Annie is the Content Manager here at Express Writers, has managed multiple teams in the past, and has been a journalist and expert copywriter for years.
You want to create great content for your readers but you’re short on time, right?
If you haven’t considered repurposing content, it may be time to give recycling your old work a second thought.
Be advised, though, that repurposing work doesn’t simply mean copying and pasting or rewriting an old article word by word.
In addition to being a waste of time, repurposing content in this fashion will end up being ineffective and frustrating.
As the wonderful Mary puts it:
Responsible and effective repurposing entails careful reformatting, updating and repackaging in order to reach new audiences or simply revive great content. In addition to stretching your hard-won content further than ever before, carefully repurposing content has the potential to give your site an SEO boost among other things.
Here is everything you need to know about repurposing content:
Why Repurpose Content?
Repurposing content can be a great way to drive more traffic to your site and produce increased reader engagement. Unless a piece of old content has been adequately back-linked by high-traffic sites, there is a definite chance that it isn’t getting as much traffic as it deserves. Repurposing that piece of content can fill it with new life and serve the purpose of simply getting it out in front of your readers again.
Additionally, repurposing content in order to develop several pieces of high-quality material around a certain topic can produce an SEO boost. By targeting a specific keyword and producing a high level of quality backlinks from other reputable sites, repurposed content can easily prolong the lifespan of your original post.
Additionally, repurposing content can help you extend your site’s reach in order to connect with new audiences who either didn’t see your original work or don’t frequent the media formats in which your original work was published.
For example, if you typically write blogs but you take one of your blogs and turn it into a carefully crafted podcast, you have the potential to reach an entire audience of podcast listeners who don’t read blogs but may be very interested in what you have to say. By making sure you are utilizing a multi-channel marketing approach, you stand a better chance of engaging various types of audiences from around the web.
Finally, skillfully repurposing old content can help you underline and reinforce your message. Marketing experts have known for decades that, in order for a customer to convert, click or make a purchase, the customer needs to know you and your message well enough to feel as if he or she has a solid sense of what is being promoted through your work. Repurposing content can help reformat and underline your message in order to facilitate better customer understanding and increased conversion rates.
How to Determine Which Pieces of Content Should be Repurposed
Generally, the content that deserves to rise from the ashes of your collection is evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that is perpetually relevant, regardless of when or where it was published. Repurposing an old post about the then-current happenings of the Clinton administration, for example, will not do much good, unless you are committed to seriously re-working the piece in order to make it relevant to today’s population. Evergreen content, on the other hand, will require little or no heavy-duty re-working in order to be relevant to current audiences.
After you’ve determined which content is evergreen, spend some time looking at your analytics software in order to determine which of your evergreen posts have been the most popular. More likely than not, each of these posts will share a common trait that has increased its popularity and made it more readable among your followers. Do your best to identify this this common thread so that you can incorporate it into future blogs.
Finally, determine which, if any, materials within these posts need updating. Regardless of how evergreen or popular a post was, chances are it will still be somewhat outdated and will require a bit of work to update the post.
The Repurposing Process
There are many ways to repurpose content. Contrary to popular belief, however, repurposing content absolutely does not mean that you get to simply copy and paste an old post into a new platform. One of the best ways to repurpose your high-quality content and ensure it stays popular in the future is to transform previously published content by plugging it into a new format.
For example, a webinar can become a video tutorial and a blog can be reformatted and dissected in order to become a podcast. By repurposing popular content into new formats, you can ensure that you reach new audiences, drive more traffic and extend your best content to all of your readers through multi-channel marketing.
Here are some of the most popular ways to repurpose old content in new formats:
Blog Post to How-To Guide
If you’ve written a blog post that got a great reader response, consider transforming that blog post into a how-to guide. For example, if your topic of choice is cloud-based marketing tools and you’ve written extensively on the subject of cloud computing, you could create a short how-to guide for companies just getting started with the cloud.
Keep in mind that an effective how-to guide should include more pictures and step-by-step information than most blog posts. For maximum visibility, consider uploading your repackaged content to Pinterest or a niche-focused forum for increased reach and more reader engagement.
Podcast to Quora Content
Quora is a popular online platform for Q & A’s, and it serves as an ideal place to repurpose old Podcast content. Simply take the transcript from the podcast and use pieces of it to ask or answer Quora questions. Doing so can help drive new readers to your site and further establish you as an authority in your area of expertise.
The Quora Q & A platform at work.
PowerPoint Presentation to SlideShare File
If much of your previous content has been PowerPoint presentations or video content, consider repurposing it into a SlideShare presentation. Simply upload your hard-won PowerPoint presentation into the SlideShare platform, where it can be viewed, shared or embedded into your website or blog.
Blog Post Becomes a Guest Post
If you have a blog post that’s been very popular on your own site, consider pitching it as a guest post for a like-minded site. Of course, it would be unacceptable to simply copy and paste the content of your old post into a new guest post, but you could very well focus on one or two of the most important points from the original post and expound upon them for the readers of the guest post’s home site.
The great thing about this repurposing option is that there is truly no end to how many guest posts you can write. Take the time to break down your most popular original post in the form of several guest posts for other sites. This allows you to dig deeper into your topic and provide helpful, needed information for your readers while also attracting new subscribers and building strong blogging relationships.
Statistics Becomes Twitter Updates
If you’ve developed a statistic-dense blog post, consider disseminating the information to your followers in the form of twitter updates spread out over several weeks. Add a Twitter-friendly image to the post to encourage maximum reach and follower interaction.
Blog Series Becomes eBook
If you’ve been blogging in a niche for some time, it’s likely you have a pretty extensive catalogue of content built up. Why not sift through some of that content and offer it as a promotional eBook for new subscribers?
By pulling your best content out of your archives, packaging it in an eBook and dispensing it to your new readers, you not only give them a taste of your best work but you also harness the potential to reach new readers by meeting them in the information-delivery method of their choice, in this case, an eBook.
Take the time to beef up your eBook with additional photos, research, and formatting in order to make it a special package that is truly helpful for and desired by new readers.
Long Blog Series Becomes Short Weekly Email
If you have ever written a long, in-depth blog post, consider disseminating the dense information to followers in the form of a weekly email sent through an automated service such as MailChimp.
This repurposing approach can be especially helpful if you are preparing for a large event such as a book or podcast launch due to the fact that it provides your readers with easily digestible and sharable bits of information.
Beef up these weekly emails by adding photos, additional facts, helpful social medial links, social media share buttons and high-quality links to other content. Once you’ve developed the format for these automated emails, send them out to your followers with a call to action that asks them to share the information on social media or forward it to interested friends.
In addition to furthering your interaction with your own followers, this repurposing approach also builds anticipation in advance of large events and allows you to connect with new audiences.
What Not to Do
While there are plenty of ways to responsibly repurpose your old content, there are plenty of things you want to avoid, as well. For example, failure to utilize a variety of different means while repurposing content will produce lopsided results and will likely not result in the increased reader interaction you were hoping for.
Rather than getting stuck in one or two stand-by repurposing formats, be brave enough to experiment with multiple platforms in order to find what works best. Additionally, ensure that you do repurpose your old content rather than simply letting it sit in the dredges of your archives. Although this tip seems simple, it is one of the foremost mistakes bloggers make. Fortunately, it can be easily avoided through a little ingenuity and a willingness to make what is old new once more.
Conclusion: The Case For Repurposing Content
You work hard on your content, and you deserve to get the most out of every post you write. By repurposing your best content, you allow yourself to dive deeper into your content, explore new facets of old topics, equip your readers with higher-quality, more shareable information and, not least of all, reach new audiences.
Additionally, repurposing old content is a great way to get out of a rut and imbue your content with new life by packaging it in a different form, dispensing it to a different reader base or posting it in a fresh, new location.
Although repurposed content has long since been the subject of the evil eye in many blogging environments, all that shade just isn’t justified. While copying and pasting old content or simply loosely rewriting an old post is poor form, there are plenty of effective, responsible ways to repurpose your old content and ensure that it continues to shine with a new vigor.
By dedicating some time and effort to repurposing your high-quality, evergreen content, you ensure that your hard work pays off rather than just festering in the Neverland that is a blog’s archive.
Additionally, adequately repurposing your content ensures that you are perpetually growing as a blogger and that you continue to reach new audiences and experiment with new platforms for communication.
Alecs is our Client Accounts Manager and a ten-year-veteran copywriter.
Email newsletters have been around for a long time, as a successful means of helping businesses communicate with their customers.
When email introduced a new dimension to the traditional newsletter, it instantly became more marketable in the twenty-first century.
Not all newsletters are great, entertaining reads, however. As someone who enjoys reading and learning from what I read, a newsletter gives me a valuable resource. Sadly not many companies that create newsletters do that with information in mind.
Be inspired from the greats.
Developing a Great Email Newsletter: 15 Keys to the Castle
One of the key things about creating a great newsletter is that the information contained therein should be mostly informative. The content in your newsletter is an extension of the content that you create for your blog or website. This content has to be entertaining and engaging. Newsletters that don’t perform as well as they should forget this one overarching idea: that content is value and value is what sells.
Let’s take a look at some of the more impressive email newsletters that have managed to make their way (and keep making their way) into my inbox. 1. The Skimm: Having information given to you in easily readable, bite-sized chunks is the aim of most content marketing. Less is more, since content seems to be downsizing. The Skimm builds a newsletter that embraces this trend by giving you all the news you need to know about in short, concise bursts. You don’t even need to click out of the email to be fully informed about what’s going on. As a newsletter, it brings immense value to the table in a nice, simple, clean layout that doesn’t distract from the story elements of the news. The stories make for viable inspiration for your own blog posts as well. 2. Community.is: This newsletter tries to fit into a number of molds at the same and time and manages to do so pretty well surprisingly. As a newsletter that is designed to “put people at the center of their work”, they have a wide and varied audience. Their unique combination of short, medium and long form content appeals to their different demographics really efficiently. This allows their newsletter to be properly organized without seeming confusing at all. When you’re trying to hit such a wide audience, that in itself is a task, but this newsletter accomplishes it easily. 3. Food Safety Update: A B2B email newsletter doesn’t need a flashy title and Food Safety Update’s title is relatively bland. When you take a look at their layout and content, however, you realize that the title is misleading. The content is organized into easily digestible chunks that are well-labeled, ensuring that you can find what you’re looking to read up on. Interspersed throughout the journal are thumbnails that help to break up the text and add flavor to the layout itself. Handy social sharing options allow for easy dissemination of articles you like and unsubscribing is pretty simple as well, although after you’ve read it you’d wonder why anyone would want to. 4. Austin Kleon: Minimalistic design has always been something that appeals to a lot of modern users. Austin Kleon’s newsletter goes into the minimalist design with great intentions and manages to be successful with its mix of simple design and informative writing. The thing that is most impressive about it is the tone. Reading this newsletter has a quaint, almost homey feel. It’s almost like getting a letter from a friend you haven’t seen in a while. This is probably the most impressive accomplishment of this newsletter, making the publication seem more human. 5. Litmus: Named after the chemical testing paper, this email marketing testing company has a newsletter that is unique in its design. Swathes of color are used to break up the sections into easily readable bits. You never feel as though you’re staring at a field of monotony with the color scheme. The colors are muted and give the sense of a background without being too outstanding to distract you from what you’re reading. The content is interesting as you would expect from a marketing testing company, and it’s definitely one you should look into if marketing and analytics are your thing. 6. NoshOn.It: If you’ve ever tried making something from a recipe book and the book doesn’t have a helpful, full-color picture of what it’s supposed to turn out as, you’ll realize the struggles of many aspiring foodies out there. NoshOn.It is a newsletter that is designed for foodies and gives them helpful hints along with recipes and included pictures to help their readers visualize what they’re creating. Combining them with simple red text-boxes that stand out over the images and announce what it is you’re looking at helps readers to go directly to the section they’re looking for. Innovative design, to say the least, and quite useful for someone who cooks. 7. InterDrone News: Since drones became commercially available, there’s no shortage of people willing to throw a few bucks at them. InterDrone news is a pretty informative newsletter that encapsulates information about commercial and industrial uses of drones. As is to be expected from a B2B newsletter, its design is simple but effective. The entries are easy to read and give you all the important information about drones and their usage. If you’re a drone owner or are just curious about how this new technology benefits us overall, this is a pretty good addition to your reading list. 8. Very Short List (VSL): The idea behind VSL is simple in its premise, but powerful in its delivery. What Very Short List does is give you a selection of three “cultural gems” every day into your inbox. These gems differ from day to day as does the style and variety of the pieces. This is because VSL tasks a different contributor each day with doing the editing and compilation of their newsletter daily. This ensures that their content is always fresh, and that it might differ vastly from one day to another. VSL’s design is fun and playful as is to be expected from a blog that is fluid in its content style and delivery. 9. NextDraft: Another minimalist production, NextDraft gives you insight into a variety of topics without being too overbearing on presentation. The content delivery is simple, concise and effective. Social sharing opportunities abound throughout each of the pieces that make up the newsletter making it easy to get it out to your friends. NextDraft utilizes social media to grow its readership and with good reason. It’s one of the most effective ways of attracting people who like to read these types of articles to sign up to his mailing list. Simple design and informative news make a killer combination when it comes to a newsletter.
10. Hacker Newsletter: No, it’s not a newsletter for hackers. They don’t utilize this type of medium. Hacker newsletter is a curation of the most interesting social media stories that is delivered daily to your inbox. The simple design can be misleading because the information it contains is informative. It’s a no-fluff newsletter, but uses sections to its benefit by breaking up potentially confusing stories and arranging them in a way that makes sense. It’s quite a lot more entertaining than trying to find out what’s going on over at Twitter by simply searching hashtags and far more efficient at delivering that information in a readable way to you too. 11. Chemical Processing Weekly: You tend to notice after a while that B2B newsletters are not very imaginative when it comes to titles. But in a professional publication, you have less creative freedom with your title. Chemical Processing Weekly makes up for the bland title with writing that’s definitely not what you’d think you’d find in a newsletter like this. The tone is friendly and cordial and makes you want to read more, even if you’re not into chemical process plants. Polls and reader questions help to build engagement with the audience and the writing is very well done, building your interest in the topic but staying true to its scientific roots. It’s not often you find a scientific writing enterprise that appeals to the layman. 12. Muck Rack Daily: In journalism, a “muckraker” is someone who digs up dirt on public figures in order to raise circulation of a newspaper or magazine. Muck Rack is certainly not that. The writing is fun and witty, and the tone is casual. It invites you to read more and the design is well put together, making reading easy. Bold headers separate sections so that you don’t have to worry about facing a wall of text. It’s simple yet effective at engaging the audience, and the information it presents is delivered with just the right amount of humor to make it readable. 13. General Assembly: Professionals that want to expand their skill sets should look into General Assembly as a newsletter to subscribe to. The header is entertaining with a simple GIF at the top to attract attention. Normally, when you see a GIF in a newsletter you usually prepare yourself for an onslaught of them throughout the publication. Gladly, you don’t encounter those in General Assembly. Rather the design is minimalist and gives you a content in a format that is easily scannable. Since this is a newsletter designed for professionals, being scannable is one of the major things that it must cater to since the core audience doesn’t have that much time to spend on sifting through newsletters. It’s an impressive publication nonetheless. 14. SD Times Featured Resources: If you’re a software developer, you must know how hard it is to get relevant information about what’s going on in the industry. SD Times caters to a niche by developing informative articles that address a lot of the issues within the industry. Strangely for a B2B newsletter the design is both and artistic. The calls to action are easily located at the bottom of the snippet for easy following. The layout of the whole newsletter is well done and the content is both appealing and relevant to the industry. 15. Medium: Medium is a blogging platform that came out in 2012. From the initial launch it has steadily grown momentum, providing informative articles and opinion posts on news, views and issues that affect a number of different industries. The newsletter they send is a compilation of some of the best posts on the Medium network and more often than not you’ll find yourself reading at least a few Medium posts per day. The minimalistic design is highlighted by the different colors and section division to give a feeling that you’re reading a more substantial publication. It’s simple, scannable and doesn’t hit you with information overload. What else could you ask for from a newsletter?
Your Email Newsletters and Outreach
Why should a company invest in a newsletter? The answer is simple. A newsletter gives you marketability. It helps you to be more prominent to people who want to read your content. Most of all, it allows you to develop a rapport with your core audience. Email marketing is alive and well in the twenty first century, but the face of how it interacts with the user has changed. Newsletters that are professionally designed take center stage with layout elements being as important to the email newsletter as it is to the blog or website.
Ideally, the email newsletter is a medium through which you can bring more readers in to your blog or site. More than one of those I’ve mentioned have easy sharing options for their articles and posts. The aim here is to reach out to the people that exist on social media and that find these kinds of posts interesting. By opening up your content to a wider audience you might even get more subscribers which turns into more views for you and a higher level of authority when it comes to Google.
At the end of the day, email newsletters can do wonders for spreading awareness about your site, but only if done the right way. See our email product in our Content Shop.
If you were Kim Kardashian, you would have access to Facebook live streaming right now. Or Gary Vaynerchuk. Or Sandi Krakowski.
On August 5th, the social media giant released a new feature that allows public figures and VIPs to broadcast themselves via live streams through the Facebook Mentions app.
Right now, the service is only available to the one percenters but, if it proves successful, there is a chance that it could soon be accessible to the public at large and, what’s more, there’s a chance it could provide big benefits for everyday businesses.
Here’s our guide to that new (potentially confusing) Facebook live stream feature.
How Does Facebook’s Live Streaming Feature Work?
Facebook Mentions is designed to allow the fans of the aforementioned celebrities and VIPs to engage with live-streamed content in the same way that Facebook currently allows users to interact with everything else in their News Feeds.
When a celebrity using the Mentions app begins to stream a live broadcast, a video link goes out to the celebrity’s fans. The fans can then click the link, watch, comment and interact with the live broadcast, which encourages engagement and fan/celebrity dialogue. Just like any typical Facebook post, the new feature allows for commenting and liking.
Unlike a typical Facebook post however, which is filtered through the New Feed’s relevancy filters, Facebook’s new live broadcasts will reach viewers while they are still happening, rather than being shuffled down the lineup. Once the Live post is over, the poster can choose either to delete it or to save it as a traditional video, at which point it can be re-shared among Facebook’s users.
The purpose of Facebook’s new feature is not so much to promote sharing as it is to provide fans with a direct line into the lives of the people they admire. Facebook provides a unique platform for public figures and most famous people already have a huge fan base that they share content with on a daily basis. The introduction of Facebook Mentions means that so-called “influencers” will enjoy a wider audience and a broader reach than they would on other social media platforms.
Four Things Facebook Mentions Offers Influencers
In order to unveil the specifics, Facebook wrote a post last month stating that Facebook Mentions will have four key features:
1) See what fans are saying and join the conversation
2) Share stories by posting updates, photos, videos or hosting live Q & A sessions
3) Join conversations on Facebook and see real-time posts from fans
4) Receive streamlined notifications about posts, including mentions from other influencers or the media
These benefits aren’t random and Facebook actually began collecting feedback from public figures last year. The Mentions app was originally formulated to help celebrities and other influencers deal with the scores of fan interaction they received on a daily basis and, at one point, served to facilitate the process of responding to thousands of wall posts and mentions at one time.
As it evolved, though, it turned out that stars liked the Mentions app for much more than that and actually found it a more intimate and authentic way to interact with their thousands of followers.
Celebrities like The Rock have already used the new Live feature. In order to make the feature more manageable for celebrities, fan comments are pushed onto the celebrity’s screen at a slow, readable pace and vulgar comments are automatically deleted. If they so choose, celebrities can turn off comments altogether and, if there are topics a celebrity doesn’t want to discuss, such as politics or a recent divorce, he or she has the option to blacklist certain topics for the course of the conversation.
What are the Benefits of Facebook Live Streaming for Businesses?
If celebrities have a message to share, so do businesses and the function of the Facebook Mentions app is actually very similar. Facebook live streaming services offer fans (or customers) a real-time look inside the heads, lives and habits of the people they admire and, with a little imagination; it’s clear how this feature could benefit a wide variety of businesses.
Imagine it – wouldn’t you love to step inside Mark Zuckerberg’s living room or get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the production of your favorite product? Nowadays, customers want a more active role in the production, manufacturing and marketing of the products they love and Facebook Mentions has the potential to offer a platform for this.
Facebook Mentions for Interactive Marketing
Interactive marketing is an up-and-coming trend in the business world and it’s easy to see how live streaming services could offer a great way for companies to move from a transactional-focused interaction into a conversation.
By bringing customers into a live-stream session, companies can begin to encourage a dialogue rather than a simple product – transaction form of advertising and marketing. Today’s customers are more likely to respond to interactive marketing tactics and Facebook Mentions offers a great platform from which interactive marketing can spring.
The benefits of Facebook’s live streaming service for businesses are truly endless and possibilities include things like sneak-peak product launches, live Q& A sessions, interviews with a company’s head managers and even business/customer talking sessions.
Live Streaming Offers Educational Opportunities
One of the primary benefits of live streaming for businesses is that it offers a powerful platform for education. With Facebook’s new services, companies can easily reach out to educate their audience about a new service or product and may potentially even use the feature to hold troubleshooting sessions, how-to features or host discussions about relevant topics and industry questions.
Additionally, live streaming can be used to host talks about current developments in the industry and host interesting guests, in a sort of podcast-esque fashion. All of these things serve the purpose of reaching out to customers, providing high-quality information in a digestible format and ensuring that a company has a presence across a wide variety of media platforms.
Facebook Live Streaming Can Promote Spontaneity, Which Leads to Better Business
Numerous studies have shown that customers want a company they can relate to and a great way to ensure that your company is relatable and approachable to its customers is to incorporate some spontaneity into the works. Live streaming, of course, is a great way to do this.
With the live streaming feature, companies can now use Facebook to provide customers with a glimpse at some of their in-house employee antics, fun events, surprise guests or exciting new product blurbs. Your customers want to meet the people behind the scenes of the company and allowing them to do so encourages customer engagement and promotes loyalty to your brand and product.
Take movie director Bryan Singer, for example, who announced via mobile live-stream a special DVD cut of the X-Men film Days of Future Past. Because Singer chose to the announcement via live-stream, fans got to see the set of the movie as well as several people scurrying around, busy with the preparations for the impending shoot. As a result, the video enjoyed massive fan engagement and garnered many comments.
Although Singer wasn’t running a business, per-se, this is not limited to the film industry. People want to see what they can’t see on a daily basis and Facebook’s new live stream feature offers a great way for companies to interact with their customers in a fresh new form.
Live Streaming for Progress Reports
For companies that need to issue progress reports for investors, a live stream can be a great way to do it. A progress report through the Facebook Mentions app is a more intimate way of conveying important company details and, when formulated appropriately, can serve to provide investors with the needed details about a company’s positioning and help them further understand what, exactly, their money is helping the company do.
As an added bonus, a live-streamed progress report can also allow companies to give investors sneak peaks of new products or mock-ups.
Live Streaming for Help Desk
There’s nothing quite so frustrating for customers as trying to reach a help desk and being met, instead with an automated phone service. Studies have shown that poor customer service is a sure-fire way to lose clients and live streaming now has the potential to help companies avoid that pitfall entirely.
By hosting live-streamed help desk sessions, a company can mitigate client concerns, walk confused individuals through a process and provide the closest possible thing to hands-on support from anywhere in the world.
The Case for Facebook’s Live Streaming Service
Although it was introduced to cater to celebrities and “influencers,” there is a good chance that the Facebook Mentions app will soon expand to the rest of the site’s users, which will be a particular boon to companies near and far. Unlike traditional Facebook posts and even traditional videos, live streaming offers companies a way to interact with their customers that has previously be unattainable.
In addition to disseminating high-quality content in a unique, exclusive, exciting format, live streams also allow for better customer service, business boosting-spontaneity and exciting sneak peaks for dedicated customers, all of which serve to produce more business and better company/customer relationships.
Need a writer?
The people in the Pacific Northwest might…
Imagine this, you’re driving there, and you see a farm stand coming into view on the horizon.
Your mouth waters as you imagine the juicy produce, and your mind begins to fill with fantasies of fresh-picked cherries, strawberries, apples, raspberries, honeys and jams and maybe even some delicious veggies to throw on the grill during dinner that night.
As you get closer, however, you realize that this isn’t just any fruit stand. This is a fruit stand that appears to be in desperate need of a good writer, as evidenced by the spray-painted wooden sign that advertises “zookeene”, “tater + maters,” “hallopinyo” and… *Gasp*
Your favorite member of the entire vegetable family – “bail peprs.”
Zookeenes, y’all?
3 Other Major Sign Mistakes (Aka Why You Need a Writer)
Hold your giggles now folks, because this is exactly what happened to customers at the infamous “zookeene” farm stand and, while there is certainly a decent amount of power in sounding out difficult words, we can probably all agree that this is just one piece of evidence that indicates the need for good writers in all industries.
Why you need a writer is about to be illustrated in 3,2,1…
1. The Case of Patterson School 20’s Misspelled Sign
There is one misspelling mishap that might be slightly more tragic than the colorful “zookeene” and “bail peprs” sign and that is the infamous misspelling on the Patterson School sign.
When students arrived at Patterson School 20 in Patterson, New Jersey in December 2014, they were in for a surprise. There, on the school’s marquee sign prominently located directly above the entrance to the prestigious establishment, was the newest of the school’s monthly information boards. This one, however, read like this:
Watch out kids, those teachers are out to dice and reepor you this month!
It didn’t take long, of course, for students and faculty to notice that, not only was December misspelled “Dicimber” and report as “reepor” but also that there was a ‘1’ facing noticeably backwards.
To make matters worse, the school’s principal, who earned a salary of roughly $108,000 per year, left the sign up for an entire week, seeming not to notice the multiple mistakes.
As a result, the school board grew angry and the principal, Antoinette Young, was quickly relocated to a different school district – all over a proofreading failure that went embarrassingly public. And that my friends is why you need a writer (or just a good copyeditor).
2. The Montgomery Debacle
As if losing a job weren’t bad enough, imagine losing several thousand dollars over a misspelling. This is exactly what happened in Montgomery, Pennsylvania when the Montgomery County Court House left an important ‘m’ out of “commissioners” and produced a grand total of 26 signs throughout the county that had glaring and obvious misspellings on both sides, resulting in the need to fix a whopping 52 sign panels to rectify the mistake.
After a call from the public and elected officials to fix the signs, Montgomery did so, at a cost of $4,000. To add insult to injury, the city projects that the signs will need to be replaced yet again after the local general election, resulting in another several thousand-dollar expenditure.
3. The Case of the Misspelled Spelling Bee
When two young girls, Maiesha Akhand and Anamaria Brown came out as victors of the Centennial Elementary spelling bee, they expected local fame and maybe their name on the school’s marque sign. In the end, they got both but they were in for a bit of a surprise when their bus rolled by the billboard on the way out of town and they were met with this:
Little did the girls know that the students would soon become the teachers, both in spelling and in irony.
There’s A Growing Epidemic, And It’s Called Bad Spelling
If the state of our spelling is this bad with all of our current technology, just imagine a civilization without spell check. Misspelled signs are popping up in everything from “A State Sales” to homemade billboards advertising “farwood fer sale.”
Although these signs seem funny, and indeed they are, they also provide a pretty obvious reminder that there is no end to the value of a good writer – no matter what you’re selling.
Although the “zookeenes” example is hilarious in its absurdity, it’s clear that these mistakes also make their way into high-level affairs, such as official city signage and school billboards and it goes without saying that it’s difficult to be taken seriously as an individual or an institution when your literature is riddled with misspellings.
In addition to writing, optimizing sites for search engines, incorporating keywords into content and helping devise marketing and promotional materials, a great writer can also play the important role of proofreader and editor, which evidence has shown may be more important than anything else, in some cases. Businesses need a good writer more than they know.
Although misspellings like Westar Mart’s “Ice Cold Bear” are hilarious at first glance, oversights like this can be detrimental for business at a higher level and spelling, as it turns out, is an indiscriminate and persistent scourge.
Misspellings affect everyone from fruit salesmen to lawyers (as was the case when one attorney misspelled public as ‘pubic’ – as in “in consideration of important pubic matters” – all throughout a27 page legal document) and can cost a business time, money and sales.
That said, the moral of the story is clear: hire great writers and keep yourself out of Elite Daily’s list of the “25 worst public spelling errors ever seen”. Need a writer (or two)? To learn more about the importance of hiring a great writer and how it can benefit your business (so you don’t let any “zookeenes” sneak in)… check out our Proofreading services.
Social media is awesome, isn’t it? You can reach out to your clients via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and even meet new people, bringing them in and turning them into customers. There are so many excellent social channels out there that you might start to feel a bit overwhelmed and wonder just what else, outside of the social media trinity you should use.
Well, I am here to tell you about an incredible social channel that you might just be overlooking – Pinterest. That’s right! I am going to show you why you need to add this channel to your mix, as well as how you can use it successfully for your business.
Pinterest For Your Business: How To Succeed In Your Pinterest Social Media Marketing
Pinterest is a great resource for businesses, and can give you a wider reach and range for your audience. Here are some great reasons why you should be using it.
1. Over 70 Million People Use It, & 93% of Those People Are Buyers. That’s right. The 70 million users is a stat from Wikipedia a few years ago, so it’s safe to say this may have even doubled by now. And Shopify is saying that 2 million people pin product pins daily, while 93% of all Pinterest users actually use Pinterest to plan purchases. If this isn’t your main reason to be on Pinterest, I don’t know what is.
2. You Can Use Pinterest to Help Increase Traffic.According to Jessica Meher from Hubspot, a great reason to use Pinterest is to help increase traffic. Research on the amount of traffic Pinterest provides shows that it can actually bring in more people than Facebook or Twitter, which is great for all websites. This is definitely amazing if your site is new or you rely on your site to help drive sales and bring in new customers.
3. You Will See High Amounts of User Engagement. Pinterest is amazingly addictive for anyone who uses it, and many people love to engage on it. In the article mentioned above, Jessica Meher points out that you will see more engagement on Pinterest simply because many people are on it and addicted to it. This means that they are very likely to pin, favorite, and comment on your pins while they spend their time browsing through the channel.
4. It Will Help Strengthen Your Brand. You can use Pinterest to strengthen your brand and drive trust among your client base. According to Nicole Kohler from Shareaholic, a great way to use Pinterest to strengthen your brand is to bookmark mentions of your brand and products. This will help you keep track when someone mentions your brand, giving you the chance to interact with them. This can help promote engagement, trust, and, as I’ve mentioned, strengthen your brand. It will also help you stand out from your competitors if you are regularly seeking out and engaging with your customers.
5. You Have Easy Access to Market Research. One of the great things about Pinterest is that you get the chance to do excellent market research easily. Pinterest gives you the ability to see what your users want to see while keeping you updated on the latest trends. You can follow your clients back and easily watch what they post and see just how they use social media, helping you create and curate excellent content for them.
And Here Are 9 Top Ways To Successfully Use Pinterest for Your Business
Now that you know a few excellent reasons as to why you should use Pinterest for your business, let’s take a look at just how you can use it successfully.
1. Integrate Pinterest With Your Website, Twitter, and Facebook. A great way to use Pinterest is to integrate it with your website, as well as your other social channels such as Twitter and Facebook. You can set it up to where Pinterest updates your Facebook and Twitter pages when you make a new pin, helping to drive your existing social media followers to your account. To integrate it with your website, you can include “Pin It” buttons to encourage visitors to pin product images to their own Pinterest accounts.
2. Learn What Your Audience Wants to See. You need to do some basic client research to be sure that when you use Pinterest, you are sharing what your clients want to see. You can create personas, but simply following your clients and taking a look at their boards can help you figure out what they pin and like to see. When you understand your Pinterest audience more, you can then start to develop things that are interesting to them, helping bring about engagement and driving more people to your website.
3. Focus On the Quality of Your pins and Not When You Post. Trying to find the best time to post to social media is something many people look for to help bring about more clicks and views. However, according to Kevan Lee from Buffer, when it comes to Pinterest, you need to focus on the quality of your pins and not when you post. High-quality pins are more important to Pinterest users and many people are on Pinterest at varying times. When you post something that is high quality, you have a higher chance having more people pin your pins and click on the links.
4. Create Excellent Captions With Each Pin. Just like with your blogs and other social media posts, the headlines and captions on Pinterest are vital. When you go to create a pin, make sure you have an amazing caption that can capture a user’s attention, convincing them to click. Focus your attention on making something that is engaging that gives clients enough information to be curious but not too much information that keeps them from looking further at your website.
5. Make Sure You are Driving Traffic to Your Site. You might be sharing a lot of interesting pins, but when using Pinterest, you need to make sure that you drive traffic to your site. For example, when you share a product image or an image from your blog, make sure to “Pin It” directly for your website. This will link back to your site visibly on Pinterest and will make it easy for a user to click on the image, taking them to the product or blog you are linking to. The only way to see the amazing traffic that Pinterest provides is to make sure you link back to your site.
6. Add a “Pin it” Button On Your Landing Pages and Blogs. As I mentioned earlier, adding a “Pin It” button to your website is a great way to integrate your account with your site. Make sure that the button is on each of your landing pages and product pages, as well as your blog. This will help make it easier for your clients when they want to share something from your site that they find interesting.
7. Have Proper Pinterest Etiquette. Just as in normal life and on other social media channels, having proper etiquette is great when approaching Pinterest. This can help you be more successful when using the social channel. Some good ideas for etiquette are to be nice, give credit to any sources you use, and don’t be overly self-promotional. You can also comment on your clients’ pins when they pin something from your website, and just maintain a fun, great client-business relationship.
8. Add Your Keywords and Use Hashtags. When you go to create your awesome captions, make sure that you include your keywords in the description. This will help someone locate your pins when they are searching through Pinterest for those keywords, just like when they are searching Google.
You can also include hashtags in your Pinterest post. This will help categorize your pin with a specific hashtag such as #weightloss or #shorthair. In addition, Anna Bennett from Business 2 Community says that it will help if you have your Twitter and Pinterest linked up. This means that once you make a pin and it gets sent out over Twitter, you already have the hashtags in place.
9. Use Secret Pinterest Boards to Curate Content. You don’t want to overwhelm your Pinterest followers with several pins all at once, but you also don’t want to lose the great content you’ve found. A great idea from Cynthia Sanchez at Social Media Examiner is to create secret boards that only you can see and curate excellent content.
This can help you with your whole social media strategy, as well as a blogging strategy. But it can also help you keep all of the excellent content youfind in an easy-to-access location. Once you set up these boards, you can always go through the pins and begin pinning them throughout the week.
Pin Away, My Fine Friends!
As you can see, Pinterest for your business really can happen. It is a great social media resource and there are many ways you can use it for the betterment of your business. If you don’t have a Pinterest account, go ahead and set one up and start pinning. If you are looking for help with your social media strategy, look no further than Express Writers. Our social media services can help your business have a brilliant, shiny social media presence that you are sure to enjoy.
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