Online Marketing for Local Business
Posts tagged Business Resources
How to Schedule Your Web Content Writing
12 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
Your Web Content Writing is a Critical Piece of the Puzzle for SEO
Using an editorial calendar for your web content writing
If you’re creating web content for SEO then you likely already know you need to keep your content up-to-date and fresh for the best results. Search engines like Google want to see relevant and current content on your site before they will consider it worth linking to. It can be difficult to come up with ideas to write about every day, which is where an editorial calendar comes into play. Here are some tips on setting up your editorial calendar for success.
Look at the calendar
Before you plan anything else, you should look at a calendar and find topics that are related to times, holidays, seasons, or other dates. Almost every topic has some kind of seasonality to it, where certain parts of the year lend themselves to writing certain kinds of pieces. For example, you might focus on Christmas time and do the “Twelve Days of Whatever” focused on your topic. The benefit of planning out this kind of content is that you can usually write it in advance. Write it at your leisure and keep it in the queue for the day it’s going to be published. Keywords might change if you write it early, however, so it’s a good idea to do a bit of research before you publish the final post. The calendar approach doesn’t require writing in advance, however. You might plan out a day when you write about an event that’s going to happen. Obviously, you can’t write about something before it has happened, but you can plan for it on the calendar.
Focus on your business
It’s likely that your web content writing is to support a business of some kind or another. The next big area you want to focus on is the goings on at your business. If you know when a product is going to be launched, it’s time to put it on the editorial calendar as well. It doesn’t have to be just one day either. You can write a few days worth of content to go around the big announcement to build buzz and traffic. Important anniversaries are also great fodder for content. When was the company started? When did you launch a certain product or feature? Next, you can write about new employees or executives as they come into the company. If there’s something important going on at your company then you should definitely be writing about it.
Be flexible
Ideally, you will plan out every day in advance so you don’t have to scramble to find topics to cover. That said, you might not be able to find anything suitable for a day that’s a year in the future in a nondescript time. Try to fill up the calendar, but don’t spend so much time on it that it takes away from the actual writing. If you can’t find something, mark it as an open day and be sure to keep an eye out for interesting ideas. Likewise, plan on some of your plans falling through or changing based on breaking news in your industry and the like. Your calendar is a great tool, but if you’re too attached to it then your content will suffer.
If you don’t have an editorial calendar then now is the time to get started! And if you need help with your content, contact Hat Trick Associates to learn more about how their web content writing rates can create positive ROI for your buisness.
Encyclopedia Britannica next “victim” to web content
13 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
The forests will benefit. But it was difficult not to feel a pang on hearing the news this week that Encyclopedia Britannica would no longer print the 32 volumes of its famous publication. Especially for those Gen Xers and older folks who used this famous reference piece for countless book reports, class presentations and the like when growing up.
First published 244 years ago in Edinburgh, the Encyclopedia has lined many a bookshelf over the years and used to be shorthand for where to go for information. But the fact that “I’ll Google it” has replaced “I’ll look it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica” is one reason why it will now only be published online.
Britannica, the US company which has published the Encyclopedia since 1902 and is owned by Jacqui Safra of the Swiss banking family, has been right to embrace modernity. Long gone are the days of 1771, when the Encyclopedia defined “woman” as “the female of man”. It claims it was the first encyclopedia to go online, launching on Lexis Nexis in 1981, on CD-ROM in 1989 and on the internet in 1994. And it is easy to see why shifting to online only is the logical next step. As a private company, Britannica’s numbers are hard to come by, so it is not clear how much revenue it is generating from online subscriptions and advertising. But the business rationale behind this week’s decision reflects swift-moving trends with which all publishers are grappling.
The rise of the iPad, and the declining prices of the Kindle and other ereaders, not to mention the relative cheapness of ebooks themselves have led to a surge in their sales. In May last year, Amazon said ebooks were outselling hardbacks and paperbacks for the first time. PwC, the consultancy, expects global spending on ebooks to grow at 35 per cent annually for the next three years, and that they will make up a tenth of all consumer and educational book sales by 2015, up from under 3 per cent in 2010. The trend is particularly marked in the US where, says the Association of American Publishers, ebook sales last December were a staggering 72 per cent higher than a year earlier.
Of course, the Encyclopedia Britannica is not just facing competition from ebooks, but also from other sources of information on the web. Wikipedia says it attracts 400m unique visitors a month. Britannica, whose online versions have 100m users, tries to compete with Wikipedia, as do other online encyclopedias, by allowing users to contribute images or videos and has recently launched an app.
But the struggle between all content providers on the web to attract readers, and thus revenue, appears to be moving decisively away from availability to quality. The fierce competition between information sellers on the web may, hopefully, only serve to encourage Encyclopedia Britannica’s traditional commitment to scholarly authoritativeness.
Even if it does result in an even better Encyclopedia in the future, though, a nostalgic tear still seems merited. In 1998 the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards suffered cracked ribs from a falling set of Encyclopedia Britannica. Well, it’s all over now.
Business Resources – The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time
13 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?
It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.
What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.
Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend you’re taking notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?
The biggest cost — assuming you don’t crash — is to your productivity. In part, that’s a simple consequence of splitting your attention, so that you’re partially engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. In part, it’s because when you switch away from a primary task to do something else, you’re increasing the time it takes to finish that task by an average of 25 per cent.
But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.
I know this from my own experience. I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.
If you’re a manager, here are three policies worth promoting:
1. Maintain meeting discipline. Schedule meetings for 45 minutes, rather than an hour or longer, so participants can stay focused, take time afterward to reflect on what’s been discussed, and recover before the next obligation. Start all meetings at a precise time, end at a precise time, and insist that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting.
2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day. It forces your people into reactive mode, fractures their attention, and makes it difficult for them to sustain attention on their priorities. Let them turn off their email at certain times. If it’s urgent, you can call them — but that won’t happen very often.
3. Encourage renewal. Create at least one time during the day when you encourage your people to stop working and take a break. Offer a midafternoon class in yoga, or meditation, organize a group walk or workout, or consider creating a renewal room where people can relax, or take a nap.
It’s also up to individuals to set their own boundaries. Consider these three behaviors for yourself:
1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you’ll be. When you’re done, take at least a few minutes to renew.
2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don’t, you’ll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that’s relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.
3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you’re off, you’re truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you’ll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.
A single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. When you’re engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time. When you’re renewing, truly renew. Make waves. Stop living your life in the gray zone.