2018 Blog Predictions

by Elle Ray | Dec 19, 2017 | Blog Writing

Blogging Follows Trends; Here’s Some for 2018

You may wonder, as do we, which is more productive:

To live in the moment, one day at a time
To live for a time in the future when everything finally falls into place

At Ray Access, we teeter somewhere in between on most days. While numerous blog predictions across the country could have us celebrating prematurely at the notion that small business is going to boom under the Trump admiration’s tax bill and pro-business agenda, we’re just grateful for what we already have. Some blog predictions say this is a business-minded president if ever there was one, while others beg to differ about who he really cares about.

Besides, most of us aren’t in the same bracket as those business people running the country anyway. Like millions of small business owners, we think in terms of thousands, not billions. Still, we’d like to venture out as 2017 draws to a close and make a few bold 2018 blog predictions. We can dream, after all, even when we embrace the many gifts of today.

Enjoy the gift of our blog predictions

And the Beat Goes On

The blog writing team at Ray Access is acutely aware of what’s hot in the blog marketplace — in other words, those topics readers will be looking for as they browse the internet. When you can hop into current events, get ahead of trends and excite and energize internet readers with your topics, you gain credibility — and more traffic to your site. Hopefully, you garner some new business in the process as well.

As we create lists of topics for our blog clients, we have to think ahead. And when we develop our own blog topic lists and acquire new customers because of our exceptional originality, we like to think we tap into something special. So here are a few of the topics we think will trend heavily as 2018 starts:

All things Trump. The 45th President isn’t going away. While the calls for his impeachment may gather steam, they will for the most part whither out as bigger challenges develop in the United States. So go ahead and refer to The Donald in a few blog posts as you prepare your 2018 content marketing plan.
Privacy as tech continues to invade our lives. Smart homes often are occupied by not-so-smart families who open themselves up for enormous probing just so they can get access to the latest talking refrigerator or pre-heated bathroom. Smart homes are here now, and they’re going to get more popular. Just make sure you don’t skimp on the privacy upgrades for every addition you make.
Drones — and the range of options, issues and challenges they pose. As Christmas gift lists were being bombarded with toy and amateur drones in Christmas 2017, 2018 blog predictions include plenty of room to incorporate the growing trend into your own corporate copy. In other words, think of ways drones will impact your business or your customers’ lives.
Spicing it up in the kitchen. One of the big trends in “foodie utopia” in 2018 will be the use of spices to make your meals healthier. Spices like turmeric have long been known to increase circulation. Expect this spice to get an even bigger boon in the next year, right along with cinnamon, cumin, ginger and garlic.
All things mobile. Our blog predictions for 2018 include a spot for mobile connectivity. This will be the year that mobile surpasses laptops and desktops as the primary device for the internet of things (IoT). If your website isn’t mobile friendly by the end of 2018, you may as well close it down and install a fax machine. This also means that your blogs and e-newsletters must be totally readable on mobile devices, too.

Short, sweet, easy-to-digest and interesting enough to repost — that’s exactly what your blog should be. And include some of these blog predictions to increase your click-through rate. Stop using your blog to send ads to your followers! It’s time to join the 21st century, where you’ll find a slew of new friends and followers. They’ll matter to your business in 2018.

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.

Keep Your Blogs Timely

by Elle Ray | Dec 4, 2017 | Blog Writing

Remember: Blog Posts Are Not Advertisements

Ads are ads, and blogs are blogs. Timely blog posts aren’t press releases, nor are they detailed white papers. Blogs represent an entity all to themselves, and they really deserve the respect and credit that other forms of communication receive.

In fact, blogs truly provide one of the best ways to reach your clients without slamming them with special offers, sales or promotions. Most people will, after all, just block you if all you send is advertisements for your goods and services. Customers want to feel appreciated and they want to believe that you really do care about their welfare and their happiness. People do business with companies they like.

Timely Blog Posts Add Value

When you create timely blog posts tagged with seasonal sentiments and useful tips, readers flock to your blog to get in on the latest trend or fashionable gift. Timely blog posts tie into local, regional, national and international news, politics, entertainment and sports. Timely blog posts have very little trouble finding keywords because they are the embodiment of current searches.

timely blog posts help at Christmas

“Trump This Holiday Treat” and “Sexual Harassment Not Invited to this Holiday Soiree” are headlines that draw tons of attention in December 2017. Timely blog posts for the holiday season are easiest of all and might include:

Top 10 Fitness Gifts in 2017
Best Gifts for College Kids
How to Throw a Holiday Party on a Budget
How to Avoid Party Germs
Tips for Glamming Up Your Holiday Wardrobe

Make It Fit

If you don’t sell any of the above items or work in any of those fields, no problem. Your blog is not about you — it’s about your readers. And if these are the kinds of topics that interest them today, then those are the kinds of topics you need to be writing about. Then, after reading your oh-so-informative tip list, readers are more likely to click on your sidebar that just happens to lead to your homepage and your latest deals.

Make your blog fun, quirky, or full of must-have information to get readers through the season. and they’ll oblige by checking out your links. Blogs are not meant to tout your deals and espouse your greatness. They’re meant to hold the reader’s attention, give them something for nothing and even lure them into reposting your article or sending it to their email list.

Place a link in the body of your blog to generate traffic to preferred website pages. Links should be unobtrusive and work seamlessly with your whole timely blog focus. Your readers will thank you for not hitting them with deals in every paragraph or pictures of your products on every line.

Just Be Considerate

Timely blog posts are considerate and, well, timely. They are articles designed to add more information to a current conversation, give your readers helpful information that they can really use or provide tips on topics that are on everybody’s mind at the time.

And don’t lure in readers with headlines that promise timely blog posts unless you can deliver on the promise. Nothing feels worse than being tricked. No one likes to be the butt of a marketing joke. Give readers what they expect, and they’ll come back for more of your great timely blog posts.

And if you have any trouble thinking of timely blog topics, by now you know whom to call.

Write Now!

by Elle Ray | Jul 7, 2017 | Blog Writing

10 Tips for Writing Blogs for Fun and Profit

Whether you’re writing blogs, your company newsletter or a message to a new client, you may find, like most people do, that you’re having trouble getting started. If you’re like the millions of people who break out in a sweat just at the thought of writing blogs — or anything someone might actually read — chill out. You’re not alone.

You can be writing blogs no matter where you are

The number one phobia among adults, according to most psychological research studies, is the fear of public speaking, technically called glossophobia. This seems to always head the list, ranking even higher than the fear of death, which often comes in at number two. Paraphrasing Jerry Seinfeld, this means the average person at a funeral would prefer to be in the casket rather than doing the eulogy.

Anxiety Prevails

When it’s severe enough, the fear of writing is called scriptophobia or graphophobia. And it can be debilitating. Although it may not rank among the top 10 fears with public speaking, dying and snakes, it’s still rated pretty high, especially for business people who must write for their jobs.

So, if you clam up or get nauseous every time your boss asks you when you’re going to get around to writing blogs for the company website — you can contact Ray Access to do it for you. Or you can take action yourself, which is one of the top tips we can share with you about writing blogs and other business communications.

Writing Blogs Is Profitable

Writing blogs elicits profits either through the ads you sell for your personal blogs or more often, through the brand awareness and name recognition you receive from customers and potential clients. And to get you started, the team at Ray Access join the marketing team of Nike to bring you the most important, number one tip for writing blogs: “Just do it!”

Write now. Open a new document and just start tapping away. Go with free-flow, unedited thoughts. Write like you talk. Write down your thoughts about the topic. Since getting started seems to be the hardest part about writing blogs, you can conquer that part just by following this advice.

Just write, whether you're writing blogs on something else.

Blog Writing Tips

So here are 10 more tips to get you going and keep you flowing. Stay on track and on schedule while delivering quality communications on a steady, profitable basis:

Read. Good writers read … and they read a lot. One trick is to read a bunch of articles about your topic, but don’t copy them — you don’t want to get charged with plagiarism. Reading about a topic trips your thought processes and gives you fodder for content.
Face the fear. Throughout your life, you’ve undoubtedly overcome a multitude of fears. You went on job interviews, applied to college, rode a two-wheeled bicycle and maybe even gave a presentation to a group. Understanding that you’re just facing another one of those illogical fears is no different.
Grow up. Not meant to be harsh, this tip refers to the small voices that still follow you through your life. Maybe you were criticized as kids for something you wrote. Worrying about being criticized really is the main source of glossophobia. But you’re not a kid anymore. Your skin is much tougher, and you have a lot more confidence and a proven track record of previous successes.
Visualize success. Visualization techniques work just as well for winning the Super Bowl as they do for writing blogs. See fingers racing across the keyboard as they write with clarity and intention. Visualize the finished piece. Seeing is believing.
Stop thinking. Thinking has its place in the writing process, but it’s usually not during the actual writing. Overthinking the content of your communication dooms you to deadlock. Go with your gut when writing. You can always revise later (see tip #10).
Make mistakes. The need to be perfect falls right in line with worrying about what others think about you. It’s all based on fear of failure. Drop the perfectionism; you’re a human being; making mistakes comes with the territory. Making mistakes is also one of the ways you learn how to be a better writer.
Focus on the prize. That’s what worked for Tom Brady. Keep your eyes on the new customers your blog writing produces, on the kudos you’ll get from your boss for turning in an assignment on time and the inner peace you’ll enjoy once you’ve completed your task.
Research. As you’re writing about a topic, especially something that’s new or inviting to you, stop when you think of a question. Google that question and reinvigorate your creativity with more information. Learning while you write is one of the greatest gifts of writing blogs. In this way, writing makes you a better, more interesting person!
Practice. The more you write, the better you get and the less time it takes to complete a project. Writing is, after all, a skill you can learn. Whether you keep a daily journal or spend time writing blogs a couple days a week, the process gets easier when it’s habitual.
Edit and revise. This part of the process lets your inner perfectionist shine. And it’s OK to let her out! This step saves you from making egregious spelling errors or from simply sounding foolish, which is one of the major fear-inducing situations. If you don’t have a second set of eyes willing to be brutally honest and you must edit your own writing, sleep on it and reread your work the next day. You’ll be amazed what a fresh perspective can do to your writing!

Editors are to writers like a good sharp knife is to a top chef. They are the means to a perfected end. As Truman Capote once said: “I’m all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”

Blog Post Topics That Get You the Most Traffic and Views

by Elle Ray | Jan 24, 2017 | Blog Writing

10 Legit Ways to Come Up with Blog Post Topics

A great blog title makes all the difference if you want your blog post to be read. Current statistics show that only two out of 10 people read more than your title. So come up with blog post topics so engaging that readers just can’t turn away.

Come up with blog post topics no one can turn away from

And it’s not easy. The pressure mounts when you think about stats from online publishers that say readers are 500 percent more likely to read your blog and enter your website when the title that attracted them is viral-worthy. That’s a high bar.

As If Writing Isn’t Hard Enough

Now you have to spend as much time — and sometimes even more — coming up with your blog post title as you do writing the darn thing. And if you’re not a natural, writing can be excruciating. But as with all things that have to do with online content — the stats can be a bit intimidating. So much so, that they can lead to analysis paralysis.

Anything you do to promote your company shouldn’t be so difficult. Marketing can be fun if you follow a few tips to come up with blog post topics that will at least put you in the running with the competition out there clamoring for the eyes of your customers.

10 Tips to Successfully Come Up with Blog Post Topics

At Ray Access, it’s part of our job to come up with blog post topics for our clients. While this service certainly is valuable and we’ve charged for it in the past, we’ve decided it makes a better value-added piece to our gold-standard services. And since we don’t charge extra for it, we better be good at it — otherwise, we’d have to spend all day coming up with blog post titles, and that’s time we couldn’t charge!

To make this blog worth your time, here are a few secrets to our special sauce to come up with blog post topics on a regular basis:

Collaborate. There’s nothing like brainstorming with another person or a group of people to get those ideas sparking in your head. It seems like they feed on each other.
Read the news. You can’t very well tap into a top news item that’s trending wildly if you don’t read the news. Whether you listen to the radio, peruse the headlines on a couple officious news sites or get a daily paper, know what’s going on in the world around you.
Run a tab. When your mind’s at rest and not forced to think about anything specific, it can come up with some pretty cool ideas. Jot down those super ideas when they come because you can’t expect them to be quickly available when you need them.
Listen to the pros. Companies like Moz and Google provide you with plenty of statistics to aid your topic search. Things like using numerals instead of writing out numbers help, as does looking up “word of the day” trends to boost your title base.
Talk to your readers. The word “you” is the number one most popular word used in searches. Ray Access learned that writing to an audience personalizes each piece — readers feel like you’re talking directly to them.
What’s it all about? Don’t make readers work for their payoff. Sure, catchy witticisms become obvious once a reader gets into the content of your blog, but they don’t work in a title. Topics that begin with “how to” “top,” and “why you should” tell the reader what to expect.
Go long. Studies show now that long-string titles with 16 to 18 words are the most popular. They give readers the most information about what they can expect in the blog and have a better chance of answering a query.
Drop the descriptions. Save the flowery descriptions for the body of your blog post. Spend most of your title real estate using verbs and adverbs that actually serve as calls to action.
Drop the salesy language, too. Putting your company name in a blog title or using that line to make announcements or promote sales is a turn-off for readers. You’ll get more sympathy than readers for appearing so desperate.
Mix it up. The last thing you want from your readers is to be boring. After all, they look good when you give them hot, trendy titles to repost. Don’t come up with blog post topics that are all questions; add one in occasionally (about 11 percent of the people like to click on questions).

And when you really don’t want to deal with the subject of titles or spend the time to come up with blog post topics — let alone writing them — contact Ray Access. We love a challenge.

4 Reasons to Hire Professional Blog Writers

by Mark Bloom | Dec 6, 2016 | Blog Writing

A Pro Frees You Up to Do What You Do Best

Hiring independent, third-party blog writers may sound like more effort than it’s worth, at least at first glance. You have to find qualified writers. You have to test them out. You have manage them. Who wants all that responsibility?

Then you remember struggling with your blog. Finding topics to write about that other people might be interested in. Spending the hours it takes to actually write the darn thing, even when you know what you want to say. And your articles never come out as well as you want them to.

Hire professional bloggers

All that time and effort serves to remind you why you’d at least consider hiring out the writing. So let’s list both the reasons for and benefits of hiring professional blog writers for your company website:

Reason #1: Blog Writers Are Professionals

If you hire a third-party to write your blog posts, you’re hiring a professional writer, someone who makes his (or her) livelihood by writing. This has several significant advantages:

Professional writers hit deadlines, so your blog will never be late again.
Professional blog writers know how to write well — they do it for a living, after all — so your blog posts will always be easy to read.
Professional writers know how to connect with your audience.

Reason #2: Blog Writers Can Do It All for You

When you hire third-party professionals to write your blog posts, they can do it all. They present you with topics for approval. Because they’re not as close to your company as you are, they can come up with interesting topics about your business that you might not have considered.

Professional writers know how to do the time-intensive research to write about your industry. They don’t use Wikipedia or similar websites, but go to authoritative website sources for the information they need. And good professionals also have their work edited before they deliver it. Some third-party professional writers (like those at Ray Access) can manage the whole process for you, including publishing the blog posts on your website!

Reason #3: Blog Writers Free Up Your Time

If you don’t have to write blog posts for your website, you can spend your time more constructively:

Satisfying your customers
Managing your staff
Improving your systems
Making more money

You’re happier and more productive when you do the things you love to do. So if blog writing isn’t one of those things, leave it to an expert while you get to do the things you’re best at doing. In the end, you’ll save time and headaches by hiring out tasks like blog writing — just as you may do for your bookkeeping and marketing.

Reason #4: Professional Blog Writers Do It Better

If you’re not a writer, the process of writing blog posts takes you longer and the end result may not be as powerful as you’d hoped. Professional writers take pride in their work. They make it as good as it can be. They struggle over their words to make them sing.

The resulting blog posts are powerfully effective pieces of content. These articles successfully market your business. They help your customer base by answering questions and building trust. Blogging works to attract visitors to your website. Attract more visitors with a professionally written blog. Because that’s what professional blog writers do.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

by Elle Ray | Oct 11, 2016 | Blog Writing

How to Tell if Online Claims Are True or Not

Every day, we hear about scams and outrageous online claims. At the same time, we count on the Internet and its vast network of content suppliers to keep us up-to-date on trends and news affecting our families, communities and businesses. Many people rely on the credibility of a blog to make important life decisions.

don't believe all online claims

We’ve always amazed at some of the stuff people fall for. But we question our own gullibility every day. If you believe the horrendous online claims of parents whose children were permanently damaged by vaccines, why don’t you give blog credibility to the likes of third-world country posts that show kids with no teeth who’ve never been exposed to fluoride?

Do Your Homework

As a company that prides itself on accuracy, Ray Access finds this is an especially pertinent question. To find our way through the maze of information and online claims, we take extra precautions to use only reliable sources. For example, to write about a medical issue, Ray Access writers are not allowed to use WebMD as a source. Wikipedia and YouTube are never allowed as credible sources. These sites have zero blog credibility because they are open-source and anyone can add content to them. Others, like WebMD, hire out cheap writing labor to fill their pages.

We might find an interesting tidbit on a site that’s notorious for spreading rumors that aren’t always backed up by science or history or true experts in the field. We may want to believe that little gem of information, but we cannot take the chance that it could be fraudulent. Yet just as easily, it could be the nugget we needed to provide an interesting twist to a blog or a valuable example for a new webpage we’re writing.

The only way we’d use a piece of information from an unreliable source is if we double-checked it against a truly practical, qualified website with substantial blog credibility. For example, let’s say we find a YouTube piece about the latest green material used in the building of popular, trending tiny houses. Before we could include that information in our real estate client’s blog, we’d check it out with a university or government website. We have to be sure it’s accurate before we use it.

writing process at work

One Extra Click

Often, all it takes is one extra click on another website to verify online claims. The more you research and write, the more you understand the blog credibility factor and how it works. If, for example, you read a blog on Business Insider, you can pretty much bet that it’s going to be true. On the other hand, a blog on MedicineNet about a new diabetes drug may need some double-checking because that site is run by WebMD, a site that is not inherently trustworthy.

Discover who owns a website by scrolling to the bottom of the site’s homepage. MedicineNet sure sounds like a good source (and many of its blogs may be very true), but because of its origins, it needs to be verified with one more click to somewhere like the National Institutes of Health or the Cleveland Clinic. Even a medical doctor’s site might be able to give you that extra validation you want (and we require).

Consider the Source for Blog Credibility

The bottom line is that not all online claims are true, but you know that. It’s those questionable sources that really can get you into trouble. Figure that government sites are under pretty strict rules about what they can and cannot print, as are journalists at credible news organizations who always must double-source their stories.

A few more tips to help you decide whether to trust a source include:

Check out the author. When a blog has an author, you’re one step closer to true blog credibility because that person is willing to stake her reputation on it. One click to find out more about the author should seal the deal.
Consider the date of the post. If a blog post doesn’t have a date, exit and find something else. You really need a date to even know whether you should follow up on the information that may or may not still be relevant today.
Look at the domain. It used to be that .org was a pretty good sign that you had yourself some blog credibility, but not anymore. Any nonprofit can claim a .org designation and push their propaganda through it. Instead, look for .edu or .gov for your secondary click. Beware, however, that students often get use of their schools’ .edu domain. Never, for example, use term papers as sources.
Review the website’s design. It can give you clues about how relevant and trustworthy a site is. If it’s garbled, difficult to read and full of weird graphics, its content probably is too.
And follow this grammarian’s rule of thumb: Everyone makes mistakes; that’s the very definition of being human. But too many grammatical and/or spelling errors on a webpage should send up a big red flag.

Ray Access provides authoritative and engaging blog writing services if you want to be sure you’re getting the real deal and not getting taken for a ride.

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