by Elle Ray | Nov 24, 2013 | Blog Writing
The Worst Blog You’ll See Is the Outdated One
As we like to say: “If you aren’t paying attention to your website, it’s likely not paying attention to you.”
We can say the very same thing about your blog, a crucial extension of your site. A blog is an easy, inexpensive way to communicate with your customers. A blog can relate news that affects consumers, innovations they want to learn about, and invitations to hot events and happenings.
But what if you’ve lost the steam needed to keep it up or you’ve just plain run out of time to add new posts each week? Here are seven tips for writing your blog:
1. Find Interesting Content
If you run into an interesting article or blog from another source during your everyday reading or research, you can write a short post introducing the other article. At the end of your short summary explaining why it’s important, include a link to it. If it’s truly interesting, your readers will thank you for sharing it.
2. Create a Calendar
Set aside an hour each week to write a blog or search for an interesting post to add to your website. Add it to your to-do list every week, and you’ll find the time. Don’t forget to allocate time to periodically brainstorm for new topics so you can devote your writing time to actual writing.
3. Organize to Simplify
Break down your schedule to focus on different topics every week. For example, choose the first week of the month to write about industry trends, the second week to write about economic forecasts, the third week for news-related or seasonal pieces and the last week to post a round-up of other blogs related to your business or your location.
4. Invite Guests
Blogs are easier when others write it. Solicit guest posts. Read them over carefully before publishing, but letters of appreciation or customer stories make effective blog posts. Pose questions to experts and then print their responses to give your readers even more in-depth information about your business.
5. Maximize Your Efforts
Whenever you do write a new blog, post it to your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. In fact, it can work both ways. Why should a popular Facebook post be confined to Facebook? Post it (with the discussion) on your blog. Your friends and followers will appreciate some meat in their social links instead of just the day-to-day ramblings that so often fill the social pages.
6. Examine Your Goals
Every quarter or so, stop and review your goals to make sure you’re not spinning your wheels. If you started your blog to inform and educate your customers, are you using it for that purpose? Or have you moved on to actively marketing your business? Or are you using the blog to generate new sales? When you have a clear picture of your audience, it’s easier to write for them and keep topics on target.
7. Hire Us
If your business has taken off, and you no longer have time to write a weekly blog, contact us. We’ll imitate your voice and craft fresh new content every week to fit your calendar.
If you just can’t get motivated to start a business blog but you realize you need one, contact Ray Access, and we’ll handle the whole process, from developing ideas to turning in perfect copy. We guarantee original content, thoroughly researched and professionally edited. It’s what we do.
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 Elle Ray | Oct 20, 2013 | Blog Writing
Your Business Blog Needs Topical Blog Topics
Regardless of what you sell, if you have a business blog, it’s doing three things for you:
- Adds new content to your website, forcing search engines to re-index your website, which helps your page rank.
- Establishes your business as an authority in your field while educating your customers (and prospective customers).
- Attracts new people to your website through keyword searches that may not be directly related to your business.
Halloween is a topical subject right now.
When Is a Topic Topical?
This article focuses on #3. Writing about new topics, topics that may be in the news, allows you to connect with an audience that you hadn’t previously sought. That awareness can help you generate business.
Everyone has an opinion about what’s happening in the world around us. Even businesses can contribute to the conversation. If you sell insurance, for example, shouldn’t you blog about the Affordable Care Act? It’s right in your wheelhouse, as far as topics are concerned, and it should attract some attention on the Internet.
That’s an easy example, but there are many others. If you’re a dentist, you can write something relevant about a Kardashian marriage (or divorce), the dangers of Twinkies, or the price of gold (caps). All these topics have been in the news recently, and your article may attract a new audience.
Topical vs. Evergreen
You should not, however, write only these types of blog posts. Topical articles are terrific, but they often have a short shelf life. Once the Kardashians, Twinkies, or the price of gold are off the headlines, searches for them drop, and so will your traffic.
Instead, sprinkle in topical articles while striving for more informational “evergreen” topics. Evergreen topics are those that have an unlimited shelf life. Whatever your business, you can write to educate your customers about some aspect of it. This kind of useful information will always find an audience.
If you’re an architect, write about matching a design to a specific location. If you’re a banker, write about the perfect client for a loan. If you’re a web developer, write about the newest technology and why it’s applicable to your customers. You get the picture.
We Brainstorm for You
If you already have an active blog, good for you. You understand its value and are working to increase your online visibility. But active bloggers sometimes need help thinking outside the text box. And that’s what we do here at Ray Access.
For a small fee, we will brainstorm 25 blog topics for you — topics that you can write about in the future. We’ll give you both topical and evergreen topics, complete with a title or heading that will attract attention and give you the angle to make the topic interesting and relevant.
And of course, if you need help getting your blog started, we’re the perfect people to turn to, since we write blog posts for a living. We can research, write, edit and deliver a blog post a week for a very reasonable sum. Interested? Contact us for details and a free estimate.
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 Elle Ray | Oct 10, 2013 | Blog Writing
What Your Blog Can Do… and What It Can’t Do
When they first appeared in the late 1990s, blogs were running commentaries of writers’ lives, much like many Twitter and Facebook accounts today. Blogs were seen as one person’s opinion and deemed as little more expert than a diary. Unfortunately, many business people still consider a blog to be a four-letter word: unnecessary and not worthy of investment.
Like most things Internet, however, the blog has evolved and changed. Today, business blog have efficiently replaced the company newsletter in that it can contain news about recent business happenings or convey information on a single subject. Blogs may still contain opinion and commentary, but they are well respected as vehicles for passing along pertinent and sometimes vital communications.
What a Blog Does
Blogs are one of the primary means of communication between professionals today, according to Penn State University. Coupled with technological tools such as RSS feeds, blogs are an inexpensive inclusion in a marketing toolbox. They allow professionals to get their ideas out to their readers easily at little cost. Blogs are short, fact-filled articles that can be sent through email, posted on a website and sent to mobile devices.
The bottom line is that a blog is one of the best vehicles around today to communicate with your audience, whether they are customers, friends or followers. And since most blogs allow comments, the platform gives you an opportunity to connect with that audience, to have an exchange of ideas and to solicit feedback on your services or products.
Blogs vs. Newsletters
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Replace your monthly newsletter with a set of four weekly blog articles (which are called “posts”). You don’t need expensive software to write and publish your posts. Once you have a website, the technology to allow blogs is usually free and quickly learned. Since everyone has a web browser, you don’t have to worry about mailing costs, and since blogs are stored online, you don’t even need a filing cabinet to store your back issues.
Producing a newsletter can be costly. One eight-page monthly newsletter professionally written and laid out can cost you up to $500 a month, and that price only goes up the more clients you have. In other words, newsletter technology doesn’t scale well. Blog posts, on the other hand, can be professionally written and produced for a little as $60 a week. They are much more accessible, and always available, to your clients.
A newsletter requires coordinating multiple articles produced in advance of publication. A blog post, in contrast, can be produced and published on the same day. Even if you post your newsletter to your website, which is always a good idea by the way, adds new content for search engines on a monthly or quarterly basis. While that’s good for search rankings, you can publish a new blog post every week, providing a constant stream of new content and forcing those search engines to re-index your site more frequently.
Blogs Are Better
So forget the old stereotype of what a blog is. It’s gone the way of the www. It’s no longer necessary to produce expensive newsletters. Join the 21st century and jump into the blogosphere. Because it’s not just a good idea; it’s what you need to get noticed. It’s what will set you apart from your competition.
When you’re ready to get started, contact us. We are communication professionals and can offer free advice. Or if you understand the value of a blog, but don’t have the internal resources to create one, can do the writing for 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.
by Mark Bloom | Jun 6, 2013 | Blog Writing
Ray Access Works with You to Write Blog Posts
A common question we get asked is: “How do you go about writing blog posts for a new client?” Before we answer this very good question, let us provide some context.
What’s a Blog?
Blogs — originally called “weblogs” — began in the late 1990s as online diaries. Individuals wrote about their thoughts or experiences. They may have followed a theme or written free-style.
What made blogs different was that they were available to anyone through the Internet. In other words, these diary entries were public. Public and personal.
Business Blogs Arrive
So when business blogs eventually appeared, they had to go through several transmutations. What could a business say in a blog that would remotely seem personal? Businesses initially struggled with that question.
Business blogs matured into vehicles for outreach, consumer education, and industry insight. If they are well written and useful, these blogs reflect the personality of the company. They offer value and provide a place for interaction with some company personnel.
Today, a good business blog attracts search engines and potential customers alike while cementing the company’s authority in its given field. A useful blog benefits the company’s bottom line.
How We Work
So how does a third party, like Ray Access, even attempt to write blog posts for a company? What can a business owner expect from the process?
When we are hired to write a series of blog posts, we meet with company representatives to discover their target audience and dig into their field of expertise. Then we brainstorm a list of possible blog titles or topics. We present this to our client, who approves or selects enough to get us started. The company may also add to the list.
From there, it’s a straightforward process of research, writing, and editing. The first blog post we prepare requires a bit of back-and-forth with our client to refine the tone and the language, but we always present drafts well in advance of our deadlines for just this sort of issue.
Extra Credit
The blog posts we write contain keyword phrases as naturally as possible. Our goal is to prepare blog posts that people can read. Search engines, while important, are not the primary audience. We can also supply an image with the article for no extra charge.
Once our client accepts the blog post, it is usually the company’s responsibility to publish it. Then the cycle repeats itself, getting faster and faster with each iteration. When we run out of approved topics, we brainstorm another list. We will never run out of ideas. Never.
Now that you know how we work, try us out! We’ll even provide an estimate to write your business blog.
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.
