SEO 101

by Guest Blogger | Feb 14, 2017 | Social Media

Use Social Networking to Boost Website Traffic

On its own, writing stellar content for your website isn’t going to make you any money. You need to figure out a way to attract potential clients to your website, who can be converted into dollars. This is the ultimate goal of every business.

SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. SEO measures how optimized your website is for the search engines that offer it up when someone types in a related search query. SEO is a huge factor in making sure you get traffic to your site — and more specifically, the right kind of traffic, people who are looking for you to solve their problems or answer their questions.

If your website isn’t generating a profit, then you need to ask yourself some hard questions — for example, what benefit does it really have for your business? No need to panic if you’re still waiting for a breakthrough; you’ll find the most important SEO factors below, along with some hands-on techniques that you can put to use right away to increase the traffic to your website. So, without further ado, read on to discover how to increase your website traffic with SEO tips.

Promotion Is King

One way to promote your website is by paying for online ads in hope of snatching a client once they land on your page. This model can be a huge money pit. And as soon as you stop paying for online ads, usually the traffic to your site drops like a rock. It’s also frustrating because it can cost more to lure people to your website than the revenue they bring in. This is the reason to stop paying for traffic and get people to be interested in your website organically. In other words, attract people because of your content, not because of your ads. The most rewarding solution to paid marketing is content marketing or blogging.

While it’s easier said than done to “just create great content,” it’s possible to build on that concept. The truth is that there’s way more to SEO than just writing content. One piece of the puzzle is attracting attention by proactively positioning your articles to be seen by your audience. It’s really no different from dating. You can be the best-looking person with all sorts of positive attributes. But if you never leave your home, you won’t meet other people to date!

The Real Purpose of Content Marketing

Even if you attract a boatload of visitors, it means nothing to your business unless those visitors become paying clients. Getting thousands of likes and shares for well-written content isn’t your number one goal. The real purpose of any website is to support your domain authority — and, let’s be honest, to make you money.

Most of your visitors who become clients typically look for answers to questions about your industry or about your business. For example, they might search for the term: “homes for sale in Asheville” or “best dentist in New Jersey.” It can be difficult to rank for these types of search terms as the competition can be fierce. But by supporting your website pages, linking to them from your blog, you can help them to rank higher.

What Drives SEO?

In the past five years, Google has totally revolutionized how their algorithm works — how they decide how to serve up the list of search results. Many SEO techniques that worked before have had to be abandoned or changed to fit new standards. Today, there are at least 200 factors that affect the rankings of a website. It’s still generally agreed among SEO experts that having inbound links from other websites helps rankings.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t like websites that it catches manipulating their rankings by creating untrustworthy (or “spammy”) links back to their site. Link-building still exists, though, and it’s a vital part of SEO. But by all means, you must make sure that the links are pointing towards your site from a credible source with a legitimate reason.

After all, Google is right about the value of creating good content to rank your website. What they forgot to tell you is that good content is only one part of the puzzle. Getting other people to link to your articles is the mountain that needs to be climbed. Lacking the endorsement of other websites is what’s keeping your website from being ranked on page one of Google.

Promote Your Content Like Your Life Depended on It

One way to get others to link to you is by creating such amazing content that it gets picked up by others — and it goes “viral.” This approach is known as the hope-and-pray method. Usually, it’s a very unreliable way of running a business.

You can easily turn blogging into a full-time job and write content until your face turns blue. But unless you already have an established group of followers to promote your content or an everlasting bank account to pay for marketing — you need to take the matter into your own hands to get others to talk about you through promotion.

Finding Online Friends with Benefits

Promoting your content through social media is an affordable way of helping others find out about your work. But you’re setting yourself up for failure if you think that social media is all about you. The secret to establishing any friendship is to look out for the other person’s best interest ahead of your own. This concept works both offline and online. One of the best ways to have your content to be picked up by others is to share their content first.

Becoming friends with influencers in social media can be meaningful for your website’s ranking. Be generous by linking to other bloggers with quality content that’s relevant to your topic. Sharing their content with your audience is most certainly going to be reciprocated.

The topic that you write about doesn’t matter at all. As long as it’s related to your industry, it’s going to be fairly straightforward to dovetail others’ references to expand your own article. The three most popular best practices to link out to other websites from your own content are:

Hyperlink from within the content
Provide a list of additional resources
Write a roundup post about a topic

As an example, curate a collection of articles into one round-up article called: “The Best Plumbing Blog Posts” of the past year. It may turn out to be a huge draw. People like a bunch of information in one place; you can put it at their fingertips.

The Key to Making Content Marketing Work

By using content marketing sites and by bookmarking sites you find, your articles can get a boost in the search engines. A favorite content marketing site is Scoop.it. It’s a powerful platform for making your content more visible. As an example, you can summarize content about a topic, add extra perspective to the topic and post it on the page with a link pointing back to the original post.

The key to getting SEO value out of using the above platforms is adding your own comments to create unique content. It’s not enough to copy and paste a link on the page. You can’t just grab a piece of the original content and use it for yourself. To be acknowledged by Google, you still have to satisfy one of their many requirements by creating your own unique content. Using these two content marketing sites may be one of the best SEO strategies you can put to use right away.

Start Ranking Today…

As you can see, there are many different ways to giving your website an SEO boost. Writing content that people crave is one way. Learning how to promote it properly through social networking is another. Doing both will propel your site’s ranking.

There’s no doubt that it takes a great amount of time and effort before you see the needle moving. But by taking one step at a time and coming up with a plan, you’ll end up on the top of page one in a Google search. Start writing today — and start promoting tomorrow.

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.

Chop Wood, Carry Water

by Elle Ray | Feb 7, 2017 | Small Business Advice

A Woman’s Path to Self-Fulfillment and Success

Yes, it’s all very Zen:

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water
After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water

personal and professional self-fulfillment and success

I just came in from two hours of chopping wood. It’s good exercise: mindless, physical work. While I didn’t carry any water — because it’s winter outside, I did carry plenty of chopped wood. And as happens when my hands are busy, but my mind is not, I got to thinking about business and how the search for self-fulfillment and success in business is interchangeably linked with my personal goals of spiritual enlightenment, self-fulfillment and success.

Listening for Clues

My spiritual practice encourages me to listen to the world around me. When you stop thinking about yourself, your mind tends to wander in other directions. So, like I do in my spiritual practice, when I stop thinking about myself, I listen for clues as to what other people need. I always get answers.

When it comes to business, though, I too often forget to take the same road to self-fulfillment and success. It’s almost as if I don’t think business is a worthy recipient of my higher nature. But exactly the opposite is true.

Getting Out of My Own Way

When I listen for the needs of others in business, the answers may indeed often lead to the next client and more income. But it’s the practice of getting out of the way that seems to produce the outcome. I get answers when I think about what you need rather than what I need.

Whenever I have my head stuck in dark places (like up my butt), I never can see the light — only more stinky gloom and doom. When I worry about myself and my needs and desires, I cannot be open to the universe’s cries for help.

Start-Up Blues

You may be going through similar doubts if you’re an entrepreneur. As a start-up, it’s easy to find tons of issues to worry about:

What if I can’t pay my bills?
What if no one calls?
What if I make a mistake?
What if I fail?

Sometimes, the very answers are buried deep within the what-if questions:

What if I get so busy I don’t have time to pay my bills?
What if too many clients call, and I can’t give them all my best?
What if I create something beautiful?
What if I succeed?

Sounds So Familiar

This kind of existential thinking then takes me to the core. It all sounds so familiar, yet sometimes so far out of reach. I ask: “How can I profess to believe that there is a higher power setting all things right in ways that I can never understand and still worry about my business?” Is that not the very essence of hypocrisy?

If I believe that everything’s going to be all right in my personal life, then those same practices that bring me self-fulfillment and success when I’m not working should translate very well in all my business affairs. And they do!

And some of the very basic principles that have turned my sorry excuse for a human being into a pretty darn good citizen of the world work quite well in every aspect of business. Those core values I use in my own life can serve as the core and brand of my business as well, bringing with them the same level of self-fulfillment and success. Some of those include:

Gratitude
Generosity
Love
Forgiveness
Patience
Commitment
Honesty
Integrity

So just for today, I believe I’ll continue to chop wood and carry water. I’ll work hard. Give an honest day’s work. Strive for excellence in every split log and every lit blog.

It works if you work it!

Why Content Is King

by Mark Bloom | Jan 31, 2017 | Website Content

Reasons Content Marketing Outperforms SEO

Your website content has to deliver your promise and communicate your value. As more and more people get online to find answers and do their shopping, it’s become increasingly vital that your business be visible, front and center. That’s the business of search engine optimization or SEO. But it’s also why your content is king.

Why your content is king

We’ve written about this idea before:

SEO for the Rest of Us

But there’s still more to say. For many business owners, SEO is a “black box” that seems like a marketing necessity, but no one quite knows how it’s supposed to work. Ask five different SEO experts, and you’ll likely get five different versions of the best way to approach SEO for business websites.

Some say backlinks drive ranking. Others say you need long-form content on every web page. Still others swear by keyword research and Google Adwords campaigns. Then there’s the growing reliance on landing pages. While all these strategies play a role in improving your website rank toward that coveted Number One on the First Page listing, they may all fail without website content that converts.

Content Is King Because…

SEO delivers eyeballs to your website. It maximizes your website to attract the people most likely to buy your service or product. It positions your website listing so that more people see it. But it’s your website’s job to convert those visitors into lasting customers. Without useful and persuasive content, your website wastes all the chances that SEO delivers.

Content is king because it prepares your website for all the traffic it sees. When it’s done properly, your website content:

Communicates your competitive advantage
Connects with your target audience
Delivers useful information and answers questions
Makes your site the “go-to” destination for your industry and location
Persuades visitors to contact you

Keywords and Content

Keywords do actually work to help people find your website. But once they’re there, reading your content and perusing your pages, the keywords should be virtually invisible. This doesn’t mean hiding your keywords in invisible ink at the bottom of each page — that kind of behavior now gets you punished by search engines, and rightly so.

Keywords need to appear within the content, as part of the content. But if content is king, your keywords are the pawns that shouldn’t knock your readers senseless. In other words, if a visitor to your website notices obvious keywords, you’re overusing them. Subtlety is the champion of effective website content. Ray Access writers shoot for a one percent keyword density and sometimes purposefully under-deliver. A higher density smacks of an advertisement.

Attract, Don’t Repel

For your content to achieve all of the goals listed above, it must speak to your audience and it must deliver value. It can’t do that if it screams out its keywords every chance it gets. Above all, make friends with your audience. Offer your virtual hand and provide something that’s worth the trust you’re asking for.

In other words, provide value to your website visitors. If you can do that, they’ll remember you; they’ll think of you first when they’re ready to buy — or recommend — what you offer. As one content marketing firm once wrote: “To be good at SEO, you need to stop thinking about SEO.” Because content is king, it remains at the top of all online marketing efforts.

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.

Writers: Get Thee to an Editor

by Mark Bloom | Jan 17, 2017 | Editing

Use an Online Writing Editor for Best Results

find an online writing editor

Writers are everywhere. They’re like bookstores and libraries — seemingly on every corner and in most coffee shops. They have their own Meetup groups. They have their own schools and degrees. They are amateur or professional, full-time or part-time, committed or casual. Good writers even have their own websites to advertise their talents. And many writers specialize. Consider:

Ad writers
Mystery writers
Ghost writers
Novelists
Blog writers
Poets
Journalists
Grant writers
Copywriters
Short story writers
And more

Some, like the writers at Ray Access, cross boundaries. If you’re looking for a writer for a specific project — whether it’s to write your blog posts, memoir or web page content — you can certainly find one easily enough. But not everyone knows the value of a good editor. And they are much more difficult to find. In fact, many writers don’t even know good editors, especially good online writing editors.

What an Online Writing Editor Does

Editors are an invisible lot. Their names never appear in the byline. Their work doesn’t cry for headlines, even as the headlines in their work bears their influence. So how can you tell if an editor has worked on a piece of writing? What kind of tracks does an editor leave behind?

A good editor does much more than correct grammar and catch typos. When it comes to editing online writing, an editor molds the article to:

Ensure the lede, especially the first paragraph, captures the readers’ attention and compels them to keep reading
Cut, cut and cut some more to force the writing to be concise and to the point
Enhance the flow of thoughts from one to the next
Strengthen, not change, the writer’s voice
Place valuable information at the beginning of the article, so readers don’t have to wade through fluff to get to the good stuff

Writers Benefit

Writers understand what an online writing editor does. The best writers seek out editors to work with. They often develop a deep and lasting trust between them. The writer knows that the editor makes changes and suggestions that improve the writing. The editor knows that the writer takes the changes as constructive criticism, even if it appears harsh at first glance.

When a writer works with an editor, they create a team that improves every project they tackle. Edited writing is not just more efficient; it’s more powerful. Because an online writing editor has to know the target audience as much as the writer does, an edited article strikes the right notes to engage its readers.

Editing for an Online Audience

An online writing editor has to handle issues that are specific to writing for an online audience — issues that a book editor may not even consider. People read online content differently than reading something in a printed book; it actually closely mimics how they read newspapers:

With other content just a click away, online readers shrink their attention span. They want online writing to get to the point quicker.
The same people who wouldn’t balk at reading a 600-page tome expect a pleasant online format with lots of white space.
Most online readers don’t read at all, in fact. Instead, they scan for the information they’re seeking. Their eyes flit from the title to each subheading as they search.

So an editor has to ensure that titles are authentic. They have to come up with subheads that are both explanatory and inviting. They have to deliver information in chunks so that it’s not overwhelming. Otherwise, no matter good the writing is, readers may pass it by.

And every article posted online requires the judicious use of keywords. An online writing editor has to know how to best place keywords so that they work and yet are unobtrusive once readers find their way to the article. If you’re a writer, find an editor you can trust. If you’re a reader, thank your writer for using an editor.

Less Is More

by Guest Blogger | Jan 11, 2017 | Small Business Advice

4 Steps for Decoding the Productivity Myth

As business owners, we’re all impatient.

In our always-on, agile, tech-obsessed society, we want what we want and we want it yesterday. We depend on fatter pipelines, fuller funnels and more prospects. And the only way to meet the rising demand is to work longer hours, without breaks, and stay connected at all times. That’s the productivity myth.

productivity myth busting

Email Has Become Ubiquitous

Every time we hear the chirp of our smartphone singing in a new email, we jump to respond. We check it in bed, at the dinner table, in the park with the kids and on family vacations. A 2012 study by the Center for Creative Leadership found 60 percent of smartphone-using professionals were connected to the office for an average of 72 hours a week.

We’ve become narcissistic drones, we’re told, lacking the will power to look away from the soft glow of our iPhone 7s. We’re desperate to stay at the center of attention and frantic to remain reachable at all times.

While it’s a productivity myth, it’s also absolutely true that many of us can probably lay off the social media frenzy and not miss a beat. No one needs to know what you had for lunch, second lunch, dinner, snack or your 2 AM fridge-raid. But it’s becoming overtly clear the workplace demands propel a huge portion of the anxiety-induced phone-glancing. But social media isn’t what this is about. It’s an email obsession.

4 Steps to Slow Down & Maintain Productivity

When we slow down, we’re labeled slackers. We’re led to believe we’re doomed to get less done. We slow down, but the world races forward, leaving us in the dust. But staying in the perpetual “on” position is completely contrary to everything we know about what makes it possible for humans to perform at their highest level. And that busts the productivity myth.

The science of a slowdown
The human body is hardwired to pulse — moving naturally through periods of higher and lower alertness. Nathaniel Kleitman, the sleep researcher who figured out the basic rest-activity cycle more than 50 years ago, said we move progressively through five stages of sleep each night, each lasting around 90 minutes. But did you know he also found our bodies operate by those same 90-minute rhythms during the day — and not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally?

Our bodies send us physiological signs when we need a break — like fidgetiness, hunger, drowsiness and loss of focus. But in general, we tend to hush them. Instead, we find artificial ways to pump up our energy: caffeine, sugary snacks and even our body’s own stress hormones, like adrenalin, noradrenalin and cortisol.
The cycle of success
The modern model for success is broken. The idea of hunkering down for hours in front of a computer screen, plugging away all day, answering emails immediately, even late into the night, and working until you drop isn’t helping you get more done. That’s the real productivity myth. What are you giving up by working so continuously? Are you able to think as clearly and creatively? Do you produce the same quality of work in the tenth or twelfth hour of a work day as you do in the second or fourth?

Our bodies are designed to cycle. The patterns of organic labor are meant to shape our email productivity. Burned-out, neurotic employees who can’t unplug are neither productive nor creative. We need “off” time to produce a better “on” time. “On” is impossible without “off.”
Sprint and rest
The paradox isn’t in the sprint, but rather in the rest. While it seems almost counterintuitive, the secret to sustainable greatness in email productivity is incorporating rests into your work day. Make that your new productivity myth.

Work in sprints — highly focused for short periods of time, with breaks built in — instead of being partially focused for longer periods of time. Slow down. Think about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it to produce higher quality results.

We all know your inbox is the mortal enemy to email productivity, but use it to increase your productivity. Work in 90-minute sprints, punctuated by 10- to 15-minute rests in your inbox. But insist on predictable time off, as well — evenings and weekend periods where you’re out of bounds.
Set boundaries
Set firm boundaries to avoid allowing your email to become a sprinting rest. Email is incredibly addictive, and when you’re in it, it’s possible to get sucked into it for the rest of the day. Just as you should for your sprints, create a hard stop in your schedule for your rests.

7 New Year’s Resolutions for 2017

by Elle Ray | Jan 3, 2017 | Small Business Advice

Smart Resolutions for Small Business Owners

Not everyone makes New Year’s resolutions. In fact, according to Statistic Brain, a German think tank, only about 45 percent of Americans even bother to come up with new goals for the coming year. And when they do, not more than 10 percent keep them for longer than just a couple weeks. It’s actually proving to be a losing proposition.

Don't dream of goals; set them

And that very well may be why the tradition that began more than 4,000 years ago has lost its luster. Back in Babylonian times, everyone was encouraged to make promises at the beginning of the new year. Mostly, they had to do with paying the bills they owed and returning borrowed stuff. But when they made those resolutions to the gods, by god, they knew they’d better keep them — or risk getting stuck with a poor crop that year.

Set the Stage

Whether or not you count on your god (or higher power) to bring you good fortune or punish you if you break your word, you still can set the stage to come out of the whole resolution business as a solid winner. It may take a little more thought and foresight to make realistic resolutions. But the process very well may be worth the effort.

Those same German brainiacs report that the people who make specific, well thought-out New Year’s resolutions are 10 times more likely to succeed in the new year. Those who don’t make any resolutions and those who spout only wishful fancies and call them resolutions are just spinning their wheels.

Get Real

A New Year’s resolution really is just another word for setting goals. And any halfway decent entrepreneur knows that goal-setting is tantamount to success. The trick now is to choose wisely rather than make predictions that are doomed to fail. Start your year with some New Year’s resolutions that you have a very good chance of achieving.

The primary focus of New Year’s resolutions — or any goals, for that matter — should be positive. Instead of setting your sights on losing weight, for example, it’s much kinder and more encouraging to want to get healthy. And that just may be the best place to start anyway:

Get healthy. Good health doesn’t have to mean that you fit into any societal image of body perfection. But it does infer that you’ve reduced stress in your life, since stress is one of the major causes of disease and sickness in this country. Choose one new habit to institute this year in honor of your good health. Consider little things like: turning off your cell phone for one hour a day, meditating for 10 minutes each day or drinking one less beer a week.
Give compliments. Amazing things can happen in your life when you aren’t thinking only about yourself. Not only do you make the world a happier place, but you also store up plenty of good karma to improve your own life.
Share your talents. There’s a reason that you’re achieving success in your business and in your life. You’ve got talent. Invoke the power of payback and either give away an hour of your time every month to someone in need or take on at least one pro-bono client this year. This resolution falls into the same metaphysical category as giving compliments.
Read your own website. It’s amazing how many small business owners get so busy that they don’t even look at their own websites. But even if your website person did a great job on your site, you need to keep it updated and current. Read through it at least every other month. Make necessary and appropriate changes. You may save a sale or earn a new client if you do.
Clean house. Just as a cluttered office can lead to lost production time, so too can a lazy underachiever. Let the deadweight go and hire people who are hungry and want to make money for themselves and for you. This could also fall in the “get healthy” column of New Year’s resolutions, as you’ll discover how much your stress levels drop off after your poor employees leave.
Mix business with pleasure. Never leave home without your business cards. And jump into conversations with updates on your business when at parties or other social events. You’ll be surprised how many people you know need your services or have talents you could use.
Spend money. It’s true that you’ve got to spend money to make money, so let 2017 be the year that you loosen the purse strings a little more and hire a contractor to do some of your admin work or bring on a team of awesome writers to maintain your blog (hint, hint). As your revenues grow, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without them.

These New Year’s resolutions aren’t difficult to achieve, and they just make sense. Come back to the tradition of making resolutions. Even if you boil it down to just one, make it count. And make it real. Not only will you reap the benefits of each positive change, but you’ll feel better about yourself for trying — and succeeding! Best of luck for a rewarding, prosperous 2017.

What Writers Want for Christmas

by Mark Bloom | Dec 27, 2016 | Announcement

Christmas Gifts for Writers They Really Want

Everyone knows a writer. Some writers may even be on your Christmas list. (Whether they’re on the Good list or the Naughty list is an entirely different question.) So how do you choose the best Christmas gifts for writers? Easy. Get them anything. Writers love the attention, even though they won’t admit it. Here, then, is a sampling of ideas for:

Christmas Gifts for Writers

The classic gifts can still bring joy to your favorite writer. Or can they?

The classic Moleskin notebook. Good writing advice says to carry around a notebook for all the brilliant ideas you get when you’re someplace inconvenient. — Because apparently, a notebook is easier to carry than a smart phone.
A fountain pen. It’s a classy gift, right? — Because apparently, writers like writing with pen and ink whenever their smart phone runs out of juice.
A book on writing. It’s helpful and encouraging to read what Stephen King or Ray Bradbury or whoever had to say about the writing process. — Because apparently, writers who emulate famous writers become famous themselves.
Adult coloring books. Writers are a creative bunch. When they’re not writing, they’ll enjoy doodling. — Because apparently, writers have lots of free time and like to doodle.
A T-shirt with a clever saying on it. Writers are often witty, so great Christmas gifts for writers can include T-shirts they’ll be proud to wear. — Because apparently, all writer aspire to write clever T-shirts.
Boggle or Scrabble. Writers are word nerds, so it only makes sense to get them a game that uses words. — Because apparently, writers often get together to trade books on writing and play games.

What Writers Really Want

The best Christmas gifts for writers are the ones you may not expect. This is what they want:

A coffee mug with a clever saying on it. Send a writer to the grocery store for essentials, and she’ll come back with a quart of milk, a loaf of bread and five pounds of coffee. It’s the fuel that makes writing possible. And a mug differs from a T-shirt because it becomes a private joke.
Sticky notes. It seems so silly — and so cheap — that you wonder why they don’t buy sticky notes for themselves. It’s because they don’t have a sticky note to remind them.
A red ink pen. There’s an editor inside every writer, and he’s trying to get out. A red pen gives every writer the single most important tool of an editor and reason to print out that rough draft.
A desk organizer. Writers like to get organized. And they often have lots of things to organize, from scraps of notes to first draft printouts. You won’t get them to clean up their desks completely, but this is a start.
A lap desk. It can be just a finished piece of plywood or a specially shaped wooden surface with a padded bottom. They’re great for reading or working when your writer is away from the keyboard.

There you go. No matter what you gave the writer in your life this year (probably from the top list), now you know the best Christmas gifts for writers, what they really want. Better luck next year!

The Message or the Medium

by Elle Ray | Dec 20, 2016 | Communication

Send Your Message in an Appropriate Medium

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Due to a publisher’s error, his follow-up book became The Medium Is the Massage. Being writers, we certainly can understand typos. But when they are so right-on — as McLuhan thought when he saw the mistake — they must deliver some underlying, deeper truth.

And as true as both sentiments were in the 1960s, so they remain valid today. The medium you use to send your message has just as much to do with its acceptance as the words you use to convey your ideas. As a matter of fact, the medium you choose may have even more to do with the validity of your message today than it did back in the day.

The Medium Speaks

McLuhan posited that the means by which you deliver a message becomes embedded in the actual sentiment. In 1964, marketers chose between radio, TV and print. Which one they used to put out their word actually shaped (or massaged) the way it was ultimately perceived. Imagine if the Canadian philosopher and public theorist saw the way consumers communicate today.

He’d probably take solace, knowing that he was so very right. And it’s this question of “what comes first: the message or the massage?” that keeps marketers up at night. And to get a handle on the entire concept, you may need to boost your market analysis to find out the level of importance your target market places on how you send your message — and what your medium says about you and your company. As an extreme example, what would you think of a company that sent out marketing materials by fax?

Who Are You Talking To?

Call a Millennial from your landline to invite him to your launch party, and you’ll probably never see that guy at any of your company events (nor see his name come across your desk as a new client). But send your message in a tweet or a post on a hot community Facebook page, and he very well might show up with all his friends in tow.

Tweet that you have a special going on for seniors — and have fun sitting all alone at your business. But if you send an email or leave a voicemail message about how much you appreciate his previous business and want to show your appreciation with a sale just for him, and you better make sure you have plenty on hand. You’ll be swamped.

How You Send Your Message Says a Lot About You

So not only do you have to consider the message your prospective target sees, but you also must take into consideration just what your choice of medium says about you and your trend savviness. Ask a Millennial, for example, to call you back with her RSVP, and she may just roll her eyes and say, “No thank you, dinosaur.” Ask a Baby Boomer to post her RSVP on Facebook, and she’ll just pretend she didn’t hear you and wonder about your trustworthiness.

The medium you choose tells the world whether you’re hip and with-it or old-school and ready for retirement. So what’s a business owner to do when you want to reach a diverse audience of all ages, but don’t want to come off as a Luddite? Consider the facts:

All generations use email.
Email is one of the most trusted sources of contact for Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.
Consumers over 65 use email, but still prefer postal mail.
Mobile apps, text messages and social media are strong media for reaching Millennials, but drop off drastically as the media of choice for everyone else.

Basically, email is the safest medium to use when you want to reach the most people. You also can’t go wrong with a high-quality website and interesting blogs to send your message. Consider:

87 percent of all adults use the Internet.
97 percent of consumers 18–30 use the Internet.
67 percent of those over the age of 65 use the Internet.

The Moral of the Story

The point of all this is to:

Applaud your use of the Internet to reach the most people.
Remind you that you’re being judged by your constituents in ways you may never have even considered, so listen closely to their feedback.
Be nice, use the appropriate medium for your message and surprise: you’ll make money.

If you’re having trouble coming up with a new topic or engaging content to fill your tweets, posts and blogs, contact Ray Access. The writers and editors of Ray Access are poised to come to the rescue. Whether you want to reach Millennials who prefer communicating through emoji’s rather than talking on the phone or the high-end Baby Boomers looking for more ways to spend their money, Ray Access can pointedly reach your audience with just the right amount of savvy. We can speak the language of your readers, no matter who they are.

Our medium is the message, and we know how to massage the written word, yo. So relax, sis, chill and veg-out. It’s all good, cool — lit. And it’ll be very much to your liking, sir, right up your alley and smooth as silk stockings.

The Holiday Marketing Guide for Small Businesses

by Guest Blogger | Dec 13, 2016 | Small Business Advice

Small Businesses Need Help This Time of Year

The holidays are fast approaching. Are you ready? If you’re not, it’s time to get started. Shoppers are most active during holidays and eagerly looking for the best propositions every year. And small businesses that are ready for it will win out over the stragglers.

holiday guide for small businesses

Besides getting an early start, here are some other ways to make sure this is a successful holiday season for your small business:

Optimize Your Mobile Site

Mobile holiday shopping increased by about 60 percent in 2015 vs. 2014. Marketers are arming themselves with mobile strategies and there’s no reason why small businesses shouldn’t be on board. Here are some important factors in mobile optimization:

Loading time. People have less patience on mobile than they have on desktop, and that’s already not very much. 50 percent of smart phone users expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. Make sure your photos and images are light enough for fast mobile-loading so you don’t risk shoppers skipping over your slow site for a faster one.
Make sure your checkout process is geared for mobile. Enable autofill, use drop-down menus and ask only for the most essential information. Mobile shoppers are prone to interruptions from the very devices they’re using to shop, so the more seamless you make your mobile checkout, the lower your cart abandonment rate.

Prepare Early

Online shopping means that customers don’t have to wait until businesses pull out their Christmas merchandise. Holiday shopping is starting earlier and earlier with some retailers courting shoppers as soon as August. But don’t blame the stores.

In 2015, 56.6 percent of shoppers already started making purchases by the beginning of November, a 2.2 percent increase from 2014 and a whopping 17.6 percent increase from 2008. Though peak times are still Black Friday through Christmas, businesses that are holiday-ready early can increase their overall sales.

Prepare for Christmas early

Use Texting and Social Media for Customer Service

Many small businesses do customer service the old fashioned way. That’s fine, except while you’re dusting off your landline to call a customer, they’ve moved on to higher technological ground. By using SMS for time-sensitive customer inquiries and making it easy for customers to reach you on social media, you offer customers more convenience and better service.

When clients hit pre-holiday madness, good customer service becomes even more essential. Consider these stats:

72 percent of Americans own a smartphone.
77 percent of consumers who text aged 18–34 are more likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers text capability.
91 percent of retail brands use two or more social media channels.
Failure to respond via social channels can lead to a 15 percent increase in churn rate.
33 percent of customers prefer to contact brands using social media rather than the telephone.

Promote Your Brand with Social Media

Engaging customers on social media is essential to marketers for businesses large and small. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat can help you advertise your holiday wares:

Photos are great; videos are better. Even with a small marketing budget, you can do DIY video to spruce up your social media pages. Two hot video trends right now are vertical videos and videos with subtitles, so people can watch them without volume — when they’re at work, late at night, or in a loud place.

Run contests. Contests are a fun way to get shoppers to interact with your brand. Some ideas include:

Ask customers to share photos. Whether it’s a holiday-themed photo or a photo that’s related to your brand, this type of contest increases customer engagement.
An essay/recipe contest. Get people to share essays on their best holiday recipes. The apparel company Hero Box increased their email address list by 1,443 clients by running an essay contest on social media.
Give away discounts and merchandise. People love free stuff — and if all it takes is signing up to your page, sharing or tweeting, then it’s easy for customers to participate.
Referral rewards. This is a great way to increase your customer database. Offer rewards, discounts or merchandise to customers who refer friends to your business.

Be Yourself

Small businesses don’t have the over-the-top marketing budgets that big businesses do. In a way, this gives them an edge during the holiday season when people are looking for something special for their loved ones and not something generic. Advertise your business’s originality, especially if you offer unique products that customers will be hard-pressed to find in other places.

Help your customers out by creating gift guides and making suggestions on who would like different products and wares. The homey, family-oriented climate of the holidays works in favor of small businesses, so providing personalized customer service and connecting with your community are great ways to market yourself during the holidays.

Small businesses can do well this holiday season by preparing early, optimizing their mobile sites, making good use of social media and text for advertising and customer service, and playing up the uniqueness of their products for holiday shoppers.

« Older Entries

Next Entries »