by Mark Bloom | Jan 23, 2014 | Content Provider
Are You Recognized for Expertise in Your Field?
If you’re an expert in your field, but no one knows it yet, it’s a problem. Make a plan (or a resolution) to tell the world about your experience. Believe it or not, people want to know. A professional willing to share expertise in an open-source manner, free of charge to anyone who needs the information, is a valuable and respected commodity.
Share Your Expertise
The best way to set yourself apart from your competition is to write informative articles about your industry. Share the latest research polls published by your industry association. Let others know about trends affecting your market. Write down your experiences in a way that inspires and motivates people.
In other words, become the expert you want to be. You easily can accomplish this goal through a regular blog posted on your website. But make it worth readers’ time. Give readers a take-away, whether it’s a useful tip or a juicy piece of information they can pass on to friends and coworkers.
Remember that old commercial that said: “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen?” Your goal is to tweak that message by placing your name in that sentence.
Don’t Withhold Your Knowledge
You can do accomplish this feat if you continually give away useful information in a clear, jargon-free, easy-to-digest way that people can use. Too many professionals write for themselves and forget that it’s the readers (your potential customers) they need to please.
Craft blog posts and articles for your site and to publish in trade and local magazines that answer burning questions, make life a little easier and provide useful material. Write about one subject at a time and don’t try to fill a blog with too much information. It’s not that difficult when you have the desire to rise above the field and make a name for yourself.
The Value of a Consistently Good Blog
Eventually, you’ll be seen as the expert in your field, if only because you’ve been so helpful. Eventually, clients will seek you out because you’ve developed a reputation for being straightforward and forthcoming about the ins and outs of your industry. Your readers will flip for it. It’s all possible when you let your expertise shine through your writing.
If you have trouble stringing sentences into a clear narrative, however, let us make you sound like the knowledgeable expert you are. Ray Access can write for you to provide access to the readers looking for the latest and greatest. Whether you want to tell the world about your business or your products and services have a narrow target, we can craft articles for publication in magazines and blogs that are insightful, organized and informational. And we’ll even put your name on top as the author. After all, you are the expert, we’re just the writers.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 12, 2014 | Content Marketing
Website Trends to Watch in the Coming Year
Like we’ve always said: it’s no longer enough to have a website. Everyone and her brother have websites. To gain a competitive advantage, you now need an active website. If your website isn’t offering useful information to your clients and potential clients, it’s not reaching them.
Your website should be doing marketing work for you, attracting readers who turn into customers. If your website isn’t part of your marketing budget, with a constant investment, then you’ve wasted the money you’ve already spent on the site. It has to stay active to be effective.
Adding Content Isn’t Enough
In the past, we’ve said time and again that you need to keep adding to your website — such as with regular blog posts — to keep attracting readers to your business. The newest trend, however, suggests that simply adding content isn’t enough. You have to add useful content.
Useful content means answers to your clients’ questions. It means tips that can help your customers make better, more informed decisions. Your website content, as well as your blog post topics, should focus less on you and your company and more on your customers. Delivering useful content will help you stand out from your competition and pique the interest of search engines.
“Content Marketing” Is the New Buzzword Phrase
Search engines are refining how they rank pages. If you can deliver quality content, your site will be recognized, both by human readers and robotic search engines. Quality in 2014 will trump quantity.
Keywords will remain important, but if they are forced into the text unnaturally, Google and other search engines may penalize you. Instead, deliver clear, readable English that assists the people who are seeking solutions. Help these people, and they may become loyal customers.
Building Your Reputation, One Page at a Time
As you add useful information to your website, you are building value. That value will gain an audience, which will simultaneously build your company’s online reputation. If you are offering content that’s interesting, provocative, timely, and — most importantly — useful, then you are building value into your website.
Value, over the long haul, increases your online presence and your website page rank. Useful content delivered consistently over time ultimately translates into authority. So if you want to be seen as the authority in your field, your active website is the perfect vehicle to achieve that goal.
Quality Content Equals Good Marketing
To get ahead in 2014, think of your website as a marketing tool. Budget accordingly. If you don’t have the personnel to devote to this effort, outsource it. Ray Access specializes in content marketing. Let us turn your website into a marketing engine. You could say your company’s reputation depends 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.
by Elle Ray | Nov 24, 2013 | Blog Writing
The Worst Blog You’ll See Is the Outdated One
As we like to say: “If you aren’t paying attention to your website, it’s likely not paying attention to you.”
We can say the very same thing about your blog, a crucial extension of your site. A blog is an easy, inexpensive way to communicate with your customers. A blog can relate news that affects consumers, innovations they want to learn about, and invitations to hot events and happenings.
But what if you’ve lost the steam needed to keep it up or you’ve just plain run out of time to add new posts each week? Here are seven tips for writing your blog:
1. Find Interesting Content
If you run into an interesting article or blog from another source during your everyday reading or research, you can write a short post introducing the other article. At the end of your short summary explaining why it’s important, include a link to it. If it’s truly interesting, your readers will thank you for sharing it.
2. Create a Calendar
Set aside an hour each week to write a blog or search for an interesting post to add to your website. Add it to your to-do list every week, and you’ll find the time. Don’t forget to allocate time to periodically brainstorm for new topics so you can devote your writing time to actual writing.
3. Organize to Simplify
Break down your schedule to focus on different topics every week. For example, choose the first week of the month to write about industry trends, the second week to write about economic forecasts, the third week for news-related or seasonal pieces and the last week to post a round-up of other blogs related to your business or your location.
4. Invite Guests
Blogs are easier when others write it. Solicit guest posts. Read them over carefully before publishing, but letters of appreciation or customer stories make effective blog posts. Pose questions to experts and then print their responses to give your readers even more in-depth information about your business.
5. Maximize Your Efforts
Whenever you do write a new blog, post it to your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. In fact, it can work both ways. Why should a popular Facebook post be confined to Facebook? Post it (with the discussion) on your blog. Your friends and followers will appreciate some meat in their social links instead of just the day-to-day ramblings that so often fill the social pages.
6. Examine Your Goals
Every quarter or so, stop and review your goals to make sure you’re not spinning your wheels. If you started your blog to inform and educate your customers, are you using it for that purpose? Or have you moved on to actively marketing your business? Or are you using the blog to generate new sales? When you have a clear picture of your audience, it’s easier to write for them and keep topics on target.
7. Hire Us
If your business has taken off, and you no longer have time to write a weekly blog, contact us. We’ll imitate your voice and craft fresh new content every week to fit your calendar.
If you just can’t get motivated to start a business blog but you realize you need one, contact Ray Access, and we’ll handle the whole process, from developing ideas to turning in perfect copy. We guarantee original content, thoroughly researched and professionally edited. It’s what we do.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Oct 28, 2013 | Website Content
Web Developers Should Offer Writing Services
Consider this. If you’re a website developer, this blog post is for you specifically. But even if you don’t develop or design websites for a living, you can still learn something valuable here. Keep reading.
Web Developers Are Pros, Right?
Web developers can implement stunning designs, rotating photographs, exploding menus and search engine optimization (SEO), all while creating slick, interlinked pages under a killer domain name. It’s detail-oriented work and it takes time, maybe months to get everything approved and built.
As a web professional, you launch the site after all this hard work. The last thing you expect is the first response you get from your client: that the name is misspelled or the information on the About Us page is unintelligible. They’re mad. You’re mad. And it’s totally avoidable.
Who’s Responsible for the Content?
Website developers usually tell the client that they just use whatever content was provided. The client often expects the content to look different on the new site or somehow magically transform into marketable prose. But when no one claims responsibility, the site suffers.
Web developers are not responsible for “fixing” a site’s content. It’s not your expertise. Yet how do you think the client feels after paying thousands of dollars for a brand new website — and the first time they see it, it’s disappointing because of the content? Probably underwhelmed. Maybe even embarrassed, even if they did provide the incorrect information in the first place.
The Quick Path to a Good First Impression
It’s easy to fix that problem, however, making you and your clients look better. More importantly, it’s easy to look like the pros you are to your clients. What’s the trick?
First, never allow a client’s site to go live without a professional edit from a writing service. Friends don’t let friends go out naked, so why should you let your clients go live without the protection of good review? Avoid a site that’s full of mistakes and erroneous information, even if that’s what the client gave you. You look like a hero if you catch their mistakes.
Offer Up All the Goods
Web developers who spend significant amounts of money marketing their services and landing new business often lose referrals because they can’t give customers everything they need. Small business owners don’t want to shop around for specialists to do each piece of their website. They want one-stop shopping. Maybe that’s even why they came to you in the first place.
Why do you think super duper box stores are sprouting up across America faster than a pasture of kudzu? It’s simple: Why drive all over town when you can get groceries, a new pair of jeans, tires for the car and a new toaster all in one place?
Now we’re not advocating a Walmart-type operation, just taking the finer points of the giant’s marketing techniques that work. Clients who don’t use professional writers and editors for their website content risk wasting every penny on a losing proposition. We can’t imagine you want that kind of reputation, even if you did nothing to deserve it. We stress “did nothing.”
Provide Added Value & They’ll Remember You
In our conversations around Asheville with web developers and marketing professionals, we’re astounded that everyone doesn’t offer a writing services as an integral part of their virtual agency. There’s no better way to provide your clients with added value while boosting your own credibility than by having your own editing and writing services team working on every site before it goes live.
You can do all the analytics in the world and produce the best videos in town, but if the name of the owner if spelled wrong on the roll-out — look out. What do you want to be remembered for: the brilliant design and implementation … or the misspelling in the heading? You can either point fingers, waste more time on a project that should have been right the first time, or you can get to know us to do it right the next time. It’s up to you.
Save money, boost your credibility, satisfy your customers. Let us help you delight your clients.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jun 28, 2013 | Content Marketing
Ray Access and Search Engine Optimization
First, let us state that we are not in the SEO business. Our core business, however — writing blog posts, press releases, and especially website copy — can directly effect a website’s page rank. The problem for many online marketing professionals, SEO firms included, is that Google continues to tweak its algorithms for what it values … and what it punishes.
Past SEO Practices
It used to be that you could load up on backlinks — essentially, links back to your site from other sites, reputable or not — and enjoy a high page rank. No more. So here are some SEO tips. As CopyPress.com recommends, “create a compelling site (i.e., engaging content)” and “use social platforms to increase [your] visibility organically.”
At Ray Access, we see the new paradigm as a positive development. What is SEO after all except the process of positioning truly useful websites at the top of applicable search results? Google wants you to use its search engine, and so it works hard (too hard, say some) to deliver useful results every time.
Creating a Compelling Site
Again, advice from CopyPress.com, so you know it’s not just us making things up:
With so much content created everyday online, it’s not enough for a company to mass-produce dull copy and then push it heavily on every social site with a heavy paid social campaign. If you’re satisfied with a quick spike in your social traffic that will disappear as soon as your budget does, then by all means you should continue.”
Indeed, as we’ve been saying since Day 1, quality content will eventually win the SEO wars. Quality content attracts both search engines and potential customers. Quality content — without tricks or hidden costs — increases your website’s page rank organically.
Increasing Your Visibility
How does quality content do all that? People online often want answers. If you can deliver those answers in your particular field, people will find you, learn to trust you, and share your content. Yes, Virginia, quality content has “shareability,” and it’s a trait every business wants.
“Shareability” means that your content can go viral. It increases your reach on social media outlets as well as in search engine results. “Shareability,” in other words, increases your website’s visibility. And it all starts with quality content.
To learn more about how your company can benefit from the kind of quality content that we develop at Ray Access, contact us. We’re always happy to discuss our passion: clear communication.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jun 6, 2013 | Blog Writing
Ray Access Works with You to Write Blog Posts
A common question we get asked is: “How do you go about writing blog posts for a new client?” Before we answer this very good question, let us provide some context.
What’s a Blog?
Blogs — originally called “weblogs” — began in the late 1990s as online diaries. Individuals wrote about their thoughts or experiences. They may have followed a theme or written free-style.
What made blogs different was that they were available to anyone through the Internet. In other words, these diary entries were public. Public and personal.
Business Blogs Arrive
So when business blogs eventually appeared, they had to go through several transmutations. What could a business say in a blog that would remotely seem personal? Businesses initially struggled with that question.
Business blogs matured into vehicles for outreach, consumer education, and industry insight. If they are well written and useful, these blogs reflect the personality of the company. They offer value and provide a place for interaction with some company personnel.
Today, a good business blog attracts search engines and potential customers alike while cementing the company’s authority in its given field. A useful blog benefits the company’s bottom line.
How We Work
So how does a third party, like Ray Access, even attempt to write blog posts for a company? What can a business owner expect from the process?
When we are hired to write a series of blog posts, we meet with company representatives to discover their target audience and dig into their field of expertise. Then we brainstorm a list of possible blog titles or topics. We present this to our client, who approves or selects enough to get us started. The company may also add to the list.
From there, it’s a straightforward process of research, writing, and editing. The first blog post we prepare requires a bit of back-and-forth with our client to refine the tone and the language, but we always present drafts well in advance of our deadlines for just this sort of issue.
Extra Credit
The blog posts we write contain keyword phrases as naturally as possible. Our goal is to prepare blog posts that people can read. Search engines, while important, are not the primary audience. We can also supply an image with the article for no extra charge.
Once our client accepts the blog post, it is usually the company’s responsibility to publish it. Then the cycle repeats itself, getting faster and faster with each iteration. When we run out of approved topics, we brainstorm another list. We will never run out of ideas. Never.
Now that you know how we work, try us out! We’ll even provide an estimate to write your business blog.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
