7 Reasons to Create Long Blog Posts

by Mark Bloom | Nov 27, 2018 | Blog Writing

Longer Articles Serve Multiple Purposes for You

The content experts at Ray Access encourage you to write consistently, regardless of the length of each article — as we’ve advised you in the past. Consistent blog posts, delivered every week (or more frequently), help your website rank higher with the search engines. All that extra content helps visitors and search engines alike learn what your business is all about.

Long blog posts can do more than 350- to 500-word articles. Short articles provide just enough space to explain one key point or share a short list of tips or tricks. It’s just too short to delve into a topic or shed real enlightenment about any subject. And the best blog posts — shareable articles — are those long blog posts that educate, inform and entertain.

Research Supports Long Blog Posts

Multiple expert sites suggest that the best length for a blog post is 1,600 words, such as:

One of the reasons this is so perfect is that this length takes an average reader about seven minutes to get through. Most people who find your topic interesting have seven minutes to learn something useful. If it’s any longer, readers tend to lose interest.

How Much Is 1,600 Words?

How much do you have to write to reach 1,600 words? If an average book contains about 250 words per page, then count on 1,600 words fitting close to six and a half pages. The same is true of double-spaced, typewritten pages. That’s much less than a chapter. You can write that.

Another way to look at it is to compare how other documents stack up. For example:

The Declaration of Independence has about 1,450 words.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech has a little more than 1,600 words.
The average 10-minute speech has 1,500 words.
This blog post contains approximately 1600 words.

The Long and Short of It

It still holds true that consistency wins the long race for gaining exposure, which is a vital first step toward generating new business. If you post on your blog regularly, you quickly build up a treasure trove of excellent resources for your customers and potential customers. And every blog post, long or short, stays on your website forever for anyone who wants to find it.

Even if your blog posts are short, around 500 words, they can still offer benefits to your website. But they need to be useful to your customers. They need to explain your point of view clearly, and it’s best if you write about topics that aren’t widely available. Give your audience real value, and they’ll remember you. They’re more likely to return in the future.

On the other hand, you have more opportunities in your long blog posts to build your case. It’s one thing to share your opinion on a matter of relevance to your customers. It’s another to back it up with research. A longer post packs more punch. It’s more persuasive. And that’s often the reason you write blog posts: to share information, tips and insights so that when your readers are ready to buy what you sell, they’ll think of you.

Why Everyone Doesn’t Write Long Blog Posts

Long blog posts are inherently more difficult to write. They take more time to complete than short blog posts. But since longer posts are proven to have a better response rate than shorter ones, it’s a trade-off in terms of what’s better for drawing people to your website. Of course, your results may vary. Your blog posts still need to be entertaining, engrossing reads.

Additionally, not every topic deserves 1,600 words. You need to dig deeper to find those juicy topics that your customers may find interesting and worth their time. If you’re a plumber, write about a common problem, and offer a number of reasonable solutions that don’t involve “call your plumber.” If you’re an accountant, a list of year-end tasks could make a valuable long blog post.

7 Reasons to Write Long Blog Posts

And now for the primary purpose of this blog post: to share with you why we recommend that you write long blog posts at least occasionally. Find some extra time once a month to craft a blog post that approaches 1,600 words. Here are the reasons why:

Search engines like long blog posts. As research progresses year by year, the top-ranked sites had longer and longer content. Several years ago, a 900-word blog post may have received top marks, now it’s 1,600 words, and the mark seems to get a little longer every year. If you write long blog posts for no other reason, this one is compelling, since writing blog posts is a way of attracting readers and search engines in almost equal measure.
Longer articles keep visitors on your website for a longer period. If you’re writing engaging content in your blog posts, readers are more likely to read until the very end, which keeps them on your website. This fact matters because other studies have confirmed that the longer a visitor stays on your website, the more likely that person is to buy from you.
You can cover a topic completely in a longer post. As mentioned earlier, you have the space to go into depth about the topic you’re covering in a long article. In a longer piece, you can set up the situation, walk readers through your points, one by one, so that by the end of the article, you have persuaded your audience to adopt your advice. That’s the essence of successful rhetorical writing.
Your readers stand to gain a greater ROI for their time. In other words, your audience gains a greater understanding of your arguments or your reasons for following your recommendations. If they follow you all the way to the end of the article, their payoff should be exponentially greater than that from a much shorter article. Make sure that remains true; reward your readers for reaching the end.
Your website can stand out from the crowd. Because most businesses don’t create long blog posts, yours will automatically stand out. While some marketing experts, like Neil Patel, suggest creating 3,000-word blog posts, which is all well and good if you have the kind of subject matter that holds up for a good 15-minute read! We believe that a 1,600-word bog post gives you enough space and your readers enough time to absorb your topic. This length also keeps you as the writer from rambling or diverging onto other topics.
Longer articles are more popular. They also exhibit longer staying power. The reason is that long, rich content is shared more than the short bursts of opinion that short blog posts too often contain. Marketers have determined that blog posts longer than 1,500 words are shared more on social media sites. As odd as that sounds, research has backed it up.
Practice makes perfect. Writing is a craft; the more you do it, the better you get. Your first long blog post may not turn out great, but with practice, you will improve. Additionally, if you get in the habit of writing long blog posts now, even occasionally, you’ll be more likely not to blanche at the prospect of writing a white paper or even a book. If you don’t want to put the time in, just ask Ray Access to write it for you.

If You Do It, Do It Right

Almost everyone can write, but not everyone can write a long blog post and write it well. Remember that you’re writing for people first, not search engines. Keywords are fine to use, but don’t overstuff your article with them. At Ray Access, our recommended use is one percent density — that is, once every 100 words or so. We’ve written about best practices for using keywords before.

Also, keep your article moving forward. Break it up with subheadings, as we do in this blog post. Make every word count. Extraneous fluff gets in the way. Say what you want, and say it in your own voice. Readers will connect with you and be more likely to follow you to the end. And that should always be your goal.

Final Thoughts from Professional Writers

With so much evidence on the benefits of long blog posts, you should start writing them right away. They’ll attract more attention and keep visitors on your website longer. Longer blog posts that are also engaging and pertinent to your audience should lead to more sales and a greater name recognition for your business. As professional blog writers, we can vouch for the efficacy of writing long articles for your website.

Then again, if your long blog posts are well-written, well-constructed, interesting and informative, the ultimate length may not matter that much. So don’t set out to write exactly 1,600 words. Instead, concentrate on the content. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short so your readers have white space to rest their eyes as they make their way through your masterpiece.

Addendum: By the way, did you realize that a list of seven items is perfect? More items on the list and your readers won’t be able to remember them all. Too few items on a list means it’s not as valuable — at least in the minds of your readers. The magic rule is: seven, plus or minus two. So when you’re writing your next blog post, regardless how long it is, strive for that magic number. Another solid tip from the experts 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.

It’s Not All About You

by Elle Ray | Nov 20, 2018 | Website Content

Make Your About Us Page Relevant to Visitors

Craft your About Us page for your website visitors

Most websites have an About page. If you don’t, consider building one. Certain elements of websites have come to be considered standard, and visitors rely on that commonality to find certain information.

On the About Us page, they learn who you are, what you’re all about and who plays a role in your company’s operations. Customers like to do business with people they like and trust. And yes, the focus is on people. So your About page is not the place to go into more detail about your company, your products or services. It’s where you tell your story.

Are You Relatable?

So even though the About Us page technically is about the origins of your company, your own background and the various team members who make up your company, it’s really about your customers. Sound confusing and contradictory? Well, that’s because it is. And this seems to be the most difficult concept to get across to business owners and their content writers.

Sure, the About Us Page is about you, but its primary — and some might insist only — purpose is to get potential customers comfortable with you or to get clients to relate to you. After all, who doesn’t want to support a small business owner from your hometown or who went to the same college? Why someone buys from you and not the next guy is just as much about who you are as what you are selling!

So Give It to Them

Understanding your target market is as important as ever when you sit down to compose your About Us page. You can’t very well give your potential clients information they can relate to if you don’t know who they are. At the same time, you usually don’t want to alienate potential buyers who may not be like you or really don’t like much about you — but do like your products or services.

Your ultimate goal has to be reaching as many potential clients as possible with every page on your website. To do that, stay away from certain topics. You’re going to dig up more harm than good if you include:

Religious affiliations
Political opinions or party memberships
Sexual orientation
Ethnic background

More forgivable aspects of you and your background might include your college; even arch-rivals could turn out to be great customers. Other information on your company website should read most like a friendly bio and include such things as:

How long you’ve been in business
The history of your company
What kind of experience you bring to your work
Where you’re from originally
Why you located to the area you’re in now and what you like about it
What you enjoy most about your industry

Include your team when planning your About Us page

Added bonus features might include (for fun and profit):

Hobbies
Family
Kooky anecdote
Nickname
Favorite food

Consider the Source

Your About Us page is like a resume of sorts. It’s the place where you put your best foot forward. It’s also a great place to put your mission statement and vision. It’s just not the place to be shy or humble — other than to praise your fellow workers or those who came before you in the company.

Speak about yourself and your team in terms of what you can do for your website visitors. Give them more reasons to buy from you. Make your About Us page an important part of your overall marketing strategy. And if you find it too hard to write about yourself in glowing terms, call us. We’ll tell your visitors just how great, unique, caring, funny, hardworking, compassionate and precise you really are!

Need Blog Ideas? Read This First!

by Mark Bloom | Nov 13, 2018 | Blog Writing

Blog Ideas Generator for Business Blog Writers

If you identify as a business blog writer and you get paid for your efforts, congratulations: you are a professional writer. You can wear that badge with pride. But it can also be a burden, as you have to come up with blog topics to write about every week. Even the best professional writers sometimes don’t know where to turn when the well seems to run dry.

The good news is that the well never really runs dry. Stop digging and look around. Ideas are everywhere. Here is all you need to know when you hit a temporary roadblock: a blog ideas generator you can refer to whenever you feel the need — because like all things digital, this blog post is available online all the time.

Is a Blog Ideas Generator a Device?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just whip out a doohickey every time you got stuck, and it would supply you with countless ideas? Well, that doohickey exists, and you have it in your hands. It’s called a smartphone. Connect to the internet and ask it any question you want, including:

What should I write about today?
What’s trending in the news?
Why did I choose to become a writer?
What is a blog ideas generator anyway?

Bam! You’ll get instant answers (true or not) to your question. That becomes fodder for your imagination and grist for you to write about. You can even find websites dedicated to sparking your creativity — just search for “writing inspiration” and away you go. But there are other ways to generate ideas, as well.

Get Up, Stand Up

Sitting at a computer in a room is like solitary confinement. It’s easy enough to pass the time, but it doesn’t always spark your imagination or provide ideas for your next blog post — unless you’re in a room with a panoramic view. So whenever you feel stifled, stand up and get outside!

Take a walk, either in the city or better yet into nature. There’s something about wandering among trees, strolling through a field or hiking in a desert that brings ideas to mind. Get past the immediate concerns, such as:

I wish I’d remembered to wear shoes.
I’m really thirsty.
Why is that man wielding an axe?

You’ll eventually get to a deeper place. It may be ironic, but getting out helps you dig inward. The act of walking is in itself a blog ideas generator. Exploit it, and you’ll not only find ideas worth writing about, but you’ll improve your health as well.

Don’t Get Boxed In

Coming up with fresh ideas means thinking outside that proverbial square thing we all get trapped in occasionally. If your box is full of medical ideas, think of sports, the economy or fashion. When you feel free to explore another topic, new ideas emerge. This kind of blog ideas generator allows you to combine seemingly disparate genres and combine them into something fresh.

In fact, most breakthroughs happen today when two different fields of expertise are somehow combined. Think of socioeconomics or biotechnology. This technique works to inspire you to write engaging new blog topics, maybe even ones that no one else has ever thought to write about before.

Forget Everything

Perhaps the best piece of advice is the one most often overlooked. Professional writers and successful authors all adhere to it, and you can follow their lead very simply. What’s that advice? Just write.

That’s all there is to it. If you think of yourself as a writer, sit down and write. What comes out at first may be garbage, but maybe you just need to clear away the cobwebs to reach the treasure. If you write often enough and long enough, you will eventually get to “the juice:” the mood or mental place where writing gold awaits. Go for it. Expect it to be there and you’ll find it.

Or take a break and read some rules for writing magnificent stuff from Ash Ambirge’s The Middle Finger Project. No matter what you do, if you’re a writer, you’ll find a way to a blog ideas generator that works for you. We know — because that’s our cross to bear too, as well as our reason for being here. Happy digging!

Keep Them Coming Back

by Elle Ray | Nov 6, 2018 | Website Content

How to Get Visitors to Bookmark Your Website

Marketing and sales professionals say that your best prospects are those clients who’ve purchased something from you before. It’s not difficult to get them to keep coming back if they were satisfied with your product or service — as long as they finished the transaction feeling appreciated for their business.

Stay with us — this isn’t another how-to article about how to get your customers to buy more from you. There are plenty of those missives out there that you can read. Sales advice is readily available.

Instead, we’d like to tackle a slightly different angle: getting readers to keep coming back to your website. After all, your business website is where you convert potential customers into repeat customers. It’s where you get many of your referrals and where you solidify your position in your clients’ psyche.

Stay Relevant

When you become known as the place to find the most up-to-date information about your industry, trends or location, visitors keep coming back to stay updated. Once you reach this pinnacle of relevance, your site gets bookmarked and shared.

New content on a regular basis is one way to stay relevant and trendy. Highlight those blog posts that garner the most traffic to your site and write more on that topic. Ride every trend until it stops being popular.

Make It Worthwhile

Give your clients and avid followers something to keep coming back for. Try everything from coupons to shared gossip. When you find a popular carrot, keep serving it up to your readers. Just as trendy topics are good for more than one blog post, deals work the same way. Just don’t make the mistake of using your blog strictly to pass on deals for your products or services. If you plan on offering a deal, share the love and promote some of your partners or community nonprofits.

And that brings us to community building efforts. This topic makes worthwhile content in your blog posts. Engage your readers with promotions and contests. Offer to donate $1 to a local charity for every like you get on your Facebook page.

Share a Joke

Worthwhile content may include a new meme every day about the news, such as the elections or lottery jackpots. Take a shot at the latest television shows that take themselves too seriously. When sharing jokes or cartoons, however, keep in mind that not all your clients appreciate the same type of humor. Topics such as politics and religion really need to stay off your website, unless that’s your business.

But when you give readers something to laugh about, it may be a welcome break. Even entertaining stories or weird news you’ve picked up through research or by accident can make your audience appreciate escaping from the mundane aspects of life that keep us all bogged down.

Uplift and Carry On

All in all, the more positive your blog posts and website content can be, the more inclined readers are to keep coming back for more. Negative, derogatory and defamatory posts and rants may make for one memorable visit, but few people want to return for more.

Even when you spot a stream of visitors that enjoy negativity, is that really who you want to keep coming back? Is that who you can ultimately turn into loyal customers who love your products and services? Will they tell everyone they know about you and your website? Probably not. So our advice is to use your platform to uplift, not bring down.

And if you need help creating the type of blog you want, contact Ray Access. We can create uplifting content for you and even publish it on your website.

Content Marketing and SEO in the Real World

by Mark Bloom | Oct 30, 2018 | Content Marketing

How Can Content Marketing and SEO Co-Exist?

Here’s a true story, brought to us — and now to you — by one of our new clients. We won’t mention any names to protect everyone’s privacy. Since the story relates to all businesses, our client’s industry, location and size don’t even matter.

Every business needs to attract new customers, and many use content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) to achieve results online. Content marketing can’t replace SEO, but SEO can’t be effective without content marketing. While they have to co-exist, your business has to find a workable balance between them.

Differences and Similarities

Both content marketing and SEO are inexact sciences. Both take some time to take effect and pay off. Both use the power of internet searches to prove that your business is the best option to the potential customers searching for products or services like yours. Yet each serves a slightly different purpose:

SEO uses various techniques to bring visitors to your website. It delivers visibility, so people can actually find your website. And a good SEO expert or firm makes sure your website attracts the right kind of people: those who may buy from you.
Content marketing, on the other hand, provides relevant information in a way that website visitors can understand and digest. It answers questions and builds trust. It’s content marketing that persuades visitors to actually take action and contact your business.

SEO Services Can’t Do Everything

Content marketing and SEO relate to each other, but neither can ignore the other, and that’s the crux of this story. In this case, the client was working with an SEO expert, who was doing everything he knew to perfect the visibility of the client’s website. Some of these techniques included:

Doing keyword research to pick the most appropriate phrases to target
Providing backlinks, linking to the company site from other reputable websites
Identifying website pages to ensure that the site covers all the necessary bases

The issues began when the client questioned the SEO expert. It wasn’t about the results, as they hadn’t even progressed that far. The SEO expert was only concerned with optimizing the site, as that’s the focus of SEO. But the client wanted an appealing site, too, one the company could be proud of.

When the SEO expert claimed the look and feel of the website wasn’t important, the client felt offended, and the relationship spiraled downhill from there. Now, we’re not stating that all SEO experts act this way. Most base their techniques on solid research. But even SEO experts disagree on strategy among themselves.

Business Requires Trust as Well as Results

The client made the painful (and expensive) decision to release the SEO expert. It meant admitting the relationship was irreparably damaged. It meant acknowledging that the money already paid was spent in vain. It meant that the client still had to find a way to market the business, somehow bringing content marketing and SEO into harmony.

Enter Ray Access. The client contacted us and presented the dilemma. While a content marketing firm like Ray Access can produce website and blog content to get the business noticed, we’re not in the SEO business. We don’t provide backlinks or track traffic.

How Content Marketing and SEO Work Together

So the client wanted to be sure that we could help the business move toward its goals of growth. Can content marketing replace SEO? No. But content marketing builds long-lasting, organic value, meaning that once it’s in place, the value of the content stays high for a long period of time. If it’s done correctly, content marketing answers the questions potential customers are typing into their search engines.

Every business website needs compelling content to present its case to motivate visitors to respond with a call or email message. Content marketing and SEO both work to bring visitors to the site, although content marketing’s strategy is more inbound-focused than outbound-focused. But SEO alone can’t help visitors once they arrive on the site. Content marketing creates the environment that turns visitors into customers.

Contact Ray Access today to discover how content marketing can help your business.

The Difference Between On-Site Blog Content and Off-Site Content

by Guest Blogger | Oct 23, 2018 | Content Marketing

For SEO, Use Both On-Site and Off-Site Content

Effective content creation for both on-site and off-site platforms has never been more important to the performance of your SEO campaign. The right content delivered at the right time in the right way can make all the difference to your bottom line. But the question is: are you doing it right?

Well-crafted on-site content can help strengthen your brand’s message and highlight your industry expertise. But you’ll also need to produce creative off-site content to help your business secure the best online coverage. In other words, spreading your message across a range of off-site publications increases your online rankings while amplifying your brand.

How Online Ranking Works

When done correctly, effective on-site content can increase your website’s search rankings. If you’re looking to become the go-to brand/service for your prospective customers, it’s crucial that you appear at the top of the online results page. But it’s no longer enough just to publish on your own website.

Google, the leading search engine, recently updated its search quality rating guidelines. This act has had a profound impact on the way content is created and used. In its revised 166-page document, Google has stated that it’s now paying greater attention to what users are searching for and what information they end up reading.

The tech-giant wants to focus on enhancing the user experience across its platform. The changes it has introduced reinforced this statement and initiative, which has had a ripple effect for content creators and marketers around the world.

Blogs Support On-Site Content

Ultimately, blog content on your business website supports your visitors’ journey, while providing them with the most insightful information for making good decisions. Blogs also support your website visitors when making a purchase, as they see you as a more trustworthy figure. There are a few techniques you can use to make sure your on-site blog content performs exceptionally well, such as:

Understand your audience. The first step to creating blog content is to understand who reads it — usually, this is your main demographic who already have an interest in your products or services. Although you’ve positioned yourself as an authoritative figure, you need to speak to your website visitors as if they’re on your level for both acquisition and retention purposes.
Write with clarity. Avoid any industry jargon, as this can be an instant turn-off for your readers. Be transparent with your audience and provide the information they need in a concise way that still delivers the same level of information.
Differentiate yourself. Use your blog content as a way to tell your audience that you’re better than your competitors. You can achieve this by showing off your unique selling proposition — whether it includes next-day delivery or a lengthy warranty on your products. If your article delivers useful information, your readers won’t mind you being slightly advertorial, as your products and services can be beneficial.
Create links. Internal links are a must in your blog post, but only if they’re relevant. If you’re discussing a certain product or service that you offer, you should link to the relevant website page to give readers more information and to help improve the overall page authority of the blog post.
End with a call to action. It’s essential that you close your blog post with a specific call to action. If a reader has made it all the way through your article, they’re already invested in your business and are more likely to perform that action.

Off-Site Content Serves a Different Purpose

Creating off-site content is completely different from publishing blog posts for your business website. In this case, you’re not trying to appeal to your customers, but to journalists and major publications that can drive authority (and traffic) to your website. Off-site content gives you the ability to increase your brand visibility.

It may require a full team of innovative and creative people to come up with outreach ideas to support an SEO campaign. You must carry out extensive research into what is relevant in the news. This can allow you to see what type of content journalists are looking for and what’s currently working well in terms of online coverage.

Off-Site Content Goals

For your off-site content, aim to create articles for publications that cover different niches. For example, an article that discusses how technology has improved health and safety in the workplace would appeal to technology, business and HR websites, all of which can improve your link-building strategy for your online marketing campaigns.

You should also create content around national or international events or celebrations. Editors are more likely to pick up this type of content because it will appeal to a wider audience and generate an overall buzz. You may have seen this with the World Cup recently; you’ll soon see the same with the upcoming holiday season.

Final Thoughts

Publications and journalists don’t take content pieces that are too advertorial; they want to provide readers with content that’s informative and unbiased. But that’s not to say they won’t credit you with either a brand mention or a link to one of your target pages.

Although content creation for both on-site and off-site may look similar, they’re very different in tone, format and objective. Target your on-site content to inform your readers and your off-site content to market your brand.

Georgie White is a copywriter at a digital marketing agency in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. After completing his traineeship at the National Youth Film Academy and finishing his studies in Creative Media Production, Georgie transitioned to Mediaworks in August 2017, where he uses his creative flare to write unique content for a range of clients from all different industries.

Get Out of Your Own Way

by Elle Ray | Oct 16, 2018 | Writing

How to Write from Your Heart to Touch Readers

The heart knows more than you may give it credit for. You’ve often heard expressions like “the heart knows what it wants” and “the heart wants what it wants.” These sentiments usually are spoken when referring to romantic affairs of the heart, not about how to write.

But if you consider the strength of your convictions as valuable when it comes to your love life, why in the world can’t you trust that same heartfelt intuition to serve you just as well as when you create? Intuition is one of the greatest powers human have. When you learn how to tap into that well of knowledge, you’ll realize that you can learn how to write like a pro.

Stop Thinking

Thinking certainly has its place in polite society. You may have a reason to ponder the miracles of the universe, how the human body works and why some people are mean. And it’s been proven that negative thinking often plays itself out in the grand scheme, leading to less-than-desirable consequences. Positive thinking, on the other hand, often delivers in favorable results.

But neither positive nor negative thinking helps you learn how to write. If you buy into the negative notion that you’ll never be able to write, you won’t. Conversely, if you put positive vibes toward the truth that you too can write and write well, it may not lead you to inspiration. So when it comes to writing, it’s time to take off the thinking cap and just listen.

Intuit It

Dictionary.com defines intuition as: “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” Since intuition sits below the threshold of your consciousness, thinking may only get in the way of understanding what you already know. And writing is one of those communication methods that’s ingrained into your subconscious from the time you learn the alphabet.

Consider how you read when thinking about how to write. Just as you don’t need to spell out each word and access some inner dictionary as you read this page, you don’t need to analyze each word, thought, idea and concept as it leaves your fingertips. Whether you use a keyboard, a pen or a speech-recognition program, the process of writing can move just as smoothly as the subconscious process you use to read!

Let It Flow

After talking to countless intelligent people who say they would rather dig a ditch in the middle of summer rather than write a 500-word blog post, we are convinced that thinking can only get in your way when it comes to writing. So how exactly does it work? Follow these simple steps and you too will be able to knock out 500 words with ease:

Sit still and clear your mind of everything except the idea of what you want to write. You can’t even begin the process of how to write until you first allow your intuition to provide you with a title, idea or concept. Brainstorming is a great technique to nudge this along.
Place your hands in the home position on your keyboard. If you don’t use a keyboard, open your notebook and take up your pen.
Have a conversation with the paper. It’s your listener right now. It has no judgement. It’s only there to serve you as you allow your inner knowing to spill out onto it.

How to Write Now

By kicking out all the barriers to your writing project — including your intrusive judgements — the words flow. At Ray Access, we often hire smart, intellectually stimulated writers. And we can always tell when they’re thinking too much. It makes their writing disjointed or convoluted. When they get out of the way and have an intimate conversation about what they’ve learned though their research, the words flow over the page.

And when the words flow smoothly during the writing process, those same words flow smoothly into the reader’s brain. Write the first words that come out of your fingers; there’s a good chance that it’s the right word more often than not. And when it’s not, you’ll discover any flaws in word usage or intent during the edit. Remember:

“Editors think, writers intuit.”

How to Take a Vacation When You Own a Business

by Mark Bloom | Oct 9, 2018 | Small Business Advice

You Need a Vacation for Small Business Owners

When you own your own business, it’s a 24-hour-a-day job. Small business owners have to wear many hats — managers, salesmen, customer service representatives, bookkeepers, marketers and more. You name it, and business owners have to take care of it. So what about a vacation for small business owners? How is it even possible, given the never-ending responsibilities?

Vacations, or any kind of downtime, are vital. All that pressure to succeed, with the entire company depending on your focused attention, puts a tremendous strain on your mind and your body if you’re a small business owner. You need time to recharge. You need a change of scenery to rejuvenate. You need the space to reset your brain so you can more easily overcome future obstacles.

The Burnout Dangers Are Real

According to Small Business Trends, 77 percent of small business owners suffer from some form of burnout. As many as 80 percent of small businesses fail within 10 years. Stress contributes to that figure.

Burnout does more than reduce your effectiveness on the job. It interferes with your passion and changes your priorities. Burnout can lead to failure, according to a 2016 Medium.com report. Small business owners, along with many office workers in the country, often work more than 60 hours in a typical week, which adds to the stress.

Taking a Vacation for Small Business Owners

Since 98 percent say a vacation for small business owners relieves stress, you need to find a way to make vacations happen for you. If you’ve learned to schedule uninterrupted work time, you can schedule a vacation. If you’re a solopreneur, you may have some additional hoops to jump through, but arguably, a solopreneur needs the time away even more than other business owners.

To encourage you to take a vacation for yourself, the co-founders of Ray Access have created this blog post to explore some tips for getting away — and making the most of the time away that you have. Not all the tips below may apply to you, but it’s our hope that you’ll learn something new and gain the wisdom to apply it.

Tips to Maximize Your Vacation

Put it on your schedule. Don’t pencil it in; chisel it into stone. A vacation for small business owners can only come about if you take it as seriously as a meeting with a new client. Once it’s on the calendar, schedule around it.
Take the time you can. If you can only get away for a weekend — or better, a long weekend — take it. Go away someplace, even if it’s the next state or the next county. The change in scenery matters, as does the change in routine. These changes break established patterns, allowing you to regroup even in a short amount of time.
Do something different. You don’t have to cram your vacation full of activity to force you to forget your day-to-day duties, but change up your environment. If you work daily on a computer, go camping or take a hike into nature. If you live in the plains, get to the mountains or the beach for a different kind of fun.
Leave someone you trust in charge. If you have a business partner, let them carry the ball while you’re away. If you have a trusted employee, leave her in charge. For solopreneurs, this isn’t always possible — and you may have to rely on your auto-reply for a couple days.
Use technology … lightly. If you must, put aside time every day you’re away — but no more than 30 to 60 minutes — for work-related activities, such as writing emails, making phone calls or reading status reports.
Alert your clients. Schedule your vacation for small business owners when you don’t have a pressing deadline or project milestone. Tell all your clients that you’ll be away. Let them know when you’ll be back. They’ll understand and appreciate your honesty.

You’ll be amazed what some downtime can do for you. You’ll regain your edge and refresh your passion. You may even think of new ways to do things or new products or services to offer. Time away from your daily chores frees your mind and relaxes your body. Don’t wait until burnout strikes; take a vacation for small business owners to save and revitalize your business!

Overcoming Writer’s Block with Automated Transcription

by Guest Blogger | Sep 24, 2018 | Writing

Use Automated Transcription to Break Through

If you’re a writer — of books, essays, scripts, blog posts, whatever — you’re likely familiar with the phenomenon of the blank screen, a looming deadline and a sinking feeling in your gut that pairs poorly with the jug of coffee you drank earlier.

If you know that rumble all too well, maybe this blog post will help you get out of your rut. At the very least, it’s good for a few minutes of procrastination. The core idea is that thinking out loud is less arduous than writing. And it’s now easier than ever to combine the two, thanks to recent advances in speech recognition technology and automated transcription software.

Introducing Automated Transcription

Dictation is nothing new, and plenty of writers have taken advantage of it. Carl Sagan’s voluminous output was facilitated by his process of speaking into an audio recorder, to be transcribed later by an assistant. And software like Dragon’s Naturally Speaking has offered automated transcription for people with the patience and budget to pursue it.

But it’s only been in the last couple of years that automated transcription has reached a sweet spot — of convenience, affordability and accuracy — that makes it practical to use it more casually. It’s useful for generating a first draft. It presents an alternative approach to the painful process of converting the nebulous wisps inside your head into something you can actually work with. This process is called idea extraction.

Part I: Extraction

Here’s how the automated transcription process works. Since everyone is different, borrow what works for you and forget the rest :

Pick a voice recorder and start talking. Try it with a topic you’ve been chewing on for weeks or for an idea that flits into your head. Don’t overthink it; just start blabbing.
The goal is to tug on as many threads as you come across and follow them as far as they go. These threads may lead to meandering tangents, and you may discover new ideas along the way.
A lot of your new ideas may be embarrassingly bad. That’s all right. You’re already talking about the next thing! Unlike when you’re dealing with text, your bad ideas aren’t staring you in the face.
Consider leaving comments to yourself as you go. For example, “Maybe that’d work for the intro.” Your notes come in handy later.
These recordings can run anywhere from 20 to 80 minutes. Sometimes, they’re much shorter, in quick succession. Whatever works for you.

Part II: Transcription

Once you’ve finished recording, it’s time to harness the Power of Technology! The last couple of years have seen an explosion of tools related to automatic speech recognition (ASR), thanks to huge steps forward in the underlying technologies. When you import your audio file into the ASR software, it uses state-of-the-art machine learning to spit back a text transcript a few minutes later. That transcript won’t be perfect — the robots are currently in the “Write drunk” phase of their careers. But for your purposes, it’s good enough. You just need to be able to recognize your ideas.

Once you have your automated transcript, your next step is up to you. You can:

Export your transcript as a Word document and revise it from there.
Fire up your voice recorder again to dictate a more polished take.
Recognize that only a few words in your audio are worth keeping. That’s all right, too, since it didn’t take you too much time.

Tips for Perfecting Your Transcription

Use a recorder device or app that you trust. Losing a recording is painful — and the anxiety of losing another can derail your most exciting creative moments.
Audio quality matters when it comes to automated transcription. If your recording has a lot of background noise or you’re speaking far away from the microphone, accuracy is going to drop. Consider using earbuds or Airpods, so you can worry less about where you’re holding the recorder.
Find a comfortable space.You’ll find it a lot easier to let your mind “go for a walk” when you’re alone and comfortable in your environment.
Speaking of walking: why not go for a stroll? The pains of writing can have just as much to do with being stationary and hunched over. Walking gets your blood flowing — and your ideas too.
If you’re musical, try playing a familiar tune while your mind wanders. There’s something about playing the same four-chord song on auto pilot for the thousandth time. It keeps your hands busy and lets your mind go to new places.

The old ways of doing things — whether it’s with a keyboard or a pen — still have their advantages. Putting words to a page can force linear thinking that’s otherwise difficult to maintain. But for getting those first crucial paragraphs down, for building keystone ideas into concepts and paragraphs, consider talking to yourself. It will jumpstart your writing, help you overcome writer’s block and give you more ideas for future work.

This article about automated transcription was originally published by Descript. It appears here with the author’s permission.

How to Fill a Slump

by Elle Ray | Sep 15, 2018 | Small Business Advice

What You Can Do When Your Business Slows

Every industry has them, and every small business owner experiences them. Slumps hit whenever business is slow; it seems to occur every year. Slumps may be cyclical for you — whether due to the holiday season or the summer season. Or you may never know when or why business crawls for a week or two. You may be one of the lucky ones and only get hit with a slump at infrequent times, like once a year or so.

Whether you know in advance or just reach a little waiting period between projects, you need to have a plan for what to do when business is slow. Waiting until it happens and then scrambling to keep employees busy or worrying about the bills is not fruitful — nor is it the best way to run a successful enterprise.

As Ben Franklin was fond of saying: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Forecast: Stormy and Calm

Like weather forecasters, humans and their algorithms and predictors can only go so far. They provide accurate predictions only so often. So while you may know that September is hurricane season since you live in a coastal community, you recognize the value of having an emergency evacuation plan in hand. But you still need to know how to react when the big one hits in August or October!

Wall Street may give you a clue as to when you can expect an economic slump for which you can prepare, but financial wizards can’t tell when business is slow in your neighborhood with certainty that’s as clear. You may rely on experienced brokers and the latest technology to give you forecasts based on historical data and market research, but when business is slow for no apparent reason, all that investment may seem like redundancies and wasted resources.

J.R.R. Tolkien seemed to have his finger on the pulse of American business when he said: “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”

It’s Not If, But When

Even the brightest financial prognosticators encourage business owners to keep a little back — to include a contingency plan for when business is slow through no apparent economic, cultural, political or earth-shaking disaster. And while the best mindset for successfully running a business is one that’s positive and optimistic, it never hurts to give way to the realistic left-brain side of your mind and prepare for a time when business is slow.

Use that time wisely, shore up your energy and keep up the optimistic forecasts even when business is slow by following a few creative and common-sense tips, such as:

Turn to your clients and use the time when business is slow to recognize them with a little extra attention or a limited special deal.
Know and become proficient in every aspect of your business so that you can fill in when business is slow. When business is booming, you may not have the bandwidth to pay outside contractors for every little job in your company.
Keep a training program or two in storage. When business is slow and you don’t want to resort to layoffs, put your staff through these training processes when everyone has time, not when they’re busy filling orders.
Diversify your services. Create new offerings that serve to fill the gap the next time you get in a slump. Time is now available to get together with your partner or leadership team to brainstorm in a creative session.
Lay out your marketing strategy for a complete review. Check the analytics on your social media campaigns, look at the number of views your blogs are getting and see how long visitors are staying on your website. Then decide what and how to change.
Ditch the analytics when business is slow and go with some new, outrageous marketing ploy you’ve always wanted to try. Just like the weatherman and his Doppler radar, marketing analytics aren’t always right!
Revisit your staffing needs. Meet with key HR staff or look at the performances of your employees to see how you can better use them. Or contemplate which ones may be best left off your payroll for good because they weren’t really doing all that well anyway.
Dust off your going-to-a-meeting outfit and do some networking if you’ve let that part of your marketing go in lieu of business demands. Find some new networking opportunities and get out and shake hands, pass out business cards and get to know your neighbors.

Plant the Seeds Today

Risk management is not a dirty word, nor is it negative. In fact, forethought is always a positive, proactive frame upon which to base your actions from week to week, especially when you’re the boss. When business is slow, it’s exactly the right time to work harder.

Alternatively, if you’re really a flexible Frankie, you may want to use the time to go fishing or take that trip you’ve been putting off for a while. With 24/7 connectivity, no one even has to know you’re not in the office when business clamors once again for your immediate attention.

When it comes to business planning, Ray Access follows the advice from one of our financial heroes, Warren Buffet: “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

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