Being a good writer is one thing, but having the skills necessary to adapt to different content formats without losing the messages and goals of your marketing content are perhaps the most important part of being a solid and dependable content writer.
Tips for Writers Who Want to Start a Blog PLUS a FREE Book
Lately, several of my clients and students have expressed an interest in blogging. “Where do I start?” they ask. Or, “What should I blog about?” Or, “How would I keep it going?” Let’s break down this process a bit, and I’ll share practices that have made my own blogging enjoyable, sustainable, and profitable. What follows is not the only or even the best way to approach blogging—it’s just what’s worked for me. So take what you like and leave the rest. At the end of the day, your way is the best way for you. Trust your instincts, and have fun sharing from your heart! [Read more…]
Increase the Reach of Your Articles by 94% With This Simple Habit
If you’re a freelance writer or a blog owner, you can relate to this: you’ve put in a lot of hard work in writing your article, no matter if it’s a 500- or 3,000-word post. You’ve created well-researched content full of substance and value, and written in a compelling yet easy-to-understand manner but you’re still not getting the desired number of readers. How to get traffic to your blog is a perennial problem for the likes of us. Sounds familiar? [Read more…]
4 Things Real Estate Writers Should Understand
Successful realtors understand the value of communication in any format. Many hire freelance writers to write their blogs accordingly. Blogging is an excellent resource for communicating with readers, marketing a business, and informing customers.
Blogging is effective for many reasons, including increasing name recognition, boosting search engine optimization, and informing purchasing decisions. Nearly three-quarters of companies that use blogging say it increases the quality and quantity of their leads, which explains why the real estate blogging market is so big.
Read: The Importance of Blogging for Freelancers [Read more…]
Why Video Content is a Blog’s Number One Missing Ingredient
You likely already have a massive library of well-written, well-researched blog posts, yet your audience numbers seem to have stagnated and you’re starting to see an effect on your site’s search ranking. Now, you second guess every post you publish. Will people even read it?
Well, they might. But people would be a lot more inclined to visit your blog if you give them what they want: Video content. In fact, 90% of consumers use video content to inform their purchasing decisions. Consider the following statistics from the referenced article and industry report. [Read more…]
The Importance of Blogging for Freelancers
If you are a typical freelance writer, you probably write a lot of things, from white papers and case studies to articles and blogs. It’s simply a matter of writing whatever someone will pay you to. But one of the things that is often neglected the most is a freelancer’s blog and website. Just like the mechanic’s car often needs repairs, and the plumber’s plumbing is a mess, so it is with writers and their own websites. [Read more…]
4 Tips For Building a Following As a Freelance Writer
The freelance writing life is a hustle. Though some writers focus on content work, building a freelance business, many others spend their careers chasing down jobs at an array of different publications. It’s a lot of additional work on top of writing, and if you’re going to make it worthwhile, it’s important to keep your readers connected to your work – no matter where it appears.
So how do you build a loyal readership as a freelance writer? These 4 strategies can keep everyone on the same page, and make your work more appealing to publishers by promising them a pre-formed audience.
As a freelance writer, you need a solid following. Here's how to build one. Click To TweetHow to Build a Successful Blog for Freelance Writers
As a freelance writer, you likely already know that having a website dedicated to your services is an integral part of your business’s success. You might also think that your website and samples of your client work are enough to prove your ability. Wrong! Blogging is even more important for a freelance writer. The blog is where you show off your personality, your passions, etc. It is where you make a name for you as a human not just for what you can offer your clients.
It would be really great if fantastic content were all that was required to create a successful blog. That’s how it worked when blogging was first getting popular. Today, though, there is a lot more involved in creating a successful and profitable blogging career. It takes a lot of work and, thankfully, most of that work is pretty fun.
How to Build a Successful Blog for Freelance Writers Click To Tweet3 Ways to Make Money While You Work on Your Bestseller
The dilemma of the starving artist is nothing new. For as long as anybody can remember, it’s gone something like this: You’re an artist rolling in the dough because you were lucky enough to make it big or have connections that got you behind the right closed doors with the right people. Or, you’re practically on the streets, desperate to sell your art, and there is nothing else you can do because you were made to create and not doing so would kill you inside. [Read more…]
The No-Brainer Correlations Between Blogging and Social Media
Editor’s note: This post was written by Aby League, a qualitative researcher and a passionate writer. She is an innovator and technology enthusiast. She has been writing about health, psychology, home improvement and technology. You can see more of her articles on Elite Daily. To know her more, follow @abyleague on Twitter.
Today, blogs and social media platforms are doing wonders for the business community. They allow businesses to promote their brands across large audiences, as well as help them build brand identity and trust among customers. However, for this approach to be successful, business owners and/or freelance writers like you must learn to use these two tools in a way that they’ll effectively complement each other.
Image courtesy of Christian Schnettelker via Flickr, Creative Commons
Social media holds great potential in driving readers to your blog.
Consequently, a blog can support your social media account by leveraging credibility and substance. However, you must be careful to strike a balance between the two. If you’re just starting to build your business’s web presence, you must first learn the basics of blogging and social media: what they do, what they’re used for, and how they can help move your business forward.
See, blogging and social media work differently.
A blog is ideally used to share a business’s expertise and knowledge on industry-relevant matters. It provides a conversational approach in discussing various topics that do not just promote the your brand, but also genuinely provide interesting information that readers will truly benefit from. On the other hand, social media platforms allow you to reach a larger community—since everyone these days are either logged in on Facebook, scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, or looking for creative ideas on Pinterest.
Blogs and social media serve two different purposes—but when used together, they provide a great chance of building a powerful and influential web presence for virtually any type of business. Whether you want to drive a steady stream of readers to your blog, or make people want to share your blog content on Facebook and Twitter, here is how you can use blogging and social media to your business advantage:
- Use social media to grow your blog’s traffic. A blog entry will not be able to promote itself unless it is shared across multiple social media platforms. However, building blog audience through social media can be quite tricky. Keep in mind that the key to grabbing attention on social media is to create short but interesting content. When sharing a certain blog entry on social media, put effort in making fun and creative captions or visuals that would entice social media users to click the link to your blog. How a social snippet looks on social media is almost as important as what it says.
- Make your blog entries “shareable” across all social media platforms. It’s one thing to share your own content on social media, but it’s another to be able to make it easy for readers to share your content on their social media accounts. It’s the online equivalent of advertising through word of mouth. Include share buttons on your blog so that readers can easily share or recommend your brand through your interesting blog post. Also, make sure that your buttons are up-to-date, as social media icons tend to change really fast.
- Take advantage of Analytics. If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics, you are probably missing out. This tool allows you to monitor the activity on your website or blog by counting how many people are actually clicking your outbound social media links. If the numbers are low, you can re-examine if your social media buttons are in a strategic position on the page, or if you’re writing about the wrong things on your blog. Either way, let the numbers help you improve what needs to be improved. You can also use Avinash Kaushik’s social media metrics as a guide to gauge your social media performance.
- Write about things that matter to your readers. You can share your blog posts on social media all you want—you can even put social media buttons all over your page, but readers won’t share your content if it gives them nothing worth sharing. As such, write about topics that are socially relevant. Blogging must be creative and informative, and not aggressive, hard sell writing. Remember that you want to educate and empower your readers so that they keep coming back for more.
Image courtesy of Robb Sutton via Flickr, Creative Commons
- Showcase your social media content on your blog. While blogs do allow more depth than social media channels, social media can still showcase unique content that doesn’t need a blog entry of its own. If people engage with such posts on social media, consider featuring these posts on your blog. For instance, if your Tweets get a lot of Retweets and replies, it would be a great idea to integrate your Twitter feed directly on your site.
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