Nicole Inge - Express Writers

How to Set and Achieve Content Marketing Goals

August 28, 2022May 24, 2022 by Nicole Inge

Your business needs strategy and purpose behind every piece of content. That’s why it’s so important to set content marketing goals. With clear goals in mind, it’ll be easier to determine if your efforts in business are worthwhile before you spend too much time or money on them. Plus, it enables you to make adjustments when your strategy isn’t meeting expectations. But how do you set goals that are exciting to pursue? And how do you achieve them with ease? This blog shares some helpful tips to guide you in making your content marketing efforts more effective than ever. How to Set Content Marketing Goals Content marketing is a powerful and effective way to help you reach your business goals, whether those goals include generating brand awareness, increasing sales and revenue, or improving customer loyalty. However, many businesses go wrong when they create content simply for the sake of creating content. They then fail to make their content memorable, and it gets drowned out by competitors. Instead of publishing content without a purpose, you need to set specific and measurable content marketing goals if you want your ROI to skyrocket. Your content marketing goals should always be formulated around specific business objectives you’d like to achieve. Just follow the SMART goals framework. Determine your big picture goals and then map out how your content can make it happen. These goals should be relevant to your business and its vision. And they should be time-bound, with a plan to reach your goal within a set time period. Content Marketing Objectives That Matter in Business In business, there are a variety of content marketing goals you could pursue. They can be short-term and long-term goals. You might even set goals based on different stages of the customer journey. To help you come up with exciting goals to go after, here are a few suggestions: Brand Awareness: It’s important to raise awareness for your business and communicate what makes you different from your competitors. You can measure brand awareness through website traffic, social media following, email subscribers, and social listening. Website Traffic: Without generating traffic to your website, it can be difficult to increase sales. Tracking page views and traffic sources to see how people discover your business and the content you publish means you’re always on top of any changes. Conversions: Now, conversions can look like a few different things. For instance, you might want to convert more website visitors into email subscribers or convert them into paying customers. Both are great and will require you to measure the success of your landing pages to determine if they’re encouraging people to take that next step with your business. As an example, if you want to generate more brand awareness, you might set a goal to increase website traffic by 50% over the next quarter. To achieve that goal, you could commit to posting one or two new blog posts every week that are optimized to attract organic traffic. This goal is simple but effective. 6 Tips for Achieving Content Marketing Goals With Ease Once you’ve set some content marketing goals to achieve, you’ll need to figure out how to make them happen. Here’s some advice to help you reach your goals with ease to ensure your business thrives: 1. Create a Plan to Make Your Goals a Reality Once you know what you want to achieve, you may be tempted to dive right into the content creation process. However, you should first create a plan that clearly outlines the steps necessary for making your content marketing goals a reality. By taking the time to map out a strategy, you’ll know what kind of content you need to create, allowing you to move forward with purpose. Plus, you will have identified any other actions necessary to create your desired results in business. When creating this plan, consider any resources you will need. Who on your team will be involved? How much time and money will it require to complete tasks? You don’t want to overcommit or underestimate what can realistically be accomplished within your designated timeframe. 2. Assign Team Members to Goal-Related Tasks You’ll need to get your team on board to follow the plan you’ve mapped out. Let them know your goals and share the plan you’ve outlined. During this stage, give them the opportunity to share their own suggestions for achieving your goals. They may have ideas that hadn’t occurred to you before. This shows you value their opinions. Then, divide up the workload among all the team members involved in the project. Base their assigned tasks on their unique strengths and interests. Everyone gets the opportunity to shine, which makes work more enjoyable for them. Plus, they’re able to direct their attention to specific areas as opposed to managing an entire campaign from start to finish. 3. Set Up Tracking Tools to Measure Success As mentioned before, it’s important to set measurable content marketing goals. If a goal isn’t measurable, there will be no way to know if you’ve achieved it. It’s the difference between saying you want more website traffic versus saying you want to increase traffic by 50%. The latter is something you can track and see within your analytics. So, before you begin putting your plan into motion, make sure you have the necessary tools to measure your success over time. For instance, Google Analytics is a go-to for content creators and marketers. It allows you to measure website traffic, traffic sources, and more. Additionally, the built-in analytics that social media platforms offer can help on your journey to becoming a content marketing master. However, there may be some other tools you’d like to use as well. SEMrush is a favorite for SEO and competitor research. Yoast is popular for WordPress bloggers who want to optimize their content. And, of course, BuzzSumo is great for discovering the most popular content in your industry. Determine which tools are most important to you and factor them into your … Read more

What We Do to Craft Consistent Quality Content at Express Writers

June 28, 2022May 10, 2022 by Nicole Inge

If you want to rise to the top of Google’s search results and outshine your competitors, you need to consistently publish high-quality content. Sounds pretty easy, right? Well, not necessarily. Great content can’t be created with the push of a button. It takes hard work and dedication to choose relevant topics that will appeal to an audience and turn them into something people will want to read and share with their communities. But what are you supposed to do when you don’t have time to create content? What if writing isn’t one of your strong suits? If you find yourself in either of these situations, then it may be time to outsource your content creation to the experts like the Express Writers team. You might be wondering… How do we provide quality content at Express Writers? To give you a better understanding of how our team creates amazing content for our clients, we’re sharing a few ways we make that happen. But first, let’s talk about why high-quality content is so important for brands like yours. Why Quality Content is Crucial to Your Success Gone are the days of cold calling and other old-fashioned marketing techniques to grow your business. Right now, it’s all about content marketing that outperforms those dated methods. However, it’s not enough to show up online and put any old content out there. It needs to be high-quality content, or people will scroll past. With competitive markets, that’s something you simply can’t risk happening. Here’s why quality content matters: It Increases Visibility: It’s more difficult for people to discover your brand if you don’t put yourself out there online. By publishing search engine optimized content on your blog, you generate a ton of new traffic to your website because you’ll start ranking in the search results on Google. And consistently publishing posts on social media will also send new people your way. You need to attract an audience to your brand if you hope to convert them to paying clients and customers. It’ll Position You as an Authority in Your Field: When you share valuable content with your audience, it allows you to showcase your expertise. Over time, people will begin to see you as an authority in your field. You’ll become their go-to resource for whatever you offer. That’s a huge element of building the Know, Like, and Trust Factor with your audience. It’ll Boost Your Conversion Rate: Once you’ve established authority and trust through your content, people will be more inclined to buy from you. That’s because your audience will have developed a connection with you. They’ll see you as a dependable resource, and, therefore, a worthwhile investment. The more sales you bring in, the more money you make, and the more success you bring your brand. You’ll Stand Out From Your Competitors: Odds are, you have a number of competitors in your industry that you’re always up against. And you don’t want to lose potential clients to them. That’s why you should use your content to stand out and showcase what makes you unique. It attracts clients your way, boosting sales in the long run. The best part is that content marketing compounds over time. So, when done well, that means your content will continue to attract traffic and leads month after month. Even if you take a break. That’s because well-written, evergreen content will still be of interest to your audience well into the future. At the end of the day, there’s no better investment you can make for your business because the long-term payoff ensures you get the most bang for your buck. How We’re Able to Provide Quality Content at Express Writers Now that you see how important it is to put amazing content into the world, the next thing to do is start writing. However, not everyone is a natural writer. And that’s totally okay! If writing isn’t your strong suit, you can easily outsource it to a content agency like our team. We’ve made quality content our mission, and there are three key reasons we’re able to provide it to our clients. Our 5,000 clients and more than 40,000 completed projects since the company was founded in 2011 speak for themselves. Here’s how we make it happen: 1. We Hire Experienced Writers First and foremost, we pride ourselves on hiring experienced writers with the skills and knowledge to create amazing content that readers (and Google) will love. These people are passionate about writing and content creation. We’ve compiled a team of people who love the work they do. Many of our writers studied Communications or Journalism in school, while others have previous experience working as a freelance writer or writing for publications. It’s important to us that they have experience in the field because it ensures they can confidently step into the role and take on a wide array of projects from our diverse clientele. We also have three levels of writers, which helps us match them with the projects that are the best fit. Here’s a breakdown of what those writing levels look like: General: Our general writing level is for those who have minimal writing experience. This means it’s ideal for entry-level writers looking to get started. Plus, they can level up after some time in the role. The general writers on our team still have natural writing skills and easily provide quality content at Express Writers. Level 1: Those newer writers who have a few months to two years of experience fall in our Level 1 tier. These writers are still top-notch and can be counted on to produce quality content. They’re also eager to learn and grow, which we give them the opportunity to do. Level 2: To be placed in our Level 2 tier, writers need to have at least five years of content writing experience. Not only that, but they also need to have regular experience with larger volume assignments, a proven track record, and industry specialization. Some fields will require … Read more

Why Does Getting Content Right the First Time Matter?

June 29, 2022April 19, 2022 by Nicole Inge

Why does content matter? Publishing high-quality, valuable content is a huge element of any brand’s digital marketing strategy. If your content isn’t great, people won’t bother reading it. Nor will they be interested in visiting your blog in the future. Unfortunately, there are still some people that aren’t taking their content creation very seriously. To help you see why you need to get your content right the first time, we’re sharing why ranking in Google can be challenging (plus how they rank pages) and a few other advantages to publishing great content now. Why Ranking in Google Can be Hard According to Ahrefs, 90.63% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google. That means a lot of creators are missing out on tons of potential traffic getting sent their way each month. It’s essential to optimize your content and avoid ending up in this situation. If you aren’t sure how to properly optimize your content, you could accidentally implement some SEO tactics that Google isn’t fond of. For instance, keyword stuffing or adding junky backlinks. If you’re not an expert in SEO, this is when it’ll be smart to outsource the content creation and optimization to someone who knows best practices. How Google Ranks Pages To ensure search results deliver exactly what a user is looking for, Google designed an algorithm and system to rank content. There are tons of factors you’ll want to consider if you hope to land that coveted top spot on the first page of search results. Here are some of the things Google looks for when ranking pages: Relevance of Web Pages: Google’s algorithms will analyze a web page to assess the content it contains. If its content is deemed relevant to a user’s search, it will show up in the returned results. To determine relevance, Google looks for on-page keywords and other data. Quality of Content: Priority number one is delivering searchers quality content that pertains to their queries. Google’s systems identify which web pages show expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) on a specific topic. Usability of Web Pages: If your website isn’t easy to navigate, Google isn’t likely to send many visitors your way. Proper site functionality is necessary on both desktop and mobile, so make sure there aren’t any errors preventing people from browsing. So, why is content so important? Well, if you’re not publishing content, you’re not going to rank in Google’s search results. And if you’re not ranking in search results, it’s not likely people will find your website on their own. Why it’s Essential to Publish Great Content From the Start A strong content strategy isn’t just going to help you climb to the top of Google. There are also some other reasons why it’s essential to start publishing great content right away: 1. Content Educates Your Audience In many cases, we’re Googling topics that we want to learn more about. If you can provide all the information someone needs in a single post, readers are sure to be appreciative. Plus, they won’t be inclined to venture to your competitor’s website. Always strive to create great content with tons of valuable details because first impressions make a huge difference. 2. You’ll Become More Visible Online Showing up consistently by posting regular blog content is a sure-fire way to get noticed. The more optimized content you publish, the more blog posts you’ll have showing up in search results. This is a great way to drive traffic and boost awareness for your brand. Before you know it, people will see you as a go-to resource for your area of expertise. 3. It’ll Build Your Authority in Your Field When people see you as an authority in your field, they’ll be more inclined to consume all the content you publish. They’ll recommend you to their friends. And they’ll potentially purchase products and services you offer, thus generating more revenue. Trust Express Writers to Create Great Content Our team of skilled writers is ready to create optimized content that will get you noticed by Google and your readers. Instead of wrestling with SEO on your own, let our experts take over. Contact us if you have questions or visit our Content Shop to see our content offerings.

How to Write Content for Email Marketing

January 10, 2024October 12, 2021 by Nicole Inge

How do you write content for email marketing campaigns that people will actually read? This is majorly important. Maybe more than you’d think. Why? Email marketing can change the game for your business if you do it right. Think invested and engaged subscribers. More conversions. More sales. More trust. It’s all possible with good email. (That explains why email earns a GIANT return on investment. For every $1 spent on email marketing, expect to earn about $55 back.) Not to mention, it’s one of the most popular types of marketing out there. It’s not only effective — it’s also an easy, accessible, personal way to stay connected to your growing audience. So, I’d say learning how to write content for email is really, really important, especially if you’re on a tight budget. Wouldn’t you? Hence: this guide. Keep reading for 10 tips to improve your email content game. Email Marketing by the Numbers Email as a technology is nearly 60 years old (!), but it’s still most consumers’ favorite way to get information online: The average open rate for emails across industries is 22.86%. 45% of email subscribers say they open emails based on who they’re from. 33% say they open emails based on the subject line. The most popular email clients are Apple iPhone (with 34.2% of market share) followed by Gmail (30.7% market share). During the 2020 pandemic, the most popular way to read email was on a computer. Using call-to-action buttons in your emails versus just text links may increase click-throughs by as much as 28%. How to Write Content for Email Marketing: 10 Timely Tips Email marketing is different than social media. It’s more personal, more targeted, and, as a result, higher-stakes. With this in mind, consider these practical tips for how to write content for email marketing. 1. Write a Good Subject Line The subject line is the gatekeeper in the world of email marketing. Write a good one and you’ll see a satisfying open rate. Write a poor one and you’ll suffer the sound of crickets in the background of your campaign. While there are dozens of great ways to write a compelling subject line, the best ones all have a few things in common: They revolve around grabbing a reader’s interest and keeping it. With this in mind, follow all of the standard rules that come with writing any great email subject line: include action words; address the reader directly; make it unique, succinct, and short; and differentiate it from anything else they’ll see that day. For an example of an email subject line done right, check out this example from Mark Manson: 2. Personalize Your Emails Personalized email copy performs better than general email copy. With this in mind, input your customer’s name into your email subject lines and be sure to target the body of your email so that it speaks directly to your audience and nobody else’s. While it can be easy to worry that your emails will be lost in the fray, the only way to ensure that they won’t be overlooked is to personalize them fully and differentiate them from anything else out there. 3. Make Your Emails Clear First, Catchy Second Catchy emails are great, but only if they’re also clear enough to make your audience want to click on them. With this in mind, focus on making your emails clear and descriptive first, catchy second. This ensure that your audience will understand the purpose of your emails, and that you won’t be going out of your way to develop email campaigns that don’t draw real results. What’s more, emails that are clear boost your authority as a company, since they promise only what they can deliver, and help readers develop realistic their expectations. 4. Ensure Your Subject Line Relates to Your Copy Even if your subject line is clear and catchy, it’s all for naught if it doesn’t also align with your body copy. Keep in mind that delivering what you promise is critical in the world of email, and only people who can truly do this succeed in the long run. With this in mind, keep your subject text in-line with your body copy. In addition to providing better value for readers, this will also go a long way toward enhancing your reputation as a company and making sure that customers want to click your material in the days to come. Need some inspiration for writing email subject lines? Check out our free resource: 20 Proven Email Subject Lines for Your Email Marketing. 5. Keep It Relevant Relevance is critical for a good email, so be sure to tie the content of your email in with something that will ground it as relevant and in-demand. Current events work well, as does some personal detail about the audience. By showcasing your relevance, you stand a better chance of grabbing the reader’s attention and keeping it. 6. Write Emails in the Second Person Second person is the best voice for email because it’s personal and unique. When you reach out and speak directly to your customers, it’s easier for them to relate to the voice and content of your email. This, in turn, also makes it easier for them to connect with your emails and enhances the likelihood that they’ll open your emails in the future – which is a good thing for everyone involved. 7. Showcase Benefits Over Features If you’re making an offer via email, be sure to showcase the benefits of said offer rather than the features. In addition to being more valuable for readers, this also helps present a realistic picture of your product, which goes a long way toward helping people understand what to expect from it. While most people focus on the features in an attempt to sell a product, focusing on the benefits can go much further toward helping the reader understand what’s unique and special about the product. 8. Keep It Short but Sweet Email marketing is not … Read more