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The Aim of Quality Content

Why Your Website Needs Useful Content

Everyone has been telling you that you need “quality content” on your website. They repeat it so often and with such verve that you have begun to believe it. After you realize how difficult it is to produce content that’s actually useful, you take a pause and wonder: “What’s the point of all this?” Well, you’ve come to the right place. Let us explain.

What Is “Quality Content?”

Ray Access provides quality content

We first have to define what we mean when we refer to quality content. There may be many subjective definitions for what constitutes quality content, but here at Ray Access, we like to simplify, simplify, simplify. To us, quality content is just useful information: how-to tips, solid advice backed by facts or insightful articles that can actually help a reader reach a decision. Think of this way: Quality content is something that readers would want to share with their friends.

For example, let’s pretend there’s a company called Asheville Plasterworks. They make plaster-of-Paris masks and puppets. It’s a niche market, but they supply the local theater companies and make one-of-a-kind pieces for city parades. On their website and blog, they might feature information about the history of masks, how to incorporate puppets in a school project and what kinds of “green” materials they use to make their products. They have vision and imagine what their readers might want to read about. This quality content will attract a new audience, which is one of the things a website should do.

Why Quality Content Works

strive for quality content on your websiteThat was one example, but there are many others. Quality content works because it attracts people and turns those visitors to your website into customers. Quality content not only differentiates your company, but it also describes the benefits of your products or services.

When visitors arrive at your website, they’ll scan for whatever is useful or important to them. If you can supply that information, they’ll be grateful. They may become a customer. They may even share a link they think will benefit others, or they think it’s especially funny or practical. When your website reaches that level, you will know you have quality content.

The Goals of Quality Content

So what are the goals of quality content? They are:

  • To get you noticed in the sea of the Internet
  • To draw new people to your website
  • To convert visitors into customers
  • To get people talking about your company
  • To establish yourself as an expert in your field

But the way to reach these goals — and this is important to learn — is to give stuff away. Not swag or prizes, but information. If you can actually help people, they’ll remember you. If you can give them something that they want or need, they’ll be more likely to recommend you. They’ll be more likely to spread the word about you as your informal ambassadors. They’ll be more likely to buy from you.

On the other hand, if you lure people to your website with the promise of help, but you don’t deliver what they’re looking for, they’ll move on. They’ll forget you. Or worse, they’ll spread the word that you’re unreliable.

So give your audience what it wants. Provide quality content. If you can’t do it on your own, quality content is what we deliver. Every time.


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.

What Is a Persona?

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?”

a sample of a persona

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.

Pete the personaFor 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.