by Elle Ray | Mar 4, 2014 | Blog Writing
Eight Proven Ways to Get Your Juices Flowing
Writing in Asheville rarely leaves our creativity time to go dormant. Around every corner sits a new and intriguing idea, an exciting question or an entirely off-beat take on an old suggestion. A brief walk through downtown or a quick drive up a mountain highway can get your ideas juices flowing. And it’s during those times that you need to prepare for your blog.
Too often, we hear of bloggers who sit down at their computers and expect to create a sensational piece that will draw readers in and excite their imaginations. We all want to create the kind of reading experience that will make our customers stand up and pay attention. But if we wait until the last minute to tap into the well of ideas, the flow may just not be there on demand.
What’s a Blogger to Do?
The following suggestions are what keep us at Ray Access in tune with our creative juices, maintaining a flow of ideas for our blog (and yours if you’re a client). Here are our tips for coming up with your own website blog ideas:
- Keep a highlighter handy at all times to help you remember a great idea you got from a newspaper or other published print source.
- Carry a small notepad and jot down ideas when they come, no matter where you are. Stick one on your nightstand because the brain can get active when we begin to shut down or just after waking.
- Call yourself and leave a message you can listen to at a more appropriate time when you get struck with inspiration.
- Bookmark news websites or industry articles that get your thoughts all wound up and activated.
- Throw out a challenge to friends and family members at dinner to give you blogging ideas. And then write them down before you forget.
- Put yourself in your customers’ seats and think about what they might want to know.
- Perform a keyword search every couple weeks to see what’s trending on the big search engines and incorporate those ideas in your own topics.
- Read, read, and read some more. The fact is that writers read. Not only will ideas for topics jump from the pages, but you’ll become a better writer too.
We hope these ideas stirred up some inspiration for you. No matter where you are, capture those ideas for later, when you’re ready to write. We do, so we have lots of ideas. If you run out, we can deliver 25 new topics for your blog for 25 dollars.
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 28, 2014 | Content Marketing
Create a Website That Works for Your Business
As we’ve written before in this blog space, you need an active website to attract your target audience. You need to provide useful information that people are going to want to read, talk about and share. But how can you do that?
Before you even begin to fill your site with useful and creative content, take time to make sure customers can find their way around, easily move through your site and stay to learn more about you and your business. Here are four ways to begin this process:
1. Know Your Market
Before you begin to design your website and fill it with that useful content we’re always talking about, you first have to do the hard work of research. You probably already know what you do. You know the value that you offer. Your goal in this research is to find out what your potential customers want.
For example, if your business is selling rugs, you need to know who’s buying your rugs. Are they second-home owners? Are they newlyweds moving into their first apartment? Are they landlords or real estate investors or home decorators? The answers you discover will direct both the design and the tone of your website.
If your business serves a variety of clients, consider different sections that will appeal to those specific niches. Write differently to each group.
2. Design and Redesign
Almost anyone these days can build you a website, but to get the look and feel you need for your business, consider hiring a professional designer. Web designers can tailor the look and feel to appeal to your customer base (see #1). A pleasing design can increase your sales.
Your website is your online storefront. It’s there for you 24/7, open for business. It represents your firm. It should therefore reflect your values and show that you know what your customers want. A successful design makes your content better, like a pleasantly designed room makes your furniture look better. Don’t skimp on design, just as you wouldn’t skimp on the façade of your brick-and-mortar store.
3. Organize Your Site
Before you build the site, make sure it follows an obvious structure or organization. Is it easy to find your way around? Are the menus easy to understand, and are the subpages in the expected places? Put your contact information on every page. Make your organization as obvious as possible.
You don’t want visitors to arrive at your site and not be able to find what they’re looking for. That’s a recipe for a bounce. (A bounce is when a someone comes to your website, glances around, decides it’s not what he’s looking for, and then goes somewhere else.) Don’t let bounces happen to you.
4. Create Effective Landing Pages
A landing page is a page on your website that you send specific visitors to. For example, if you ran an online ad for a special sale on car batteries, you wouldn’t want the link to direct people to your home page. You’d want to bring them to a page that talked about how great your batteries are and now they’re even less expensive! Similarly, if someone on your site wants to find out about your car wash service, don’t send him to a page that lists all your services. Effective landing pages convert visitors into customers.
At Ray Access, we don’t build websites, but we understand them. We understand website content. While we’ll provide top-quality content for your site regardless of your website design, our content will be more effective if your website design is more effective. And a better website means more customers.
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 22, 2014 | Content Marketing
Personas Help You Write to a Specific Target
Whenever you write anything, the most important questions to ask yourself, before you begin, is:
Who am I writing this for? Who am I trying to reach?”
Regardless what you are writing, whether it’s a blog post, a brochure, a script, or even an email, you must answer these questions before you start typing. Your answers will determine:
- The language you use
- The approach you take
- The tone of your writing
Without the answers, you’ll likely miss your mark and not connect with your target audience. You’ll be wasting your time.
Imagining Your Audience
That’s where a persona can be useful. A persona is an imagined conglomerate of what your audience might look like. It takes some research, but ultimately, creating a persona can help you target your business communications more effectively: marketing, advertising, websites, etc. Its return on investment, if you think in those terms, is astronomical.
Here’s a primer on how to create a persona (or a series of personas) for your company.
Creating a Persona
After you’ve done your research, you should have a pretty good idea of the people you need to target for your business. In other words, you should know the demographic you’re marketing to. It might be women aged 45–60. It might teenagers in affluent neighborhoods. It might be avid bicycle riders.
The trick to creating a persona is to personify your target demographic into one or two imaginary people — people with names, characteristics, jobs, families, hobbies, and possessions. Provide as much detail as possible. What are the names of the person’s children? What is he/she making for dinner tonight? No detail is too insignificant. Include a photo or drawing of that person.
If your target market is wide enough, create a second, complimentary persona. Make sure this second persona is distinct enough from the first to be useful, even if they share certain attributes such as their income brackets.
For example, Pete is a 35-year-old computer scientist who sits in a chair all week. He keeps in shape by riding his bicycle on weekends. He earns $52,000 a year, has two young children, Joseph and Shelby, and a dog named Hank. He loves his bike and spends time cleaning the tires and tightening the gears after each ride. He belongs to a cycling club that organizes regular group rides. They also do fundraisers for local charities.
Employing Your Persona
When you’ve finished your persona, print it out or copy it onto large sheets of paper. Put it up on the wall. This is the person or these are the people you’re writing to. These are the human beings you’re trying to reach. Respect them. Respect their time. Offer them value. Get their attention.
Determine what they need before you start writing. What is it that you have that would interest them? Why indeed should they buy your product or service? If you can find persuasive arguments to sell to your personas, you’ll have persuasive arguments for the people they represent out there in the real world.
At Ray Access, we believe in doing the research for finding the market you’re trying to reach. We don’t start writing until we know who we’re writing for. You should do the same.
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, 2014 | Website Content
How to Get a More Profitable Business Website
You can’t escape it. Sooner or later, you’ll need to provide business information — in writing — to clients, prospects, the government or the public at large. Whether you run a small business or occupy a small corner of the org chart at a multinational corporation, you need to be able to formulate a persuasive sentence.
If you’re one of the many businesspeople who lack writing skills, you should practice more. As more of your communication ends up online, more people will be influenced, either positively or negatively, by your words. Improving your writing can result in marked improvement in your business options. There’s no substitute for practice, but here are a few pointers to put you on the right track.
1. Less is more.
On a website, concision matters. Ironically, as written information becomes more important, people are less willing to read. Use words sparingly, cut out the florid prose and avoid meandering sentences. As Zorro taught his son: “Get in, make your Z and get out!”
2. Avoid jargon.
No one likes reading about “blue-sky solutioneering” and “strategical synergies” that ultimately mean nothing. If you mean “brainstorming” and “opportunities to work together,” simply say it. While jargon can be unavoidable when writing for a specific audience, use plain language whenever possible.
3. Write once, check twice.
It’s hardly fair — typos happen — but people judge you for those mistakes anyway, and harshly. To cut down on those mistakes, proofread immediately after you write and then again hours or even days later. Nothing is more embarrassing than a stupid typo in an otherwise fine document.
4. Write once, check twice.
Yes, again. This time, re-read your work to catch errors in tone that might cause trouble. For instance, if you’re upset or angry, you may write something you don’t actually want anyone else to read. Make sure your work says what you want it to say and how you want it to say it, before letting it reach its audience.
5. Pay attention to names, titles and genders.
The one thing more embarrassing than a typo is calling Mr. Smith “Ms. Smith.” If you’re not sure about the spelling of a name, job title or gender, check with someone who knows (like an assistant) or use gender-neutral language. Get the names wrong, and your readers will question everything you write.
6. Save templates.
Whenever you write a blog post or article, save it as a template for future use. You can save time and avoid common errors by using an existing document when you begin a new piece. Keep the headers, bullets, references and company information so you just have to fill in the new content.
7. Be professional, not necessarily formal.
Business communication needn’t be formal. While formal language works for legal documents and job applications, it can obfuscate your meaning. Remember, however, that informal writing doesn’t mean being unprofessional. Keep personal comments and off-color jokes out of your business writing.
8. Remember the 5 W’s (and the H).
Your writing should answer all the questions your audience might ask: Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Who is your audience? What should they know? When and where will it apply? Why is it important? And how should they use it? Use the 5W+H formula to ensure your information is complete.
9. Include a call to action.
Business websites are meant to achieve a purpose, so include a call to action on every page. A call to action directs the reader to do something. Don’t leave it to your readers to decide what to do with the information you’ve provided; most won’t bother. Tell them what to do and how to do it.
10. Don’t provide too many choices.
Ideally, you shouldn’t provide any choices to your readers. Just tell them what you want them to do and why they should do it. At most, give them two options and ask them to pick one. Too many choices can lead to “analysis paralysis,” which probably isn’t the result you’re hoping for.
11. What’s in it for readers?
Effective writing describes benefits, not features. Your readers want to know how to make their lives better. For example, nobody cares that Windows 7 runs in 64-bit mode. What they care about is that 64 bits runs faster than 32 bits, and getting work done more quickly is a benefit.
12. Hire a freelancer.
If writing is not your strength, hire a professional writer. Freelancers aren’t just for marketing material; a good freelance writer can produce corporate newsletters, blog posts, wiki entries, and much, much more. Expect to pay $35 to $45 an hour for good writing. Anyone who charges less is either not very good or not very business savvy. Ray Access is proven content provider in Asheville.
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.
