Online Marketing for Local Business
Posts tagged web content
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.
Create Traffic to Your Site with Content Distribution
12 years
by jhaynes
in Uncategorized
Content distribution can be a very effective way to reach out to your readers without sitting back and waiting for them to discover your article or your website on their own.
Free, interesting, applicable and cup-to-date web content is what most people online are searching for. So you must offer it to your targeted readers, to let them know that you’ve created something that can help address their needs and challenges.
You have to take proactive steps if you want to enhance and maximize the online popularity and visibility of your web content writing. What you publish online might contain great insight and valuable information – created by you at a cost, whether financial or in opportunity costs -, but if you do nothing to expose them, it will be buried in the sea of information. And it won’t be able to deliver what you truly want, more web traffic.
Here are some of the ways to generate traffic through content distribution:
1. Know what your target audience wants.
Knowing what your potential clients want is an effective way of doing what can serve them best. It can help you to formulate the best topics to discuss about.
You will know what your readers want to know by asking them. The best venues for asking include niche forums and your blog. Read current postings in forums about your subject; this will give you an idea what your prospects want to know. You should also encourage your readers to comment on your blog posts. It can help you to give them what they want.
2. Deliver what your readers want.
Once you have an idea of a topic that your readers want, it is time to research and assemble the content. Give them what they want. If it involves procedures, pros and cons, benefits, or whatever, do your best to deliver it to them. Your readers will surely come back to you for more – and that’s captured traffic, isn’t it?
3. Write quality articles and submit them to article directories.
Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to get traffic and quality backlinks to your site. You can do this by writing quality articles and submitting them to article sites such as EzineArticles, Article Base and GoArticles. Article directories allow you to include a resource box that contains your bio and links to your website or landing page. These links serve as leads that will bring traffic from article sites to your own website.
This is where a freelance writer or team can be of the most help. They can help you conduct the research and craft the message mentioned above of course, but if cannot or don’t want to take the time to write quality web articles, press releases or social media messages, get a professional to help! I’ve seen plenty of companies out there (you probably have too) who certainly did NOT put their best foot forward when reading their material. Make sure your content represents your company in the way you would truly like it to, and publish high-quality content.
4. Stay in touch with your prospects.
The best way to know the needs of your prospects is to get in touch with them through blogs and niche forums. Do a quick research in Google to identify the most popular forums and blogs about your subject matter. Visit these daily to get an idea what topics are “in.” Participate in the discussions and show your knowledge about the topic. This can help to build your reputation in that community. It also helps to give you plenty of writing ideas for your articles.
5. Post your article in social networking sites.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are fast gaining popularity as a great place to get traffic from. By posting useful information about your niche on these sites, you will be able to include links that will lead people to your articles. This will help to promote your content. Other members who find it useful will also share it with their friends and other members of the community.
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.