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 Elle Ray | Oct 20, 2013 | Blog Writing
Your Business Blog Needs Topical Blog Topics
Regardless of what you sell, if you have a business blog, it’s doing three things for you:
- Adds new content to your website, forcing search engines to re-index your website, which helps your page rank.
- Establishes your business as an authority in your field while educating your customers (and prospective customers).
- Attracts new people to your website through keyword searches that may not be directly related to your business.
Halloween is a topical subject right now.
When Is a Topic Topical?
This article focuses on #3. Writing about new topics, topics that may be in the news, allows you to connect with an audience that you hadn’t previously sought. That awareness can help you generate business.
Everyone has an opinion about what’s happening in the world around us. Even businesses can contribute to the conversation. If you sell insurance, for example, shouldn’t you blog about the Affordable Care Act? It’s right in your wheelhouse, as far as topics are concerned, and it should attract some attention on the Internet.
That’s an easy example, but there are many others. If you’re a dentist, you can write something relevant about a Kardashian marriage (or divorce), the dangers of Twinkies, or the price of gold (caps). All these topics have been in the news recently, and your article may attract a new audience.
Topical vs. Evergreen
You should not, however, write only these types of blog posts. Topical articles are terrific, but they often have a short shelf life. Once the Kardashians, Twinkies, or the price of gold are off the headlines, searches for them drop, and so will your traffic.
Instead, sprinkle in topical articles while striving for more informational “evergreen” topics. Evergreen topics are those that have an unlimited shelf life. Whatever your business, you can write to educate your customers about some aspect of it. This kind of useful information will always find an audience.
If you’re an architect, write about matching a design to a specific location. If you’re a banker, write about the perfect client for a loan. If you’re a web developer, write about the newest technology and why it’s applicable to your customers. You get the picture.
We Brainstorm for You
If you already have an active blog, good for you. You understand its value and are working to increase your online visibility. But active bloggers sometimes need help thinking outside the text box. And that’s what we do here at Ray Access.
For a small fee, we will brainstorm 25 blog topics for you — topics that you can write about in the future. We’ll give you both topical and evergreen topics, complete with a title or heading that will attract attention and give you the angle to make the topic interesting and relevant.
And of course, if you need help getting your blog started, we’re the perfect people to turn to, since we write blog posts for a living. We can research, write, edit and deliver a blog post a week for a very reasonable sum. Interested? Contact us for details and a free estimate.
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 10, 2013 | Blog Writing
What Your Blog Can Do… and What It Can’t Do
When they first appeared in the late 1990s, blogs were running commentaries of writers’ lives, much like many Twitter and Facebook accounts today. Blogs were seen as one person’s opinion and deemed as little more expert than a diary. Unfortunately, many business people still consider a blog to be a four-letter word: unnecessary and not worthy of investment.
Like most things Internet, however, the blog has evolved and changed. Today, business blog have efficiently replaced the company newsletter in that it can contain news about recent business happenings or convey information on a single subject. Blogs may still contain opinion and commentary, but they are well respected as vehicles for passing along pertinent and sometimes vital communications.
What a Blog Does
Blogs are one of the primary means of communication between professionals today, according to Penn State University. Coupled with technological tools such as RSS feeds, blogs are an inexpensive inclusion in a marketing toolbox. They allow professionals to get their ideas out to their readers easily at little cost. Blogs are short, fact-filled articles that can be sent through email, posted on a website and sent to mobile devices.
The bottom line is that a blog is one of the best vehicles around today to communicate with your audience, whether they are customers, friends or followers. And since most blogs allow comments, the platform gives you an opportunity to connect with that audience, to have an exchange of ideas and to solicit feedback on your services or products.
Blogs vs. Newsletters
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Replace your monthly newsletter with a set of four weekly blog articles (which are called “posts”). You don’t need expensive software to write and publish your posts. Once you have a website, the technology to allow blogs is usually free and quickly learned. Since everyone has a web browser, you don’t have to worry about mailing costs, and since blogs are stored online, you don’t even need a filing cabinet to store your back issues.
Producing a newsletter can be costly. One eight-page monthly newsletter professionally written and laid out can cost you up to $500 a month, and that price only goes up the more clients you have. In other words, newsletter technology doesn’t scale well. Blog posts, on the other hand, can be professionally written and produced for a little as $60 a week. They are much more accessible, and always available, to your clients.
A newsletter requires coordinating multiple articles produced in advance of publication. A blog post, in contrast, can be produced and published on the same day. Even if you post your newsletter to your website, which is always a good idea by the way, adds new content for search engines on a monthly or quarterly basis. While that’s good for search rankings, you can publish a new blog post every week, providing a constant stream of new content and forcing those search engines to re-index your site more frequently.
Blogs Are Better
So forget the old stereotype of what a blog is. It’s gone the way of the www. It’s no longer necessary to produce expensive newsletters. Join the 21st century and jump into the blogosphere. Because it’s not just a good idea; it’s what you need to get noticed. It’s what will set you apart from your competition.
When you’re ready to get started, contact us. We are communication professionals and can offer free advice. Or if you understand the value of a blog, but don’t have the internal resources to create one, can do the writing for you.
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 | Oct 5, 2013 | Asheville
Professional Asheville Blog Writers Spell It Out
Even in a business community as small and insular as in Asheville, businesses face competition for their services. Asheville restaurants, Asheville architects, even Asheville dentists need business blogs to give them an edge. Why? It’s all about visibility.
It’s All About Visibility
Blogs not only add flavor to a staid website, but they attract potential customers. Blog posts can be about anything, potentially tying the business blog to almost any topical subject. In fact, if you’re using your blog merely to tout your monthly specials, you’re not getting enough visibility out of your blog.
Use the space to educate your customers. Write about not only what sets you apart, but also about the inside tips about your industry. Write about Asheville and why you chose to live and do business here. Regardless of your subject matter, if you provide useful information, visitors will not only remember you, they’ll come back.
Climbing the Ranks
An active website helps its page rank, too, which is another way to increase business. When anyone searches for your business online — not by your company name but by the product or service you provide — the first five listings (after the advertisements) are the links most likely to be clicked on. The competition for those spots is fierce, but an active blog helps.
What’s an active website? A site with changing content. That doesn’t mean you have to redesign your website every week. That wouldn’t help anyone. But when you add valuable information (like blog posts and new pages) over time, it gets attention from the search engines and from Internet surfers.
Finding Services in Asheville
Since consumers are turning away from the yellow pages and moving online, your Asheville business needs to make sure your listing shows up when those consumers do their searches. As Asheville grows, the new arrivals are going to be looking for new dentists, realtors, gardening stores, home decorating stores, and more. If you want their business, you have to be where they’re looking.
So update your website. Start a blog. Get busy finding the consumers who are out there trying to find you. We’re experts in website content, which means we’re experts in helping your customers find you 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 | Sep 18, 2013 | Content Provider
Why Ray Access Doesn’t Write for One Niche
Linda and Mark at Ray Access claim to be able to write about any topic they can research. And it’s true. They’ve written about plastic surgery, retail furniture, medical issues, construction, website development, and a whole range of other topics. Yet the prevailing “wisdom” in the industry is to specialize. Why?
Specialization Creates Experts
In today’s world, people gravitate toward experts. Experts speak the truth, they get paid lots of money for their intimate knowledge of their chosen field, and businesses and the media seek them out for advice. What’s not to like about specialization?
First, it limits your market and your audience. If your specialization is computers, you may occasionally write a piece that appeals to a wider audience, but most of the time, you’re writing for geeks. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If your specialization is construction, you’re going to be writing for businesses in that field. Period.
While it’s easier to brand your services as a writer if you specialize, you also limit your marketing reach. An expert only matters when someone needs an expert in that field. Most days, they don’t.
Generalization Creates Opportunity
Since we can write on virtually any topic, we can write for virtually any client. Are you a dentist? We can create a terrific, engaging blog for you. Are you a landscaper? We can provide dynamic website text that’s SEO-friendly and written for the common man (or woman).
Being generalists means we specialize in a new field with every new assignment we take. We can still relate to the general population, so we don’t get bogged down in jargon. We get to learn and write about lots of different topics, and that suits us fine.
So regardless what your business is, it’s in good hands when you hire us to write about it. We offer a free estimate.
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 | Sep 5, 2013 | Content Marketing
How Your Business Website Can Generate Cash
An earlier article by a content marketing firm revealed that the fastest growing companies get at least 40 percent of their leads from online marketing. That’s impressive enough, but the tactics of online marketing are so common sense these days that it’s a wonder everyone isn’t doing it.
Your Website Can Work for You
The most obvious online marketing strategy is using your website to attract potential customers and to reach out into the Internet to actively find potential customers. How can this work? Here’s a football analogy:
If a team has the fastest wide receiver in the game, that’s a tactical advantage. If the quarterback never throws to that receiver, however, the team has lost any tactical advantage and might be better off without that super fast receiver, who probably cost them a lot of money.
Your business website is just like that super fast receiver. You can have the slickest site in the world, but if you don’t use it properly to gain a tactical advantage, you might as well post a single page with your phone number on it. That site probably cost you a lot of money that you are now wasting.
To get the benefit of any website, whether it’s a super fast receiver or a third-and-long specialist, you need to make it active. An active site attracts the very people who are looking for your business. Those people are potential customers. It’s that simple.
How do you make a site active? Again, the simple answer is to keep it fresh. An active blog adds content to your website weekly. Adding information and changing content on other pages — even your About Us page — keeps the search engines busy re-indexing your site while moving your site up the page rankings.
Don’t Forget the Other Obvious Strategy
The other obvious online marketing strategy is SEO. SEO, in case you’ve been under a rock since 1999, stands for Search Engine Optimization. This strategy involves making each page of your website a clear destination for a specific question. Everything from the copy to the photos to the title should all say the same thing: what the page is about.
Keywords play a large role in SEO, but too many can backfire. Keyword placement on the page is important, but again, consistency is the real key. A content provider (gee, like us) can rewrite your website content to be SEO-friendly as well as human-friendly. It’s a win-win.
Hence Our Motto
We truly believe these strategies can increase traffic to your website without breaking your budget. It led us to our motto, which is: “If you’re ignoring your website, it’s likely ignoring you.” We mean it, too. Keep your site active and updated, and your company will benefit. Remember, according to CopyPress.com, the fastest growing companies get 40 percent of their leads online. What’s your percentage?
So when you want to use your website to grow your business, we 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.
