Ray Access is in the business of writing for businesses. In particular, we craft effective web page content and engaging blog posts for our clients. When we hand off our work, we don’t sign it with our names. Once a blog post or web page is finished, delivered and paid for, our clients own it. They can even put their own names to it, if they like. That makes us ghostwriters.
Ghostwriters write for other people. When a celebrity or political figure comes out with a new book, chances are very good that a ghostwriter actually did all the writing. Yet the celebrity or political figure gets to take all the credit. It doesn’t seem fair, but it is. That ghostwriter is well paid for the work, and the story still comes from the celebrity, who often can’t write as well or hasn’t the time to sit and write a whole book.
Ghostwriters Perform a Service
So when you visit our Portfolio page and click to view some of our past work, you may see our client’s name at the end of an article. You may see no name listed. Rarely will you see “Ray Access” attributed as the writer. This arrangement is by design. Our work benefits our clients. We don’t need (or want) to get in the way of their success.
We’re compensated in many ways, not the least of which is seeing clients increase their profits through the website. We’re proud of our work, and yes, we’re paid for our service, too. That definitely increases our profits. So ghostwriting, for us, is a win-win proposition.
But Why Not Take Credit?
Honestly, the writers and editors at Ray Access don’t need the credit. We’ve been published in print and across the Internet. We’ve written every website page, every blog post and every press release listed and linked from our Portfolio page. We know it, and our clients know it. Moreover, our clients understand the value we bring to their websites, and they’re happy to recommend us. Just ask them!
And not to take anything away from those hard-working web designers and developers who put their names and links at the bottom of every page they build, we believe it’s more a ploy to gain SEO points than to trumpet their work. We believe our clients’ websites should be all about their business, not ours.
Ghostwriting Is a Means to an End
As ghostwriters, we’re able to capture a client’s voice well enough to give the business a distinct personality. If our client wants to come across as a serious professional, we can accommodate that. If a client want to be thought of as the friendly confidant, we can do that too. Ghostwriters need to write in a variety of styles and tones. Whatever the client wants, Ray Access can usually deliver.
But make no mistake about it: our goal is to help our clients succeed by generating phone calls — new business — through the website. It gives us great pleasure and satisfaction to see our clients succeed. That generates the customer loyalty we love and the word-of-mouth marketing we crave. Ghostwriting works — for us as well as for our clients.
Let us be your ghostwriters. Learn how we can help your business succeed through targeted online content. You can even put your name on it.
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.
We were hoping this blog could make the “Blog Super Bowl” or at least “hit a home run” for me. But then again, “if it works, don’t fix it.” We really try our best to stay away from clichés — because that’s the way we were trained. One of our editors crossed out every phrase that even remotely resembled a cliché.
While we admit that clichés can be fun, they get overused, which is what made them clichés to begin with. Unless you use them for effect, and use them well, you’re evoking trite images that everyone’s seen a million times before. Clichés are much too often the province of lazy writers who can’t come up with anything original to write.
Making Headlines
Some of the best word-players, however, are headline writers who love to turn a common cliché into an eye-popping headline. And they get away with it. When a tired old cliché finds its way into a headline, it seems to draw readers’ attention and maybe even generate a guffaw or two. If it’s really good, it’ll make the rounds on social media. You’ve all seen examples, like: “Everything you wanted to know about XYZ, but were afraid to ask,” or “Taking XYZ to the next level.”
Not many readers can pass up a headline like: “Kraft: Who Cut the Cheese?” But please save us from “thinking outside the box” or any other type of container. While I give headline writers a little more leeway when it comes to creatively including a cliché in their copy, they need to keep it cool and clever to keep me from groaning. Remember: the goal of a headline is to entice people to read the article, not send them screaming in the other direction.
What Is a Cliché?
A cliché is nothing more than an expression that was unusual at one time, but has since turned into an annoying irritation. A statement loses its verve and vigor when it’s overused to the point of nausea. Can you even stand to hear one more “Where’s the beef?” even though it’s been more than 40 years since the little old lady coined the phrase for Wendy’s? And does that new car really cost an “arm and a leg?” Or is a buyer just a “fish out of water” or following the “fickle finger of fate?”
The use of clichés was so common in the early days of the printing press that printers saved sets of regularly used phrases, already prepared to drop in whenever needed (which was often). These sets were called “stereotype blocks.” A cliché is not a stereotype, but the two are so closely related that you could often use them interchangeably.
Pray for This Writer’s Soul
You could make the argument that some clichés are so old and overused that they actually can make a comeback. For example, you have: “a face that would scare a bulldog out of a butcher shop,” which may be hilarious in the right company —mainly, those who can appreciate old, antiquated humor. Then again, they might just accuse you of “flogging a dead horse” and ask you to refrain from spewing any more clichés.
But the aim of good writing is to provide a good reading experience while you learn. To further that goal, the writers at Ray Access make a pledge for 2016 to refrain from relying on clichés and overused marketing copy. Even though we recognize that “content is king,” we promise not to use clichés anymore (except in a blog about clichés). But if we must resort to clichés, we’ll try our very best to “knock it out of the park.” Find our other areas of expertise.
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.
A business blog contributes to the ROI of your website.
Just as every business eventually realized it needed a website, more and more businesses are coming to the conclusion that they need blogs. An effective blog drives more traffic to the website, thus generating quality leads and phone calls. A business blog that uses keywords correctly can even raise the search engine ranking for the entire site.
It’s never too late to start a blog for your business website. It can start delivering ROI within months of your first published blog post, which — in our age of instant gratification — may seem like forever. But the more frequently you blog, the faster you’ll see the results. And the earlier you begin, the sooner your work will pay off.
Start with the Basics
Once you commit to your business blog, brainstorm a list of topics. Make sure you have enough quality ideas to get you through at least three months. And plan to brainstorm more every three months. Put it on your calendar.
At Ray Access, we recommend starting a new business blog with three blog posts. No one wants to visit a blog on a website and see a single entry. Start with three, and it looks like you’re serious about it. Write a short “Welcome to Our Blog” post that describes your blog’s benefits to the reader. Then pick two topics that excite you. Write them and publish them all at the same time. Congratulations, you have a blog!
Maintaining Your Business Blog
If you’ve decided to blog weekly (or even more frequently), you may already feel the pressure building to write. But here’s the trick: you don’t have to spend time writing every week. Follow Ray Access’s example and spend a weekend writing all the blog posts you need for the following month. Then the articles are sitting there waiting for you to publish them.
When you brainstorm once a quarter, select not only the blog topics to write, but also the order in which to write them. Pick a day of the week as your publication day and make sure you have a topic for every one of those days during the three-month period. Then you can develop a publication schedule so you know when to “turn on” each blog post.
Don’t Forget to Edit
Any business writing needs proofing. You don’t want your business card to misspell your name. You don’t want a typo in your brochure. Your business blog is no different. Make sure you have someone else (not the writer) edit each blog post before it’s published. Make this part of your process.
An editor not only catches typos and repairs grammar, but a good editor can make sure the blog post is on target and effectively communicates your intent. Every one of the blog posts Ray Access produces, whether for our clients or for our own website, is thoroughly edited. Please do the same for yours.
Even if you need help developing blog topics,
Ray Access can help.
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.
One of the most difficult tasks in keeping a blog updated — as we hear from small business owners and blog writers — is coming up with new topics on a weekly basis. We’ve heard nightmare stories about people who, trying to think of even one topic to write on, sit in front of a piece of paper or a computer monitor for hours.
One of the services Ray Access offers its blog clients is providing a targeted list of blog topics. We usually brainstorm four months’ worth of topics at a time, which translates into about 16–17 unique, fresh, timely titles. Then we put the titles into a weekly content schedule. And with the brainstorming techniques we employ, we can do it in about 10 minutes for each client.
Lightning Thinkers
Just because we can come up with so many good ideas in such a short amount of time doesn’t mean we’re lightning fast thinkers. The writers at Ray Access rely on exceptional writing and editing skills, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are all that brilliant. We’re just good at putting words on paper. We work hard at it.
But it’s not those capabilities we rely on when it comes to thinking up blog titles. In fact, being too cerebral may actually disrupt effective brainstorming. Analysis and judgment can impede a productive brainstorming session. Brainstorming can get a little crazy when we let our imaginations run free with no boundaries, so it’s something we do in the privacy of our office.
Tips for Brainstorming Blog Titles
New York advertising executive Alex F. Osborn coined the term “brainstorming” and recognized its value in the creative process. He wrote about brainstorming and its possible usefulness in a 1953 book called Applied Imagination. At Ray Access, we’ve borrowed ideas from the world’s master barnstormers and added a few steps of our own.
For the brainstorming process to work for you, you have to being willing to experiment. Read the tips below, take what feels right, tweak them as needed and make your own recipe for success:
Set aside a specific time to get together with your team to brainstorm. Put it on the calendar in advance. This way, everyone involved can flex their creative muscles in preparation.
Shout out ideas uncensored. Stopping the process to analyze or judge ideas is one of the biggest obstacles you’ll run into. Let the ideas flow, not matter how outrageous. The analyzing part comes later.
Appoint a note-taker before you start. Once the creative juice is flowing, don’t interrupt it with mundane matters like “who’s writing all this down?”
Get comfortable. Make sure everyone involved is fed and hydrated. Gather in a place where everyone can sit or pace for as long as the session lasts. Make sure the temperature is just right. Once the body’s needs are out of the way, the mind can be free.
Set a timer. One of the reasons to incorporate brainstorming sessions into your creative process is to save time. If you take so long that you get tired or have to put off other tasks, it’s not working correctly. A good idea is to come up with a few more viable ideas than you need; then stop and move on.
Think in terms of your stakeholders. For example, if you need to come up with blog ideas for a real estate company, give yourself 10 minutes to come up with blog ideas for buyers, 10 for sellers, 10 for Realtors and so on. Give each angle its due.
Remain open-minded. Explore topics as they come up. An outlandish idea may not be suitable, but it can open up a new vein of ideas. Take the time to see where those ideas take you. Being open-minded and intellectual are not exclusive, at least they shouldn’t be.
Call for help. If all else fails and your brainstorming sessions turn out to be more like hair-pulling sessions, contact Ray Access. We can do the brainstorming for you and send you the results. Although we charge a fee to non-clients for this service, think of the time you’ll save.
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.
Writers of everything, including website content, finally get their due.
Novelists have always been the rock stars of the writing world. Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, just to name a few American authors, remain famous even after death. Successful short story writers have also earned acclaim. Flannery O’Connor, Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka are all well-known names.
Screenwriters too have made a name for themselves, emerging as box office draws in their own right. Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) brings people to his movies by name recognition alone. Jonathan Nolan (Memento, Interstellar) writes for his brother, director Christopher Nolan. And of course, the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan (O Brother Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men), are known as much for their writing as their directing.
Website Content Writers Too?
As 2016 unfolds, we expect to see more recognition and regard for other types of writers as well. While novelists and screenwriters will continue to make the big money, storytellers in other fields are starting to gain the respect that has eluded them for years.
Writers of website content, for example, have been delegated for years to the back of the bus, in terms of both recognition and regard. The pay for creating website content reflected that disdain. But businesses are finally waking up to the value of quality content in their websites and in their blogs. And as a result, demand for that work is increasing, along with the pay scale.
Content Is a Difference Maker
A mere 10 years ago, not all businesses even realized they needed a website. They had a storefront or they had an established business in a vibrant neighborhood; they didn’t need anything more than an occasional TV ad to keep traffic coming. Today, every business knows the value of an online presence.
But with increased competition comes increased needs. When your business is no longer competing with just your rival across town, but with every other similar business in the entire country, you need to take advantage of every opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Enter quality content for your website and blogging for your business.
What That Difference Means
It’s no longer enough to have a website; your business needs an effective website, one that connects to your customers. Websites are no longer a necessary expense; they are part of a total marketing plan. As we say here at Ray Access: “If your website isn’t making you money, it’s costing you money.”
A business blog needs to attract potential customers to your website. Your website needs to convert random visitors into dedicated customers. Thoroughly researched, well crafted, targeted website content accomplishes these goals.
Writers Make That Difference Happen
A stunning twist of a phrase, fun word play and compelling storytelling will propel website writers to fame and fortune. Move over, Ray Bradbury! Well, maybe not, but at least a good writer and editor can attract and woo your customers — who will appreciate a website that provides real information without the marketing-speak they’re bombarded with daily.
So treat content writers with respect, and they will make your company money. Reward them for their efforts too, because writers will be in demand as the new year progresses. Here at Ray Access, our writers work hard for you to deliver the website content and blog posts that will make the difference for your company. Contact us today to find out how we can help your business grow in 2016.
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.
You got them to notice you; now give them more value.
Happy New Year to all! At Ray Access, we are pleased to report that we nearly doubled our sales in 2015 — not bad for a small Asheville-based start-up. We appreciate the business our clients brought us, and we’re looking forward to continuing to provide quality content for small, medium and big businesses.
We want to emphasize “big,” because those are the clients we’re targeting in the coming year. We’re not alone in thinking big. As a matter of fact, according to investment powerhouse Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers (KPBC), consumer and small business Internet use skyrocketed in 2015, while big companies in the fields of education, government and healthcare experienced little or no growth. So those are big markets all small Internet-based business providers should put on their radars for 2016.
Go Mobile
Another target we (and you) should add to your list for this coming year is to make sure your blogs and websites are mobile-friendly. At Ray Access, we’re currently in the process of tweaking our new website for ease of use on mobile devices. All Asheville Internet businesses should do the same.
It’s a big deal in 2015 because more and more people are getting online through their mobile devices. Check out KPBC’s account of mobile users:
In 2008, Internet users spent about 80 percent of their online time from a desktop or laptop and only 12 percent of their time from mobile devices.
By 2015, only 42 percent of online time was hard-wired, while 51 percent was mobile.
And this trend is going to continue, as more and more users buy and learn to use mobile devices. At the same time, the 2015 trends don’t mean that desktop and laptop use is going to disappear; it just means that mobile devices are increasing the amount of time consumers and business leaders spend online.
Follow the Money
Small Asheville Internet companies can reach an international audience as more and more citizens around the world get connected. The brick-and-mortar stores, door-to-door sales calls and personal networking will remain a stronghold of bottom-line business growth. But we’ll do more and more sales through our website.
Which brings us to the reason for the season: how can we all double our sales in 2016? According to Cyber Alert, “blogs have emerged as an influential new media outlet for PR stories.” They also report that close to 85 percent of consumers have made a buying decision based on a blog they read. Third-party blogs that include reviews and product/service descriptions are the most popular buying influencers.
Options for Change
A few ways that all of us in the Asheville market and beyond might take advantage of some of these trends and targets include:
Write guest blogs for others’ sites
Get industry-expert, entertaining and enlightening guests to write for your site
Spend some time blogging about trends and new products
Target your blogs to industry sidelines (like this one, for example)
In other words, don’t just write about your company and your business in your blogs. Use your valuable Internet space and position to bring attention to healthcare issues, government policies and educational institutions. Write about topics that interest your target market. As always, refrain from getting too political (you don’t want to alienate potential customers just because of their politics).
Illustrate issues in new ways. Give both sides of an issue equal treatment and coverage (much like an unbiased journalist). 2015 was the year of steady growth for Asheville businesses; let’s make 2016 a year of explosive growth and put Asheville on the map for more than just its breweries and hiking trails. If you don’t know how to get started, let Ray Access know. Go Asheville tech companies!
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.
Where you put your online content is just as important as where you hang your ornaments
Everyone by now should know how important content is to a website. It adds value, raises page rank, builds trust and generates sales. But the content on your website has to connect with your audience and it has be appropriate for its place. In other words: content has to work in context.
What does that mean? To the writers at Ray Access, writing content in context means crafting carefully researched blog posts that attract attention. It means creating website content that communicates your message in a way that turns visitors into customers. In short:
Blog posts, as an extension of your website, build depth while reaching out to your audience across the Internet. Your blog, when it’s working, becomes an online marketing engine.
Website content explains your unique business proposition — what makes you different and why anyone should choose you over your competitors.
Why It Works
When both are working together, website content contributes to lead generation, which adds to your bottom line. Yes, your website should be making you money, not costing you money. And it all comes down to high quality content in context.
The content on your website is the means for connecting with your customers. It’s your online sales force. You can’t be there 24/7, but your website can. It’s always open, and it’s always working. With the right content in context, along with an appropriate design and the necessary technology, your website — all by itself — can create and nurture a relationship with your visitors.
Your Website as a Sales Tool
Website content has to build trust in your business. Since people do business with people and companies they like, your website has to convey a likeable personality to visitors. It should demonstrate your expertise and knowledge in your field. It can enlighten, explain and coerce. While the ultimate goal of your website is to generate sales, the more immediate goal is to develop a relationship with your target market.
Your website accomplishes this with the right content in context. If your audience is 20-somethings, your website has to speak their language. If your audience is 50-somethings, you need content they can understand. Ray Access writes targeted, researched website content, no matter who your customers are.
Your Website as a Marketing Tool
But first your customers have to find you. And that’s why blog posts are so vital to your business. Blog posts can take advantage of keyword phrases that your website can’t cover. Your blog can tie your business to news events, celebrities and even other industries. Your blog posts reach out across the Internet to attract people — people looking for answers — to your website.
Business blog posts are written specifically to attract your clientele. They are meant to be interesting and shareable. They answer specific questions about your business or about your industry. They share your knowledge and educate your customers. Blog posts can help you find new customers. And the writers at Ray Access research, write and edit a tremendous variety of engaging blog posts.
For all this, you need expert online writing services. Contact Ray Access to discover the difference between just content and content in context.
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.
More and more people, especially those under 30, prefer not to touch paper. Instead, they do all their reading online and through an electronic device. But read they do.
And the better the writing, the more they will read. Writing for online audiences just takes a little forethought and consideration, very much like authors have been doing for ages.
Whether you are preparing to write your first ebook, an online post for your business or an article for an online magazine, follow these 10 online writing tips from your friends at Ray Access to engage your audience:
Make the page scannable. Consider how the page looks. Add subheadings, bulleted lists, numbered lists, bolded phrases and white space to make it easier for online readers to scan.
Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Clear, concise sentences and tight, small blocks of print are much easier to digest on a screen. Writing for online audiences requires clarity and brevity to the max.
Understand your readers and what they’re looking for. Don’t try to pack each post with too much unrelated information. It’s better (for readers and search engines) to create multiple articles and post them on different days. You’ll keep your readers engaged at the same time too.
Create and stick with your personal tone. If your readers expect witty prose or gut-busting gags, don’t disappoint them with a dry entreaty. On the other hand, if you’re known for your serious and informative writing for online posts, stick with what readers expect.
Give your readers the main idea of the article right up front. Write for online readers just like a journalist using the inverted pyramid. The who, what, where, why and when should be clear right from the start.
When you repurpose information you’ve found on other sites, rewrite it so that you don’t use more than three words in a row from the original to avoid plagiarism dings. And if you’re quoting hard copy info, break it up so that it’s easier to digest for online readers.
Writing for online search engines means you should create clear headlines and subheads. The headers are not the place for your witticisms. You can put them in later in the copy. Headlines must be clear and tight to get picked up and understood by both search engines and online readers.
Add links to references so that readers can see the original source easily. If your writing is tight, informative and easy-to-read, they will come back.
Use an active voice. Be commanding when writing for online audiences. If you take a stand, then say so. Make your points with conviction. And never start a sentence with “I think.”
Let another pair of eyes review your writing before you hit Send or Publish. Good writing always is the result of good editing. That’s true for both printed and electronic words.
Now that you know some of the secrets of online writing, go share your message to the world! And if you need ideas, want some writing help or even need editing services, contact us for expert writing services.
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.
When you want to learn about writing your own online content, where do you turn? When you want to know the ins and outs of how to develop website content or blog posts, whom do you ask? While a lot of information about the subject is available online, sometimes you want a live person you can question and follow up.
Fortunately, Ray Access can help. Part of our mission is to educate and elucidate business owners about our craft. As a result, Linda and Mark have been asked again and again to deliver presentations about online writing. So keep Ray Access in mind for your next business meeting.
Presentations for Business Owners and Executives
There may be beginning writers at our presentations, but Ray Access presentations typically attract a crowd of business owners who realize they need to improve their online presence. Better website content, they realize, often leads to better sales. A business blog, they’ve learned, can increase their company’s reach and raise their page rank. So now they want to know more about it.
The presentations about online writing that Ray Access gives teach the basics of writing, provide tips for publishing consistently and explain the use of keywords. Each of those topics could be a discussion in its own right. Since providing online content is a relatively new field, most business owners don’t understand its intricacies or the difference between it and writing for a magazine.
Ray Access always leaves time for questions and answers because they want to provide reassurance that it’s possible to apply these principles to improve business. Most presentations last about 45 minutes, but Mark and Linda can talk about online writing for ten minutes or two hours… and everything in between.
Successful Presentations About Online Writing
The presentations Ray Access does have been very successful, both in terms of the crowd size and the lessons learned. Ray Access can pack them in because it’s a topic not many people are talking about, but it’s a subject business owners need to understand. And it’s not a dry, boring subject, at least not the way Ray Access presents it.
Mark and Linda add a touch of humor, several real-world examples and lots of tips to their presentations about online writing. They get people involved with visuals and pointed samples. Because almost all of the attendees can write and has done some writing at some point in their lives, everyone can relate to the presentation. Everyone learns something and takes some tidbit away with them.
Presentation Samples
In 2015, Ray Access gave presentations at 1 Million Cups Columbia and WordCamp Asheville, among other venues. Although the video from these presentations is not of high quality, you can get a sense of the energy and information from their presentations:
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.
When you don’t have the time or inclination to write your own — buyer beware..
It’s now quite evident to most business owners that one of the best ways to reach your intended customers is with well-placed, timely, pertinent, informative and entertaining blog posts. Thing is — you’ve got a business to run and no time to sit down and think of topics, let alone write 400 to 2,000 words on a subject. So you want to hire a blogger.
4 Things to Look For
Someone in your organization may have good writing skills and be able to take on the extra work. Maybe you have a student in your family or circle of friends who’d love to write and get published online. Whether you hire a blogger who writes professionally (like the team at Ray Access) or decide to give an amateur a break, there are a few things you should look for in a blog writer:
A good listener hears what you want and gives you just that. It doesn’t matter how well someone writes; if they don’t listen well, you won’t get the blog posts you hope for.
Creativity is hard to define until you hire a blogger who doesn’t have it. A creative mind will be able to come up with original and lively topics that fit well with your industry and attract attention from potential customers.
A good writer is willing to take criticism. Good writing relies on good editing. If your blog writer can’t handle a correction or a suggestion, you end up with more problems than solutions.
All blog writers must understand deadlines. If you don’t get an assignment back until weeks after you need to post it online, you might as well not even have a blog. Consistency is one of the hallmarks of a successful blog.
Go Professional
Sure, we’re professional blog writers and would love for you to contact us. But we also appreciate the competitive landscape and want to win your business because we meet your needs. You do have options when you want to hire a blogger. Here are a few more tips to keep in mind when you go shopping for a writer:
Ask the perspective blogger if their blog posts are edited. Your paid posts should be ready to go as soon as you get them.
Find out how many (if any) revisions you’re allowed before incurring extra charges. Your constructive feedback can help your writers become more in tune with your requirements.
Request a discount for a long-term commitment. A blog works when it runs for six months to a year. Only then will you see measureable results, although we’ve seen results in as little as a month. Make a commitment and then ask for a discount; it ties you both into a relationship-building pattern.
Read the blogger’s blog. Too often, professional business writers are like the cobbler whose kids had holes in their shoes. But writers should keep an active blog for their own company, kind of like we do at Ray Access.
Offer to pay for a trial month to find out how well you work together. Don’t hire a blogger until you’re ready and willing to make a long-term commitment. That extra month may cost you more, but it’s worth the expense so you can be sure your relationship works.
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.
Honestly, the writers and editors at Ray Access don’t need the credit. We’ve been published in print and across the Internet. We’ve written every website page, every blog post and every press release listed and linked from our Portfolio page. We know it, and our clients know it. Moreover, our clients understand the value we bring to their websites, and they’re happy to recommend us. Just ask them!
A cliché is nothing more than an expression that was unusual at one time, but has since turned into an annoying irritation. A statement loses its verve and vigor when it’s overused to the point of nausea. Can you even stand to hear one more “Where’s the beef?” even though it’s been more than 40 years since the little old lady coined the phrase for Wendy’s? And does that new car really cost an “arm and a leg?” Or is a buyer just a “fish out of water” or following the “fickle finger of fate?”
Any business writing needs proofing. You don’t want your business card to misspell your name. You don’t want a typo in your brochure. Your business blog is no different. Make sure you have someone else (not the writer) edit each blog post before it’s published. Make this part of your process.
Writers of website content, for example, have been delegated for years to the back of the bus, in terms of both recognition and regard. The pay for creating website content reflected that disdain. But businesses are finally waking up to the value of quality content in their websites and in their blogs. And as a result, demand for that work is increasing, along with the pay scale.
Small Asheville Internet companies can reach an international audience as more and more citizens around the world get connected. The brick-and-mortar stores, door-to-door sales calls and personal networking will remain a stronghold of bottom-line business growth. But we’ll do more and more sales through our website.
Website content has to build trust in your business. Since people do business with people and companies they like, your website has to convey a likeable personality to visitors. It should demonstrate your expertise and knowledge in your field. It can enlighten, explain and coerce. While the ultimate goal of your website is to generate sales, the more immediate goal is to develop a relationship with your target market.
Sure, we’re professional blog writers and would love for you to