How to Choose a Blog Topic

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.

“Blog” Is Not a Four-Letter Word

by Elle Ray | Oct 10, 2013 | Blog Writing

What Your Blog Can Do… and What It Can’t Do

whether you're writing or reading a blog, you have to know what it is

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.

Why Your Asheville Business Needs a Blog

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.

customers are looking for you

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.