by Elle Ray | Dec 15, 2015 | Writing
Learn How to Write Online Content Like a Pro
Earn Your Readers’ Trust & They’ll Come Back
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.
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 Mark Bloom | Nov 29, 2013 | Content Marketing
And Is Content Still the Way to SEO Results?
Back in February, on Mark’s birthday no less, we published a blog post pronouncing that Content Is King. Here we are, some 10 months later, and we have to ask the question: Is content still king (or queen) when it comes to SEO and best practices for your website?
Our initial response is: Yes, of course content still rules the roost. After all, it’s content that draws readers to your website. It’s content that delivers SEO keywords. It’s content — useful, valuable information — that makes any site worthwhile.
We’ve always said that quality content is what will win the SEO wars, that Google and other search engines will eventually figure out how to recognize useful information from keyword-loaded crap. That’s still in the future, apparently.
Content Is Evolving
The definition of content is changing. Infographics are the current rage. Video is getting a lot of attention these days. Where does this leave the lonely word?
Words will never disappear. They are the foundation of language, even online. Infographics need words. Videos need scripts. And how often do you look for the pop-up “tooltips” that explain exactly what that little button or icon means?
The concept of content may change, but the goal has always been the same: to provide useful information people will want to read or watch and then share. If your content doesn’t reach that goal, then I don’t care how much SEO you’re buying, your website isn’t working.
Rethinking SEO
We came across an interesting article from CopyPress.com that talks about this idea. Basically, the article says:
To be good at SEO, you need to stop thinking about SEO.
In other words, the goal of SEO is to get beyond it. A local SEO expert told me once his idea of SEO was “creating community.” Not much about keywords in that sentence.
So, when you’re ready to treat SEO as a means to an end instead of as an end unto itself, contact us.
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 | Feb 13, 2013 | Editing
Editing Your Content and What It Means to You
What does it mean to edit a piece of writing? Let’s look at an example.
Joanne is a small business owner. Her business is called Bits & Pieces. She sells automobile accessories, everything from steering wheel covers to custom hubcaps. She’s excited about her growing business and has just launched a new website.
While she has employees to do the nuts and bolts work of finding or making items and then selling them, she’s been reluctant to hire someone solely for the purpose of marketing. So she hired a friend to build the website and wrote all the text herself, often staying up late at night to finish.
So she’s appalled, when browsing the new site, to see on the About page that she’s misspelled her company name. Worst than that, she used a “T” instead of a “B.” As she hurriedly places a call to her friend for a quick fix, she wonders what other errors are lurking on the site and what kinds of backlash they may cause.
How Editing Can Help
At its most basic, editing is simply getting another set of eyes to look over any writing before it’s published — online or in hard copy. Mistakes like the one described above are caught before they become a nuisance… or an embarrassment.
Effective editing goes beyond simple proofreading, as it well should. Editors fix grammatical and spelling mistakes, true, but they also make writing stronger, clearer, and shorter, which is most important to your online audience.
A good editor rearranges the thoughts on the page to make your case more persuasive. A good editor finds the perfect word or phrase to replace ho-hum writing. A good editor makes your prose come to life.
Ray Access Does the Hard Part
Too often, in our vast experience, we’ve seen business owners get discouraged by the writing process and stop blogging. This is a missed opportunity. A regular blogging practice on your company website can attract an audience, get your company noticed, drive up the website’s page rank, and establish you as an authority in your field.
But business owners aren’t necessarily writers. It may not be where your passion lies. But it is exactly where our passion lies. Let Ray Access tackle the blogging for you. Your company will still reap the benefits, and you’ll have more time to devote to the things you do best.
Ray Access has helped many companies increase their bottom lines. Our rates are surprisingly affordable, and you’ll start to see results in the first year. Don’t miss an opportunity to grow your business online.
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 | Feb 7, 2013 | Website Content
Your Website Content Will Reign During 2013
Most of you know that we’ve repeated our belief that content is king to our friends, our business associates, and of course, our clients. In fact, we’ll tell anyone, including you.
The best way to gain exposure on the Internet is to provide good, informative content on your website, delivered consistently over time. Good quality content is the absolute best way to reach your marketing goals and to establish your company as an authority in your field.
You may think we say this because we’re Ray Access and we’re in the business of providing content, but you’d be wrong. We say it because it’s true, and we’re not the only ones to assert it. We follow the trends of the online marketing industry, and we’ve found marketing experts, trendsetters, and bloggers who agree with us.
While we’re not privy to whatever Google or Bing has in store for the future of search engines, we believe sincerely that good writing and useful information will win in the end.
Keywords will always have value and backlinks work for now, but search engines keep refining their criteria. It always comes back to quality content, delivered consistently. Now others are confirming what we already knew. eMarketer.com recently wrote that content is the number 1 marketing priority for 2013, overtaking the focus on social media.
Getting on social media has been an industry mantra for the past several years, but eMarketer.com stated that “companies understand social media’s potential value in engaging customers and generating leads, but are having trouble developing effective methods of measuring return on investment.”
In other words, an actual visit to your website has value; a “like” really doesn’t. And even when you do develop a healthy social media presence, what are you going to give your followers? You’ve got to give them reasons — new reasons every day — to keep coming back for a visit. It’s your content that not only lures them in the first place, but keeps them coming back until you become a household word.
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.
