | Agency Advice
Create Landing Page Content That Drives Sales
You won’t find a magic formula that delivers customers to your business via the internet. You can’t copy a template, change the landing page content and assume your business will prosper. Every business, it seems, has to figure out for itself what works.
Still, best practices exist. Every landing page needs certain elements to be successful, even though those elements can look very different from page to page. So while there’s no magic formula that works every time, a framework in which to operate does exist. But first, let’s agree on the definition of certain terms.
What You Need to Know First
When talking about landing page content, you must understand the key terms. This article defines these terms as follows:
- Web page. A website page is a page on your website. The Home page is your root or base page, from which visitors can access your other pages (for example, About or Contact). Due to the nature of search engines, visitors may not always enter your site from your Home page.
- Landing page. This website page is not the same as your Home page. It’s a specially-created page that may not even be accessible through your website navigation menu. Its job is to get visitors to follow through on a call to action. It’s the focus of this article.
- SEO. Search engine optimization is the practical science behind ranking high in a search engine results page (SERP) to draw more traffic to your website. SEO encompasses many techniques because what works best is constantly changing, based on the search engine algorithms.
- Search engine algorithms. Each search engine, such as Google or Bing, uses a formula to determine which website or web page ranks higher than the others on a SERP. The algorithms are controlled by the search engines, and they change from time to time.
- PPC. Pay-per-click advertising is a standard internet model for advertising. For PPC to work, you build an ad that shows up when someone searches for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. You only pay when people click on your ad — but you pay whether they buy from you or not.
How Does a Landing Page Work?
If you’re running a PPC campaign, the ad should direct all traffic — on the click — to a landing page with content that reaffirms what the ad claimed. If you’re using an email marketing campaign, the technique is different, but the result should be the same: a clickthrough that sends the email recipient to a landing page.
Never send a potential customer to your Home page from a targeted marketing campaign because it often contains too much information, too many things to do and very little direction.
Your landing page content must contain a targeted message written to connect with the person who landed there. Whoever clicks though to your landing page already has interest in one of your products or services. All you have to do is persuade him to act. That’s the purpose of a landing page.
The Elements of a Successful Landing Page
Since landing page content is by nature rhetorical — in other words, its purpose is to persuade a person to act or behave a certain way — the language needs to connect to the specific target audience. The best way to connect and to get people to act is to reach them on an emotional level. To do that, every landing page needs to feature elements such as:
- A re-enforcing heading. If your PPC or email campaign promised a solution to a problem, the heading should reiterate the problem and promised solution. This technique lets visitors know they landed in the right place.
- A sub-heading that promises an answer to a problem. The sub-heading is eye-catching and is the second thing a visitor is likely to read. It should contain an “umpf” factor that supports the reason the visitor has clicked through to the landing page.
- An engaging photo that visitors can relate to. Think about what a customer will look like when he buys your product or service and uses it successfully. What’s the outcome and how can you capture it in an image or video? Landing page content isn’t complete without graphics.
- The benefits of your product or service. How does what you’re offering solve people’s problems? Why should someone buy from you and not your competitors? In short: what’s in it for them?
- Social proof. You need testimonials. You need photos of smiling customers to accompany those testimonials. And they need to be real and verifiable. If potential customers see that others have used your product or service and rave about it, that’s strong marketing medicine.
- A strong call to action. Don’t litter your landing page content with lots of options. Your landing page needs but one distinct call to action, whether it’s to sign up for your newsletter, buy your product or service, contact you for a special offer, whatever. Your call to action needs to be compelling and unavoidable. The best calls to action add time-sensitive reasons for acting right away.
So How Much Landing Page Content Do You Need?
There’s no magic number that ensures success. If you’ve included all the required elements, your landing page can be 250 words or 1,000 words. The answer often depends on your target market, as it does for many business decisions. Do they read at length? Do they prefer video? Do they really need a lot of reinforcement or are they ready to buy when they click through to the landing page?
Your best bet is to cover your bases. Make sure the elements are covered completely. Make sure every graphic is needed and adds to the story you’re creating. Just like on every normal web page, everything you put on a landing page should contribute to the purpose of the page. If you think your landing page content is too long or too short, test it on different audiences. A/B testing is a staple of marketing. But that’s another subject.
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.
by Mark Bloom | Jun 17, 2019 | Small Business Advice
The WordCamp Lessons for Business Owners
To learn what WordCamp is, you first have to know about WordPress. WordPress is a website platform, originally used as a content management system for blogging. It’s come a long way since then; today, it’s one of the most popular platforms on which to build a website. It’s open-source and free, so it attracts a dedicated community. The Ray Access website is built on WordPress.
An extension of that community, WordCamp is a two-day, weekend conference that’s held locally in cities throughout the world, once a year at each location. On June 8 and 9, 2019, WordCamp Asheville took place on the campus of UNC Asheville. Ray Access was there to learn, to share and to network. Every year, we learn something worth the price of admission. Here are this year’s takeaways.
Biggest of the WordCamp Lessons
The most impactful and easy-to-implement of the WordCamp lessons of 2019 was the importance of Google My Business. Since Google owns the two most popular search engines on the planet (Google and YouTube), it makes business sense to appease the gods of search engine rankings. Multiple sessions touched on the need for Google My Business updates.
Ray Access has a Google My Business page, but it was largely left to fend for itself, since we considered it a tool for local-only marketing. Now that we know better, look for weekly posts to the listing. Yelp, Bing and other search engine listings are sure to follow.
The Need for Speed
Last year, the focus was on mobile-friendly WordCamp templates. It’s true that Google penalizes sites that aren’t mobile-friendly, but most up-to-date websites today follow that standard. The next step in accommodating search engines and visitors alike is load speed. WordCamp lessons don’t get simpler than that: make sure your website loads within four seconds. The trick, though, is how best to accomplish it.
Strategies abound. Plugins like Lazy Loader, JS Minimizer, WP SuperCache and Autoptomizer help your page load faster, but some may need tweaking for your specific site. There’s also the idea of a content delivery network, which shares your website images and other large files on a dispersed network, so visitors get the one that’s physically closer to where they are. Whatever you decide to do, do it soon, as Google penalizes slow-loading websites.
A Return to Basics
Finally, there’s a topic that’s both new and old at the same time. As writers and editors, the crew at Ray Access understand that the audience is the first critical piece of information needed when drafting any article, regardless of its purpose. In website terms, that involves not only the language you use, but also the experience you design. User experience or UX is a resurgent topic for all websites.
UX involves making your website easy for your target audience to navigate, find information and feel good about the experience. This science envelopes accessibility, language, design and development. It calls for clear calls-to-action and consistent labeling. It involves honesty — delivering on every promise without any bait-and-switch or other link-bait tactics.
How does your website compare? If it’s been a while since you’ve reviewed your site, contact Ray Access for a website assessment. It’s an inexpensive investment to determine the state of your website from a visitor’s point of view to get the most out of these WordCamp lessons.
by Mark Bloom | Jun 10, 2019 | Writing
Professional Writing Help for Your Business
Anyone who can craft a sentence can be a writer. Anyone who can formulate an idea on the page can write a blog post. Yet there are a number of differences between an amateur writer and a professional, not the least of which is what the title suggests: a professional is paid for the work. If you want to join the ranks of the pros, here is some professional writing help in the form of tips and advice.
The most succinct difference between an amateur and professional writer has little to do with talent. But there is an enormous difference in terms of output. Professional writers write all the time, even when they’re not at the computer. It’s their job. Amateurs tend to write piece by piece as the muse hits them. Here’s the first bit of professional writing help that’ll turn you into a pro: show up every day to write.
How You Approach the Craft
Professional artists take their craft seriously. Painters, sculptors and even interior decorators spend time learning how to do what they do. They experiment. They take chances. They learn from their mistakes. They go back at it again and again as continuing education. Amateurs, on the other hand, are weekend artists or occasional creatives. It’s not their life’s focus.
Writing is the same. A professional writer doesn’t — and really can’t afford to — wait for the muse to arrive. There are deadlines, and the next project is always waiting. Professionals work hard to do the absolute best they can do for every project. An amateur, in contrast, may spend an inordinate amount of time on one project “to get it right.”
It has to do with your approach to the craft. Do you focus on goals or process? A professional writer understands that each project has a trajectory: a beginning, a middle and an end. Once you’ve developed a process that works for you, you can employ it for each and every project, regardless of the inherent differences.
How You Approach Success
Even amateur writers can enjoy successes. But they tend to view success as the goal, not a milepost. Professional writers understand that each success is just a feather in an already full cap. You can’t be a successful professional writer without a string of successes. It’s not that each success means less to a professional, but that’s not the end goal.
The opposite of success is failure, and how you approach that outcome is just as important as how you deal with success. Do you give up after a failure or do you consider every failure just another step toward your evolution as a writer? If you want to become a pro, the professional writing help you need is all mental; in other words, approach writing as a job.
Professional Writing Help for Amateurs
Amateur writers are well-served to learn the differences between where they are and where they want to be. Some of these differences include:
- Amateurs often think they know everything they need to know. Professionals realize that they still have a lot to learn, and every project presents an opportunity.
- Amateurs too often take criticism personally. It stops them in their tracks and cuts them to the quick. Professionals, on the other hand, actively seek criticism and recognize the difference between negative and positive criticism. (They ignore the former and value the latter.)
- Amateurs want every word to be perfect, especially at the beginning of every project. Professionals know that it doesn’t matter where they start writing, since the initial beginning rarely makes it into the final cut.
- Finally, professionals listen, while amateurs boast. Yes, this is a generalization, but professionals know that listening is the key to delivering the best results.
If you’re an amateur and find that the road to professionalism is too long for you to bother with and you need professional writing help now, contact your friends at Ray Access.
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.
by Mark Bloom | May 27, 2019 | Small Business Advice
Trying to Fit in All of Your Small Business Tasks
Small business owners have to do everything themselves. If you own a small business, you’re not just doing all the work of your business — whether it’s washing boats, making jellies or writing blog posts — you’re also doing all the other small business tasks. Everything falls onto your shoulders when you own a small business. There’s no rest for the hopeful.
You may have started your business because you had an idea, you saw a need in the marketplace or you had a particular passion for a product or service you knew you could sell. But you may never have considered all the other small business tasks you now have to do:
- Bookkeeping
- Taxes
- Marketing and advertising
- Payroll
- Hiring and firing
- Facilities and equipment
- Website
- Time management
- Customer acquisition
Small Businesses by the Numbers
According to Forbes Magazine, 80 percent of all new small businesses in the United States survive the first year, but only half make it past Year Five. Only a third make it to 10 years. Those are sobering numbers.
Given these statistics, it’s a wonder anyone starts a small business. Is it the allure of growing something out of nothing? Or do small business owners buy into the Microsoft model of building an international corporation out of their parents’ garage?
The Small Business Administration reports that 240,000 small businesses started in the third quarter of 2016 — the latest figures available. During the same period, though, 215,000 businesses closed. That’s a net gain of just 25,000 businesses or just over 10 percent.
Why Small Businesses Don’t Succeed
Because you have to do so much — all those small business tasks — to keep your business afloat, you may think that burnout is one of the reasons small businesses fail. Maybe you love what you do, but you still have to be a manager, accountant, advertising executive, search engine optimization (SEO) expert and information technology professional. It’s a lot to juggle.
But it’s not burnout that causes most small businesses to close their doors, according to the Forbes article. The top five reasons most businesses fail involve:
- Not enough money to sustain the business
- Not enough customers who want what you’re selling
- Too much competition in your field
- Wrong pricing point for your market
- Wrong team or skill sets
If you fail at any one of these reasons, your company may fail. You’re already facing long odds to make it. Consider these common shortcomings and compare them to your own business.
How to Juggle Your Small Business Tasks
If you can solve the first four points above, your business has a fighting chance to last. Finding the right team is both an internal and external problem for small business owners. Knowing what you’re good at requires self-reflection and an objective assessment. Also, hiring the right people for the right job requires good judgment.
What sets successful small businesses apart is their willingness to admit what they can and can’t do. Hiring someone to do your books seems like a no-brainer when you have no head for numbers. Hiring someone to do your marketing is time-consuming even though it’s an investment in your business.
And if you’re not a writer, writing your website takes enormous effort away from your core business. But your website’s where business takes place. That’s where you persuade visitors to contact you. Landing pages and blog posts have major implications for the success of your business online. To increase your odds of success, learn to farm out those small business tasks, like content, to professional contractors, like Ray Access.
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.
by Mark Bloom | May 13, 2019 | Small Business Advice
Tips to Improve Creativity and Your Business
Every small business owner finds a million and one things that have to be done every day. It’s a never-ending torrent of tasks. Since it’s often impossible to complete them all, your stress levels go through the roof. And if there are two things that are deadly to creativity, they are stress and endless busy work.
The first rule for using tips to improve creativity is to give yourself space and time.
If you’re looking for tips to improve creativity, you need look no further. But first, let’s examine why creativity is important in business. You need to understand why businesspeople even bother to be creative. After all, how can it help your bottom line?
Why Creativity Matters in Business
According to Tucker Marion, an associate professor at Northeastern University, “Companies who are creative are more successful.” Creativity spurs innovation, and innovation drives businesses to adapt to market changes and take advantage of new opportunities.
And it’s not just ad agencies or software development companies that value creativity. Retail stores are reinventing themselves. Medical practices are finding new ways to attract patients in an increasingly turbulent marketplace. Every business faces competition. Those that can out-think or out-maneuver its competitors are the ones that succeed.
Tips to Improve Creativity
There are some simple things you can do to enhance your creativity in your business. These tips to improve creativity are meant to help you, but not all of them will work for you specifically, depending on the size of your business and other factors. But don’t let that stop you from trying them! Tips for a more creative team include:
- Hire more creative people. With the right interview questions, you can tease out the creative candidates. Try: “What’s the last valuable thing you learned?” or “How much would it cost to clean all the windows of this building?” or “What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?” When candidates have to think out of the box, you get an insight into their creative nature.
- Create more diverse teams. Diversity doesn’t always mean differences in race, gender and age (although they help). It also can account for personality types and points of view. Differences lead to varying opinions on how to solve a problem. In a non-competitive group, ideas build on themselves to create innovation. Mix it up!
- Value and incentivize creative efforts. It’s one thing to have a suggestion box, but it’s another to offer cash bonuses for ideas that are successfully implemented. When everyone has a say in making your business better, guess what? Your business gets better. This effort also increases employee engagement, retention and satisfaction, which lead to a more productive staff.
- Explore ideas with an open mind. If you have a way for your employees to contribute, either privately or in a group setting, don’t discount any idea. If one doesn’t seem feasible, maybe there’s a germ of a worthwhile idea within it. Following tips to improve creativity means not saying, “No,” but saying, “Yes and…”
- Enable flex hours and telecommuting. You can still hold your employees accountable for their productivity while letting them work flex hours or from home occasionally. Not all creative people thrive in a buttoned-down environment. Allow them to adjust their hours. As long they hit their goals and attend meetings, everything else can be negotiable.
- Give your employees more space. This isn’t about physical space; sometimes, you can’t control that. But companies that constantly push their employees often lose them to burnout or attrition. If you value your employees, learn to trust them. Give them adequate downtime. Well-rested employees are more productive and more creative on the job.
- Provide inspirational activities. Group activities and personal challenges get the brain racing. When you take your employees out of their regular routines, especially if it’s a surprise, genuine connections and real creativity often occurs.
You may also need tips to improve creativity in yourself, as the owner/operator of a small business. These tips include:
- Step away from your desk. If you’re struggling to find creative answers to stubborn questions, banging your head against the wall doesn’t work. Instead, use these tips to improve creativity: Take a walk, preferably in nature. Stop trying so hard and just let your mind go blank. Go do a repetitive task like the laundry, stuffing envelopes, anything to get your mind off the problem.
- Change your routine. Falling into a routine isn’t a bad thing. But routines turn your brain off. You don’t have to think when your muscles know what to do. When you wake, do things in a different order. Drive a different way to work. Mix it up every way you can.
- Make a list … of bad ideas. Everyone has bad ideas. So get them out of the way by brainstorming all the poor ideas you can. This does two things: it gets them out of your mind and it forces you to think in a way you’re unfamiliar with, which is a great way to build your creative muscles. And you may even hit upon an idea with possibilities.
- Ask yourself personal questions. The better you know yourself, the better you can find that creative zone that you need to run your company successfully. In your quiet moments of the day, even if it’s just before you go to bed at night or just after you get up in the morning, ask yourself when, where and how you’re most productive and creative.
- Hang around creative people. Tips to improve creativity like this one are similar to others if you want to be a certain way. Want to think smarter? Hang around people smarter than you are. What to be a better basketball player? Hang around people who excel at the sport. Want to be more creative? Well, you get the idea.
- Avoid reading your “masters.” When you’re trying to be creative, nothing can dampen your spirit more than reading what experts in your field have written. You may not be able to reach their heights, which fosters feelings of inadequacy. And that’s fatal to your creativity. Instead, read inspirational books and blogs.
- Set aside “you time.” Email beckons. The latest TV show or online video looks fun. Social media’s always waiting. There’s the laundry, the dishes or the pets. Life generates plenty of distractions. If you really want tips to improve creativity, then set aside uninterruptible time to be creative.
- Schedule regular time to be creative. Creativity doesn’t always obey a schedule. It doesn’t always come whenever you call. But if you set a time, you get in the habit of being creative. You may have to plow through days when nothing happens and the muse doesn’t show, but you’ll also have days when the faucet won’t turn off.
Tips to improve creativity mean nothing if you don’t put them to use. Take the tips that you think may work and try them. Take the others and try them too. You may hit on ideas that otherwise would remain buried. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to dig for creativity, contact the creatives at Ray Access.
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.
by Mark Bloom | Apr 30, 2019 | Content Marketing
Content Marketing and Storytelling in Business
Let me tell you a story. It’s a love story, in a way. Boy meets girl. There’s passion, perseverance, even a few twists and turns. It has a happy ending. It’s our story, the story of Ray Access. It’s the convergence of content marketing and storytelling.
When Mark Bloom met Linda Ray, the idea of drawing people to look at your website was new. As writers, they saw the possibilities. As they browsed the internet, they saw the need. By the time they formed Ray Access, they had developed a passion for useful content and websites that actually added value to the world.
Blogging for a Better World
At first, they advertised themselves as business bloggers. Blogging adds volume to a website while providing a platform to share:
- Tips and tricks about a business
- Insider information about an industry
- How-to instructions to help businesses help themselves
- Content targeted specifically to a segment of their market
- Links to great information others are putting out
- Opinions about related topics
This reflects the purpose of content marketing and storytelling adds value to each of these areas. Good writing — content that connects with an audience quickly and communicates its message effectively — is what people online look for. Making it personal helps an article to connect to its readers. And that’s exactly what Ray Access did in its early years.
An Evolution in Content Marketing
But the world doesn’t stay the same; it continues to evolve, sometimes sweeping the rug out from under your best-laid plans. And that’s what happened to Ray Access. Despite a dearth of quality blogs, businesses weren’t clamoring for them in large enough numbers. The entire business model, the foundation of Ray Access, was in danger of crumbling, leaving Mark and Linda in tight spot.
Should they widen their marketing? Seek new avenues to draw new clients? All options were on the table. Just as prospects looked their grimmest, opportunity struck. It was a quirky circumstance, an unforeseen happenstance. Once of their existing clients asked if they do website content.
“Of Course We Write Website Content!”
You have to remember, those were trying times. The business was struggling. Both Mark and Linda questioned the earlier passion for their craft. They didn’t get to say “No” often at all. But website content has a different purpose from blog posts. Blog posts are all content marketing and storytelling. Website content has to convert visitors into customers. It has to persuade people to contact and order products and services.
The two writers dove into the effort to learn the nuances between blog posts and website content. Their passion for their work was rekindled. The business was saved.
And They Lived Happily Ever After?
Well, not exactly. As every small business owner understands, running a business takes hard work and luck. But the happy ending (for now) is that the business is still going and still growing. Mark and Linda are still together, partners in a business that is a product of their passion for writing and their belief in a better, more effective internet.
Now you know a little bit more about Ray Access. You know Mark and Linda better, and you know what drives them in their day-to-day work. Content marketing and storytelling do come together to serve a higher purpose. Take advantage of both by contacting Ray Access to let us provide you with that content magic to help you better connect with your audience.
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.
by Mark Bloom | Apr 16, 2019 | Small Business Advice
Great Tips from a Content Writer’s Perspective
At Ray Access, we constantly tell our clients and our prospective clients:
“Your website should be making you money,
not costing you money.”
Most businesses, with the exception of ecommerce sites, likely view their website presence as an expense. It’s no wonder:
- Hiring staff (inside your firm or on contract) to manage and update your website can be costly every month.
- Search engine optimization (SEO) and other online marketing efforts also take away from your profits.
- Even hiring a reputable firm like ours to write your weekly blogs may feel prohibitive and too much of a cut on your bottom line.
What’s the point of these expenses if your site isn’t generating any income? You need staff to keep it fresh and SEO services to drive qualified traffic to it. But if none of those visitors are contacting you, you’re paying for eyeballs instead of wallets. You get more leads from your website when it appeals to those who land there. That is, after all, what your website is supposed to do!
Get More Leads from Your Website!
It doesn’t matter how many people view your website if it doesn’t generate any leads for your business from those visitors. And that’s where your site design and content play key roles. A persuasive design and engaging content that connects to your target audience can make the difference in convincing visitors to contact you for your products or services.
“If you’re ignoring your website,
your website is likely ignoring you.”
Websites, like most other marketing strategies, need to be constantly reviewed, tweaked and updated. Keep doing whatever seems to be working. Stop doing whatever’s not working and start doing something new. There are many ways to get more leads from your website, but it takes attention — either yours or someone else’s.
Tips from Professional Content Writers
To get more leads from your website, take heed of three common-sense tips:
- Direct your visitors to the information they’re seeking. This may seem easy at first glance, especially if your target market is singular and very well-defined. But many businesses (like ours) have multiple target markets. Use your website design to provide cues for specific audiences. Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for, whether it’s information about your pricing, your industry or your business. Put your contact information on every web page. And finally, have the information they need to make a qualified decision available (and visible) on the page. Give them what they need, tell them why it’s important and point them to the solution.
- Make your message feel urgent. People naturally react to things that need immediate attention. Your message has to convey how important it is that your visitors act now. Now! Put time-sensitive material on the page. Explain why it can cost more (in time, consequences or money) if they delay. The more urgency you add to your messaging, the more likely your visitors will act — whether it’s to contact you, fill out a form or download a white paper. Give them a reason to contact you, and they are more likely to.
- Solve problems for your visitors. A classic strategy in marketing is to identify a relatable problem that your target audience is likely experiencing, and then offer to solve it. It’s not a bait-and-switch if you fulfill your promise. At this point, your website isn’t just selling your products and services; it’s helping your potential customers solve a problem.
In the end, to get more leads from your website, you have to give your visitors what they want and expect. If you can do that and make it easy for them to follow through, your website may become a treasure trove of potential customers. That’s the value of an effective website, and persuasive content can make your site effective. Contact Ray Access to jump-start your website.
