by Elle Ray | Dec 20, 2016 | Communication
Send Your Message in an Appropriate Medium
In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Due to a publisher’s error, his follow-up book became The Medium Is the Massage. Being writers, we certainly can understand typos. But when they are so right-on — as McLuhan thought when he saw the mistake — they must deliver some underlying, deeper truth.
And as true as both sentiments were in the 1960s, so they remain valid today. The medium you use to send your message has just as much to do with its acceptance as the words you use to convey your ideas. As a matter of fact, the medium you choose may have even more to do with the validity of your message today than it did back in the day.
The Medium Speaks
McLuhan posited that the means by which you deliver a message becomes embedded in the actual sentiment. In 1964, marketers chose between radio, TV and print. Which one they used to put out their word actually shaped (or massaged) the way it was ultimately perceived. Imagine if the Canadian philosopher and public theorist saw the way consumers communicate today.
He’d probably take solace, knowing that he was so very right. And it’s this question of “what comes first: the message or the massage?” that keeps marketers up at night. And to get a handle on the entire concept, you may need to boost your market analysis to find out the level of importance your target market places on how you send your message — and what your medium says about you and your company. As an extreme example, what would you think of a company that sent out marketing materials by fax?
Who Are You Talking To?
Call a Millennial from your landline to invite him to your launch party, and you’ll probably never see that guy at any of your company events (nor see his name come across your desk as a new client). But send your message in a tweet or a post on a hot community Facebook page, and he very well might show up with all his friends in tow.
Tweet that you have a special going on for seniors — and have fun sitting all alone at your business. But if you send an email or leave a voicemail message about how much you appreciate his previous business and want to show your appreciation with a sale just for him, and you better make sure you have plenty on hand. You’ll be swamped.
How You Send Your Message Says a Lot About You
So not only do you have to consider the message your prospective target sees, but you also must take into consideration just what your choice of medium says about you and your trend savviness. Ask a Millennial, for example, to call you back with her RSVP, and she may just roll her eyes and say, “No thank you, dinosaur.” Ask a Baby Boomer to post her RSVP on Facebook, and she’ll just pretend she didn’t hear you and wonder about your trustworthiness.
The medium you choose tells the world whether you’re hip and with-it or old-school and ready for retirement. So what’s a business owner to do when you want to reach a diverse audience of all ages, but don’t want to come off as a Luddite? Consider the facts:
- All generations use email.
- Email is one of the most trusted sources of contact for Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers.
- Consumers over 65 use email, but still prefer postal mail.
- Mobile apps, text messages and social media are strong media for reaching Millennials, but drop off drastically as the media of choice for everyone else.
Basically, email is the safest medium to use when you want to reach the most people. You also can’t go wrong with a high-quality website and interesting blogs to send your message. Consider:
- 87 percent of all adults use the Internet.
- 97 percent of consumers 18–30 use the Internet.
- 67 percent of those over the age of 65 use the Internet.
The Moral of the Story
The point of all this is to:
- Applaud your use of the Internet to reach the most people.
- Remind you that you’re being judged by your constituents in ways you may never have even considered, so listen closely to their feedback.
- Be nice, use the appropriate medium for your message and surprise: you’ll make money.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a new topic or engaging content to fill your tweets, posts and blogs, contact Ray Access. The writers and editors of Ray Access are poised to come to the rescue. Whether you want to reach Millennials who prefer communicating through emoji’s rather than talking on the phone or the high-end Baby Boomers looking for more ways to spend their money, Ray Access can pointedly reach your audience with just the right amount of savvy. We can speak the language of your readers, no matter who they are.
Our medium is the message, and we know how to massage the written word, yo. So relax, sis, chill and veg-out. It’s all good, cool — lit. And it’ll be very much to your liking, sir, right up your alley and smooth as silk stockings.
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 | May 31, 2016 | Content Provider
And When to Hire a Professional Agency for It
Let’s face it, large companies have their own in-house writing teams, most likely as part of their marketing departments. So these corporate businesses almost always create their own content in-house. That leaves:
- Small businesses (including start-ups and solopreneurs) and
- Mid-sized businesses who may or may not have a writer on staff
So the decision to hire a professional agency often comes down to need and timing. But there’s more to writing online content than that. The goal of this article is to educate business owners on the demands of online content — what that content has to do — so you can better determine when you can write it yourself or whether you need to call in a pro.
Writing Blog Posts for Your Business
Why do businesses blog? No matter what your business, potential customers are going to have questions about it. Blogs work over time to build brand awareness, educate your customers and drive traffic to your website. The most successful business blogs are published consistently — week after week, every other week or at the very least once a month. The best blog posts are engaging, informative and entertaining.
If you have writers in-house who can deliver consistently good quality blog posts, then use those writers and give them free rein to experiment with topics and keywords. If you don’t have a writer you can trust (or any writers), that’s the time to hire a professional agency. Creating blog posts, which are usually 500–1,000 words in length, takes talent, but these writing projects don’t cost that much. So, as soon as you can comfortably afford even $150 a month (for biweekly posts), hire a professional agency like Ray Access.
Writing Business Website Content
Now that every business (and nearly every individual!) has a website, yours has to find a way to stand out. Unless you have absolutely no competition — for example, you’re the only plumber in town or you’ve invented the best mousetrap — you need exceptional content on your website. Unlike a blog, your website has to:
- Connect with your target audience
- Identify who your target audience is
- Generate trust in your business
- Establish your authority in your field
- Convert visitors into customers
This is a tall order for any writer. You can write your website content yourself or hand the task to an in-house writer whose background is English papers, technical documents or marketing fluff, but the results may not accomplish the bullet points above. And accomplishing all five is what you need. Anything less means lost revenue.
Hire a Professional Agency
Website content is arguably the most important piece of your website. It drives home your message. It explains your business. It sells your products or services. Unless you’re a bare-bones start-up, budget for website content like you budget for website development. If you spend $5000 for a website, do not think that $500 worth of content will make your website an effective lead generation tool.
Ray Access has expert writers and editors who can deliver website content that produces leads and converts visitors. Ray Access has many success stories from customers. In fact, one of our clients recently wrote: “Every time I get a call from a client who says, ‘I found you on the Web,’ I like you guys more and more.” That’s the reason you should hire a professional agency to write your website content.
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 | Mar 19, 2016 | Website Content
What You Need to Know When Hiring Writers
You can find someone to write your website content for as little as five dollars a page. Even twenty dollars a page may seem reasonable to you if you’re a small business. But the content you end up with most likely will be worth only that much, and the costs to your business may run a lot higher.
Poor writing on your website reflects poorly on your business. Plus, and this is inarguably more important, badly written content doesn’t generate any leads. It has no ROI, a zero return on your investment.
No one is going to buy your products or services if your website doesn’t persuade them that you’re capable of delivering. We’re not just saying this because we’re in the business of writing website content. We want you to understand the difference between what most companies have on their websites and what successful companies have on their sites.
What Effective Website Content Does
Your website has three jobs, and the first two only exist to support the third:
- Connect with your audience
- Build trust in your brand
- Generate leads and phone calls
If you’re not getting phone calls or emails from interested parties who found you online, your website isn’t working for you. If you pay for new website content, you should see an increase in traffic to your site and an increase in sales over time. Ultimately, that’s what your website is supposed to do.
So How Much Does Website Content Cost?
We could turn that question around and ask you: “How much is effective website content worth to you?” If you could increase your sales by five percent, what would that be worth? Ten percent? More? Of course, that’s not how prices are formulated. Content providers set a price, based on their experience in delivering a return on investment. They know what their service is worth.
If you do any research into the issue, you’ll find that prices for website content vary greatly, running as high as $25,000 for a targeted landing page. If that sounds astronomical to you, then you don’t understand how well a tight, effective, urgent landing page can convert visitors into paying customers. Landing pages represent your online sales team. How much would you pay for a good salesperson?
In 2017, Ray Access charges a rate based on length and breadth. In other words, if you want a single 1,000-word web page, you pay $250. But if you want 50 pages — your entire site — you pay just $150 a page for 1,000-word web pages that are thoroughly researched and well crafted by American writers. That sounds like a bargain now, doesn’t it? Here’s an excellent article on website content prices, if you want a second opinion.
How Much Do Blog Posts Cost?
This is kind of a loaded question because for blog posts to work — for blog posts to attract not only a lot of people, but the right people, those motivated to buy your products or services — they need to include the right keywords. And keyword research itself can be costly, as anyone with any experience with an SEO firm can tell you. According to the article referenced above, blog posts can cost anywhere from $80 to $950 apiece.
Ray Access, in contrast, charges $100 for a standard 500-word blog post in 2017. These articles are well researched, well written and well edited. They’re also guaranteed original, meaning they are written from scratch, not copied from Wikipedia. In fact, Ray Access uses authoritative sites for its research, never eHow, About.com or any of those hit-or-miss information websites. You should follow this advice, too.
Why the Difference in Prices?
Among the reasons for varying website content prices, the key phrase is value. Can a piece of online writing prove its worth? Since websites attract visitors through a wide variety of ways (e.g., SEO, backlinks, organic searches, ads, etc.), it’s difficult to attribute a website’s success just to its content.
But conversion rates are strongly tied to content. Effective content persuades visitors to buy. Cheap content can’t convert anyone except the most highly motivated. Poor content may even drive visitors away. But exceptional content converts many visitors — and even gets others to at least inquire.
So website content has to have a return on investment that makes the investment worthwhile. This is business, after all.
When you understand the value professional, cost-effective blog and website content writers bring to your business, you’ll want to contact Ray Access to improve your online sales.
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 | Dec 23, 2015 | Content Provider
Writing Online Content Isn’t Enough By Itself
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.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 31, 2015 | Content Provider
Most People Want to Know: What Is a Keyword?
To start at the very beginning, a keyword (or keyword phrase, since a keyword can consist of one to five words) reflects the subject of a website page or blog post. The keyword sums up the content so that search engines can identify what’s on that page. It’s a shortcut, but it helps people find your page and visit it, already knowing that you are have what they expect to find.
Keywords are an important part of SEO or search engine optimization. SEO is the art and science of making a website or blog more visible to potential visitors. Using keywords correctly, therefore, helps bring traffic — and the right traffic — to your website or blog. Let us explain, since the writers and editors at Ray Access deal with keywords every day.
1. Finding the Right Word
For any bloggers, but especially for business bloggers, finding the right keyword is the difference, as Mark Twain famously wrote, “between lightning and a lightning bug.” In other words, are you trying to attract meteorologists or entomologists? The keywords you use in your blog can attract the right audience or simply increase your bounce rate.
The bounce rate from your website or blog is the percentage of your visitors who leave quickly after landing on your site. Search engines interpret your bounce rate as people who went to your site expecting one thing and found another. In other words, they didn’t find what they were looking for and quickly left. Minimizing your bounce rate means you’re attracting your intended audience.
2. Choosing the Right Keyword Density
The playing field has shifted as search engines refine what they try to deliver to their customers. In days gone by, it was acceptable (and advantageous) to cram a keyword phrase as many times as possible into a website or blog. Those days are over. If you attempt to keyword-stuff an article with a particular phrase, the search engines will reject it and penalize your website or blog.
The optimum keyword density — that is, the percentage of the keyword to the rest of the words on the website or in the blog — is now a more comfortable one percent. That means for a 1,000-word blog post, the chosen keyword or keyword phrase should appear about 10 times.
3. Placing the Keyword Correctly
Putting the keywords you’ve selected in the right places on (and behind) your page or post maximizes the effect they have on a search engine. Keywords used correctly help your page rank high for the chosen keyword or keyword phrase. Ideally, insert your chosen keywords:
- In the title of the web page or blog post
- In the first sentence or paragraph
- In a subheading
- In several other places in the text (depending on the length of the page or post)
- In the last sentence or paragraph
The keyword should also be part of the meta-title and meta-description. These do not appear on the website page or in the blog post, but they do show up when a search engine shows your website page or blog post in its search results. It’s the title and short description that appears when your site or blog shows up on a search engine results page. You can use the meta-title and meta-description to further entice people to click on and visit your page, as long as you’re honest and ethical about what’s really on the page.
Using keywords on website pages and on blog posts is a subject that runs deep and wide. The introductory tips listed here will immediately help your website or blog rank higher. Just keep in mind that choosing the right keywords is a difficult task to master. Seek help if you need it. It can make all the difference to your website or blog ranking.
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 | Mar 15, 2015 | Website Content
It’s the One Purpose for Blogs and Websites
Business blogs and websites have a specific purpose, but it’s not to sell your product or service. At least, not entirely. Your website needs to develop trust with your visitors. Your blog needs to attract those curious visitors to your site. And there is no better way to accomplish both those goals than to answer questions people have about your business, industry or town.
No matter what your business, no matter what product or service you provide, people will have questions about it:
- What will it do for me?
- Why is yours the better product/service?
- How much will it cost me or save me?
- How can I best use it?
The list goes on and on. You need to answer these questions. Only then will your visitors be open to buy.
Answering Questions in Your Blog
A business blog is a marketing tool. With it, you can reach out, using keywords and topics not directly related to your business, to attract more visitors to your site. Answering questions, both about your industry and about other topics, is a great way to attract readers.
For example, let say you’re a plumber. You can cover the obvious in your blog, such as “How to fix a leaky faucet” and “5 things to ask a plumber before he makes a house call.” But you can also answer related questions, such as “5 steps to winterize your home” and “Handling difficult clients.” These aren’t necessarily topics you’d expect from a plumber, but they fit right in and may attract readers you normally wouldn’t.
Answering Questions on Your Website
Your website absolutely has to answer as many of the obvious questions about your business as possible:
- Where are you located?
- What do you do, exactly?
- Why do people need your product/service?
- How are you different from anyone else?
- How do I get in touch with you?
These are the easy ones, but if your business generates more obvious questions, answer those, too. In the process, you’re generating trust. You’re sharing information about your business and industry. If it’s unique enough, you’ll get noticed. If it’s truthful enough, you’ll become trusted. If your website is clear enough and friendly enough, you’ll earn the respect of those who visit.
And that’s where the magic happens. If people trust your company, they will like it. If you provide valuable information about your business or industry or even your location, people will remember you. They may not be ready to buy your product or service right then, but when the need arises, they’ll remember you and they’ll return. Because people like doing business with people or businesses they like.
Your Business Website
Yes, the ultimate purpose of a business website is to sell your product or service. But you don’t do that by talking sales and guarantees and price points and all that for page after page after page. You do it by building trust. You do it by sharing value on your site. If a visitor learns something new on your website, that’s gold; that’s more valuable than 10 commercials.
People get online to look for answers to questions. Your website’s job is to answer as many relevant questions as possible. That’s how you attract an audience. That’s the value of content marketing. And it’s not always as simple as it sounds. It takes work. But it’s exactly what we do at Ray Access. Let us help you reach more people with well-crafted website content and a targeted 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.
