Blogging - Express Writers

10-Step Checklist for Starting Your Law Blog and Working with Legal Blog Writers

June 19, 2024October 25, 2017 by Adam Oakley

The benefits of starting a blog for a law firm or legal business bear repeating, even if you’ve heard them before (and you probably have). By now, you understand how blogging helps grow the chances of getting discovered through online search for any business. You’re well aware of how it builds trust with readers. You know how a blog helps position you (or, if you’re a marketer, your client) as an authority in any industry. A blog can play a hugely instrumental role in the first part of the sales journey: (Via Hubspot) As a result of its ability to attract prospects, it can help grow your business, too. Just look at this case study from Jeff Bullas to see five great examples of blogging success, including companies like Etsy and OptinMonster. The benefits of blogging can’t be disputed. In fact, you’re probably ready to get going with a law blog right this second. After all, the sooner you begin, the sooner you can reap the rewards. But where to begin? If you need a little push making the first move toward content marketing success with a law blog, you’re in the right place. These tips for starting a blog with legal blog writers will show you how it’s done. How to Position a Law Business for Success with a Blog and Legal Blog Writers The first must for starting a law blog? Hire the right writing talent! 1. Hire Legal Blog Writers! A blog can’t be successful without good writing talent behind it. You can’t just hire any writer, either. You’re working within a niche industry. Useful, thorough, factually accurate blogs about legal topics require expert knowledge. You need writers who are up to the task. Generally, you won’t find these types of writers at a content mill. If you do end up hiring cheap services, it’ll leave you with cheap, inaccurate filler blogs that provide no value for your audience. Bottom line: If you want a good legal blog, one that does everything you need it to do for successful content marketing and SEO, you need higher-level writers who know their way around legal topics. You gotta hire and invest in expert legal blog writers. For inspiration, here’s what a great law blog looks like: The Startup Law Blog is a perfect example of a blog with solid writing and expert knowledge behind it. It also gets tons of engagement! For proof, look at how many comments a recent post got: 2. Don’t Give Legal Advice Lawyers and law firms need to tread carefully when posting online and blogging. There are ethical lines you should not cross to avoid misleading readers. The American Bar Association has outlined general guidelines to follow when posting online. One biggie is to know the distinction between offering legal information and giving legal advice. Legal advice is specific and relates to the information and circumstances of an individual case. Legal information, on the other hand, is general, hypothetical, and can be applied to lots of different cases. To avoid ethical tangles, you should stick to the latter in your blog posts. Here’s where hiring an expert legal blog writer can save you – they’ll know this distinction inside-out and can make clear statements in posts about it. They’ll let the reader know the information is general and not intended as legal advice. 3. Keep the Language General and the Tone Approachable It could be easy to forget who you’re writing for and include legal-speak in your blog posts. This is a big no-no. For one, your audience is probably much more general than you think. You’ll mainly be talking to people who have been searching the web for basic information and explanations about legal topics. These people won’t have any legal training. This means you need to keep your language general. Don’t include legal jargon (unless you’re willing to define it in plain terms), and explain basic concepts in a down-to-earth way. Otherwise, you may turn visitors away. 4. Focus on Quality and Usefulness It can be hard to come up with a steady stream of blog topics, but there are always two keys to keep in mind for subject matter. Focus on providing quality and usefulness to your readers. What does quality look like? Clear, easy-to-read text with good grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Ideas are broken up into short paragraphs for maximum readability. The blog is organized with headers and subheaders. One idea flows logically into the next, and the next, and so on. What does usefulness look like? The topic is one that would interest your target audience. The blog features enlightening or practical information – it speaks to your readers’ lives, concerns, or pain points. The blog is written in a relatable, understandable, clear tone. It’s factually accurate. The blog is timely, or better yet, timeless (it will still be good information a week from now, a month from now, or six months to a year from now). Quality and usefulness are two universal aspects that should apply to every single blog you write, no matter the topic. If you phone it in, your readers will know, and they’ll stop caring. 5. Write to Your Target Audience With a blog, you can’t write to the entire world at large. First of all, that’s impossible. Second of all, if you tried to do that, you would end up with something way, way too general to be useful. You need to have an audience in mind when you write in order for your content to be effective and serve its purpose. What’s that purpose? Helping people find answers you can provide. You can’t help everyone, though. You can, however, help the people your professional law services target. Plus, this kind of targeting helps your business and your blog tie together seamlessly. If you haven’t found your target audience yet, you need to get going on market research. Only then will you understand who to address in your blog posts. Need legal … Read more

6 Reasons Professional Blog Writers Are Worth Every Last Cent of Your Investment

June 19, 2024October 24, 2017 by Adam Oakley

There are writers, and then there are writers. Or, let’s put the distinction this way: There are cheap writers, and there are pro writers. What’s the difference? Cheap writers are cheap. That’s all they bring to the table. Professional blog writers have experience, talent, skill, and style. There’s more, though. Writing is a field of expertise, just like any other industry, and these people know it inside-out. They read widely and absorb different writing techniques. They know how to conduct thorough research. They understand the basics of constructing a solid article, whether short or long. They’re creative and dedicated to their craft. Should I keep going? Proficient pro writers need to have all of these skills, plus more. (Via Learn How to Become) And yet, despite the obvious benefits of hiring a professional writer for their content marketing, lots of brands and businesses still aren’t doing it. Instead, they think they can cut corners. Something’s gotta give somewhere, and, a lot of the time, that something is the writing. You may be guilty of this, too. If you are, I’m here to set you straight. You have to understand exactly why professional writers are worth it. You need to know what cheap content mills are doing to your content marketing. You need to understand the value of good, professional writing. Why Professional Blog Writers Are Worth Every Last Cent of Investment There are reams of blogs out there that try to tell you the secrets of professional writers. Even more explain the basic elements that make up good content. You’re supposed to learn these and then apply them to your content marketing and copywriting. Articles like these are all over the ‘net. They try to give you a lesson in skills which pro writers already have. (Via Quick Sprout) Guess what? Professional writers have an entire arsenal of writing “secrets.” You’ll never learn them all, or understand them in the same way, because writing isn’t your bread-and-butter. You haven’t been reading and writing for years upon years – for fun. You probably didn’t major in English, journalism, or communications in college. You most likely never attempted to write a hefty fantasy or detective novel when you were 12. (Seriously, ask any pro writer – they’ll tell you all about their ridiculous first novel, short story collection, etc., that they wrote when they were young and foolish.) Of course, not every writer has professional training or education. However, every single pro writer has passion and experience. Let’s get more basic. If you’re a marketer, marketing is what you do. If you’re a business owner, running your company is what you do, and all that it entails. If you’re a pro writer, writing is what you do. If these still aren’t good enough arguments for you, here’s more about what good writers can do for your content marketing. These key factors set them apart. 1. Professional Blog Writers Treat Your Content with Care Cheap writers are not concerned about quality – they only care about quantity. That’s because they sell their services for the cheapest price possible, then get as much volume as they can to make up the difference. As such, the work they do has no craft behind it. They are focused on getting the words out as fast as possible to make a dime. Pro writers, on the other hand, are concerned with quality and quantity in balance. They’re trying to make money, too, but they’re also worried about producing good work. Because this balance is number one, that means… 2. They Spend the Necessary Time Getting the Writing Right Any pro writer will tell you straight out: Good writing takes time. You cannot dash out a page of text in 10 minutes and expect it to be worth anything, let alone readable. Writing for content marketing requires even more diligence. It needs to mirror the brand’s voice, use the right keywords in the right places, address the target audience effectively, and be readable and useful. If it’s really good, the content will also pull the reader into the text. It will encourage them to keep reading aaaaall the way down to the end of the page. Interlude: Case Study Time You want a good idea of what focusing on quantity over quality looks like (versus a focus on balancing quantity + quality)? Let’s take a gander at the difference using a fantastic example from this real-life case study by Startup Grind. They readily admit that they fell for the lure of cheap content. As such, they hired five writers offering ridiculously inexpensive rates to do a paid test assignment. What they got back made them balk, to say the least. Here’s one example from the test. This piece was titled “Quantity Is the King in B2B Lead Generation”. (The phrasing of this headline alone is worth a long pause of concern. What follows is not all that surprising.) If you can read this without wanting to bash your head against a wall, I sincerely applaud your effort. What’s wrong with it? Everything, for starters. It’s not engaging – it’s repetitive and wordy. The overuse of determiners also makes me suspect the writer’s first language isn’t English. This is supposed to draw in leads? I don’t think so. Naturally, Startup Grind abandoned this approach and tried a different tack. They did the research, came up with the blog title, and provided points to cover. They hired two test writers from cheap agencies who could fill in the blanks. Easy-peasy. Well, actually… Neither writer could deliver. One handed in an article that had nothing to do with the outline. (After two more revisions, the resulting article was still incoherent and messy.) The other writer included points from the outline but loaded it with filler and meaningless sentences in the gaps. Yep, it turns out the old saying is true. You get what you pay for. To drive this point home, let’s compare the example of cheap writing, above, to … Read more

We Hit 1,000 Blogs! What It Looks Like to Blog One Thousand Times = And the Return

January 1, 2021October 10, 2017 by Adam Oakley

On Wednesday, October 4, we hit a major milestone: We published our 1,000th blog. How crazy is that?! Across the last five years, we never stopped blogging, and it has really paid off. Need great content? Click here to sign up as a client. To celebrate, I’ve put together a short, interview Q/A style piece on why and how our blogging has brought us serious return and become a worthwhile investment. Enjoy! We Hit 1,000 Blogs! What It Looks Like to Blog One Thousand Times = And the Return On Investment Ready? Let’s jump in! How Long Has the Write Blog Been Running? Since September, 2012, we’ve been blogging at www.expresswriters.com/write-blog. As of today, that makes 5 years and 1 month. How Consistent Have We Been? On average, we publish 3-4 blogs every single week, and have kept up this consistency since our first month. How Much Has This Consistency Paid Off? HUGE dividends. 1) Rankings: Today, we have over 11,000 keywords ranking organically in Google from the blogs we’ve posted: Many of the ranking terms are long-tail keywords, and we see our blog posts hitting the top 3, 5, 10 and 15 spots in Google for these keywords. Over 400+ keywords are within the top 5 results of Google. 2) Direct leads and sales: Our talk to sales forms come in primarily when prospects find our content in Google. Here’s an example of one of those forms. Our Sales Manager, Tamila, assisted prospect Jeff with a cart containing the product he needed, and he bought within just a few days. And… We’ve had over 500 talk to sales forms filled out since 2012! On average, 50-70% of our Talk to Sales close within 1-2 weeks. Our typical minimum investment is anywhere from $60 – $100 or $150, on a new client’s first order. If we were to shoot for the middle, $100, that’s $50,000 minimum right there. But, many of these Talk to Sales have worked out to much more. For instance, one contract was worth $75,000 over the course of 15 months. Safe to say, these organic leads have brought us a HUGE majority of our income. How Much Have You Invested Into It? I write a major part of all the content on the Write Blog, with a lot of assistance. I have three trained expert writers on staff that help me create some of the content, while I research and write about the trends. I write and schedule all email content. We have a designer on staff that creates the content visuals for us. Rachel, our social media manager, writes weekly recaps for #ContentWritingChat, and sometimes guest blogs as well as schedules shares on all our published content. Hannah, our Content Director, has also guest blogged on the site, along with one of our client social media copywriters, Krystal. Content types like infographics, for example this one, can cost upwards of $500 to create, plan, and design. We do infographics quarterly. Besides that, I audit and check our website content, product descriptions, and update as needed, which is usually a bi-weekly job. We have more than 90 site pages, not including product descriptions! Tools and Costs Involved? We use ConvertKit, which is $75/month for email marketing: MeetEdgar, $49/month to social share: and on average, I pay out a minimum of $250/weekly in content creation time to my designer, content creators, editors, and our staff social media manager. My hours are at least 5 weekly, sometimes more. It’s Not Easy, But Done Right The Dividends of Blogging Are Huge If you’re not regularly blogging, let this be a testament and inspiration to what happens when you do – and roll your sleeves up and get going! We’re a team that lives what we say – we abide by the products we sell! Seriously, I don’t know of another content agency that lives and eats because of the huge amounts of content they’ve created. We’re able to see leads organically roll in from Google consistently – day in, day out. And if you need help – because I for one know how tough this is to maintain! – our professionally written and managed blog packages are always here, anytime you need us to help you.

20 Creative Blog Ideas for Writers: Never Run Out of Blog Ideas Again with This List!

January 1, 2021September 6, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Publishing a steady stream of ever-flowing content is important for ranking. If you’re an online content writer in any capacity… You need a seemingly endless river of blog ideas for writers, one that never runs dry. So, what do you do when it does? What do you do when you need to come up with topics, but you feel like you’re stranded in the middle of a rain-parched, burnt-out desert? You’d better head toward that oasis shimmering on the horizon, and pray it’s the river. Lucky for you, in this metaphorical scenario, it usually is. The way to the river of content is a path full of writing prompts, research, brainstorming, and good old-fashioned hard work. To make your journey 10 times easier, we’ve compiled our best strategies for getting there. Come back to this list again and again for a quick way to get on track. Let’s get going with blog ideas for writers! Blog Ideas for Writers: 20 Prompts, Research Tips, Keyword Discovery Strategies & More to Keep You Rolling Sometimes, all you need is a push in the right direction to get moving. That little nudge is enough to get ideas sprouting in your head, growing quickly, and bearing fruit. 1. Start with a Subject and Create Variations Chances are, if you’re looking for blog ideas, you probably already have one or two percolating. Take these and create variations to start off with some quick ideas for lots of posts. For instance, HubSpot recommends creating iterations of one topic by going both broader and narrower with it. If you start with “X Baking Tips and Tricks for Beginners,” you could narrow it down to “X Cookie-Baking Tips and Tricks for Beginners.” Or, go a little broader: “X Everyday Tips and Tricks for Baking and Cooking.” Keep going up and down the broad/narrow ladder and you could come up with 10, 15, or even 20 ideas quite easily. 2. Use Topic Generators Another way to find variations of one blog idea is to use topic generators. All you have to do is plug in a keyword, and the generator will spit out different ways to frame the topic. Sometimes these won’t make grammatical sense, but the point is to get ideas flowing rather than grab ready-made, publishable topics. One of the most popular topic generators is HubSpot’s. I entered the keywords “baking,” “cakes,” and “beginners” into the generator: Some don’t make sense, but some are a great starting point for ideas. (I would really want to read “The Worst Advice We’ve Ever Heard About Cakes”!) Another worthy tool is Portent’s Content Idea Generator. Mess around with these and see what comes out of it. You could make some good sparks that light up your idea fire. 3. Ask Basic Questions If you’re stumped for blog ideas, go back to basics. Write about basic topics, but frame them in terms of your business/industry, your personal brand/growth, or your keys to success. Here are some good questions to ask to get you started: What does your creative process look like? Have you discovered any new tools recently that boosted your workflow? What’s the top question customers ask you? What’s the history of your business? 4. Find Trending Topics with BuzzSumo for Blog Ideas for Writers BuzzSumo is a fantastic tool to aid you in your quest for blog ideas. There are seemingly hundreds of ways to search various topics and keywords and glean lots of helpful data. Here’s just one way. Go to the site and head over to “Content Analysis.” Plug your keyword or seed topic into the search box and hit “Search.” From there, scroll down until you get to the section with the heading “Popular Topics for Content Related to…” Gold! Here we can see the most popular topics for the keyword, which give us a good idea where we can go with further ideas. For instance, a post about beginner baking tips would probably land really well. To get different stats, don’t forget to filter by date (scroll back up the top to find that filter). Plus, for more general ideas on trending topics you can use, head to the “Trending Now” tab and filter the information by your industry. Below, the content is focused on trending stories in “Business” within the last 24 hours. 5. Read Competitor Blogs Your competitors’ blogs are good benchmarks for success, but you also can get lots of ideas from them and add your personal spin. Look at these blogs, especially solid ones, and see what they’re up to. What have they been writing about recently? Which posts are getting a ton of engagement? Grab some good ideas for yourself, but remember: Never copy. 6. Search Quora for Questions Quora is a great resource for discovering what trends and topics people are interested in right this second. To find popular questions people are asking about topics in your industry (and whether they’ve been answered!) do a quick search. First, type in your keyword in the search bar. A list of topics will pop up underneath. Click on any of these to go to an overview page. You can also click on the bottom text that says “Search: [your topic].” On this page, you can filter results to see the questions asked and which ones are most popular. You can also see how many people are following questions – this can help you determine which topics might get a better response. Any of these questions would make great blog topics to address, especially if you have unique answers. 7. Use Keyword Explorer If you want a quick way to brainstorm blog ideas, head to Moz’s Keyword Explorer and do a search. An easy way to grab blog ideas is to search for a specific keyword and then check out the “Keyword Suggestions” page. On that page, go to the first drop-down box and select “are questions” to only display keyword suggestions that are in question form. You’ll end up with … Read more

The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Best Blog Images: Sizes, Optimization & More

September 5, 2022June 5, 2017 by Adam Oakley

We’ve all heard the saying: a picture is worth a thousand words. But how does this impact blogging? Today, it’s virtually impossible to create a great blog without also creating strong visual content. In other words, your words matter less when they stand on their own. Modern readers want to be engaged on all fronts, and they look to visual materials to facilitate this. It’s proven: blogs with high-quality, original images rank better, get more attention, and earn more shares than those without. And with over 70 million blogs going out on WordPress each month, you can’t afford to stop and invest in real methods to stand out. One great method to use to stand out in your blogging is to invest in custom, high-quality graphics created to match your brand and blog topic. An eye-tracking statistic by Springer International Publishing has said that people following a set of directions (which is common to long-form blogs) respond 323% better with illustrations included along the way! This leaves one big question, though… How, exactly, do you go about creating “high-quality, shareable, original images?” What does that even mean? Here’s your complete guide. [bctt tweet=”Learn all about how to create themed, share-worthy, on-point blog images in our guide ?#blogging” username=”ExpWriters”] The Ultimate Guide on How to Create Your Best Blog Images Ever: First, The Importance of Visuals in Your Blogs 37% of marketers report that visual marketing is the single most important form of content for their business, second only to blogging. With this in mind, consider what happens when you combine the two! Visuals have always been a critical form of marketing. In addition to the fact that people are more likely to remember what they see than they are what they read or hear, content with images has a long history of performing better in search results and with shares on social media platforms. And, BuzzSumo once reported that blog posts with images every 75-100 words earned twice as many shares on social media as posts with few or no images! Adding images to your blogs is more important today than ever before. But, here’s where our guide comes in. It is not enough, folks, to simply slap a stock photo into your WordPress blog and call it a day. Stop right there. You’ve got to go the extra mile and create high-quality, custom images that provide relevance for your users, and context for your content. And if you use stock photos in the process, use them well. That’s what we’re here to talk about. How to Create Your Best Blog Images (7 Steps to Follow) Learning how to create or delegate the creation of blog images that are highly effective is a process. We’ve got a few key tips to help you get off to a great start. 1. Focus on Themed Images Here at Express Writers, we believe deeply in creating authentic, beautiful, and themed images for our blog. We invest hundreds of dollars monthly with an in-house designer that’s been on staff for years to create these custom graphic assets. We create custom themed blog images in our posts on The Write Blog that follow this set of criteria: We have 5 image assets created per blog: a feature header, an ‘inset’ that is easy to share on social media, a matching CTA that references our services, and then specific sized images for Pinterest and Instagram) We follow three bucket areas of approved styles for our designer to create, and specify which one when sending her the request: Custom designs are always preferred, like the one of the artist painting a photo on this blog you’re reading. Our designer hand-draws these and then creates them in Adobe Illustrator. If a stock photo is used, it’s created with an ‘overlay’ of colors in our brand palette. See this blog for an example. If we’re referencing events or talks that I gave, we provide images that our designer uses in blog headers. See this example. Here’s another one from CMWorld. I use my iPhone to take these photos. A cutout of me for my YouTube video recap blog header sets Clear Express Writers’ palette colors (sometimes we go off-grid from the main colors, but it’s always complementary) Check out some of our examples from the blog roll: See how engaging this is, vs. a typical stock photo structure? We won’t name names, but this is from a leading content marketer’s blog. Another good brand that follows a ‘themed’ blog image look has twelveskip.com. While most people imagine some hokey holiday thing when they think of “themed images,” the reality is much different. Themed images are actually a series of images that fall into a specific design structure. Of course, this design structure varies from company to company, but it’s always predictable, reliable, and recognizable. This serves a critical purpose. By making your blog content more recognizable to your consumers, themed images help promote brand recognition and develop a consistent branding presence. If you’re going to create themed images, keep things like your company’s color scheme, typeface, and voice in mind as you work through the process. 2. Hire a Designer While platforms like Canva have made it easy to create your own graphic content, it remains a difficult and time-consuming task for people who don’t do it frequently. If you, like so many marketers, have your hands full with other responsibilities, consider hiring a professional designer to create your images for you. Not only will you get a large batch of high-quality images all at once, but you’ll save the time you would have otherwise spent struggling to create them. This time can then be applied to more productive business pursuits that help grow your company and your social presence. Not sure where to find a designer? You can go through a content agency (Express Writers offers custom image design for social media and blogs!) or work on finding a freelancer on your own. 3. Develop a Format Regardless of whether you choose to design the images on your … Read more

What Blog Topics Get the Most Shares & Reads? A Data Driven Answer

January 1, 2021May 31, 2017 by Adam Oakley

You’ve listened to the data. You’re consistently writing great long-form content that’s supposed to be generating plenty of shares and traffic for your blog. But, for some reason, it’s not working. Over and over again, you’re finding that a large majority of your content generates minimal levels of social engagement. You’re not alone. After taking a look at over 1 million blog posts, the team at OkDork found that 89% of posts have less than 100 social shares. Yikes. (Remember the post I wrote a while back: social shares are not your best ROI tracker?) But why is this? And what can you do to make sure that more than 1 out of 10 of your posts generate 100+ social shares? It all starts with choosing the right blog topics. Marketing expert Brandon Gaille created a useful infographic that outlines the hottest blog topics by popularity and revenue. According to his research, the top 10 blog topics include: As we move through this article, we’re going to use data and examples to show you which of the above topics can help you get the most shares and reads. We’ll also take a look at some other topics that are proven to perform well. Let’s get started. The Hottest Blog Topics Today: 5 Topics That Attract Readers & Shares 1. Saving Time People love to read and hear about what they can do to save time. In fact, they love to hear about it so much that they’re willing to spend a whole lot of their time reading and sharing content on the topic. Take a look at BuzzSumo statistics for these two productivity based posts: While both articles are fairly basic, the headline promises to readers that they’ll be able to save “tons” or “loads” of time. And, since they’re able to deliver on that promise, they both generated over 450k social shares. Writer and speaker Laura Vanderkam leveraged the power of talking about time management in her TED talk, How to Gain Control of Your Free Time. The talk has generated almost 4 million views to date and has proved vital in helping Vanderkam grow her personal brand. People naturally want to be better at time management. If you’re able to find ways to help your audience become more productive, they’ll reward you with shares and reads. 2. Health & Fitness Just like time management, health and fitness shines in topic popularity because it’s something that everyone wants to be better at. When BuzzSumo created a list of the most viral content of 2016, three of the top 10 articles were in the health and fitness niche. This article, about healthy and portable high-protein snacks, generated over 2 million social shares. And this article, about the top 10 ab exercises, generated almost 2 million as well. Now, depending on your audience, talking about health may seem like an odd thing to do. For example, if you’re a financial consultant, writing about ab exercises isn’t going to yield the results that it will for a blog that already writes in that niche. What you can do, however, is generate health topics that are relevant to your target audience and the unique situations that they face in their daily life. In the financial consultant example, you could write an article for business owners about how consistent exercise contributes to increased productivity (which, in turn, contributes to wealth). And, if you can pull it off, there is clear evidence that people will share and read your content. 3. Money More time, better health, and more money. Hopefully you’re catching on to the trend. The blog topics that perform best are the things that people want most in life. The Penny Hoarder has generated tons of loyal fans by providing readers with advice on how to make and save money. Here’s an example of one of their most successful money based articles: The article isn’t overly in-depth, but it does provide brief information for readers on how to earn extra money. And that’s not the only article they’ve written on the topic that has yielded great results. Over the last 12 months, three of the top four articles around the term ‘making money’ were created by their writers. With social shares above 173k for each article, it’s safe to say that they have a pretty firm handle on what their readers want to hear about. It’s also safe to say that writing about money, and how to save and/or make it, is a great way to generate the type of interest that produces social shares and visitors. 4. Happiness and Getting What You Want Out of Life Want to be happy? Of course you do. And so does everyone else. That’s why content related to happiness, and achieving it, gets shared so much. Take a look at these six pieces of happiness-related content that have all been shared over 95,000 times to date. As we look at these BuzzSumo results, it’s also important to note the platforms where the content is being shared. The written articles about happiness were most likely to receive a majority of their shares on Facebook. The content that features quotes, however, received over 95k shares on Pinterest but only 88 on Facebook. As we move along in this article, we’ll dive deeper into the importance of considering the platform when deciding on a blog topic. 5. Travel Travel content doesn’t have the share power that the above topics do, but it can certainly produce solid numbers when the topic is implemented into your content strategy correctly. Not everyone is an adventurer. But as science tells us, there are quite a few people who are born to travel. And there are a lot of content creators generating massive shares from taking advantage of this. Take these articles for example: As you can see, Facebook is where the majority of shares are being seen for this topic. Pinterest is another platform where travel content works well, especially when it’s posted alongside … Read more

The Business Owner’s Guide: How to Work With Blog Writers to Create & Publish High-ROI Brand Content

June 19, 2024May 17, 2017 by Adam Oakley

You’ve seen the data. You know that content marketing adopters have conversion rates that are nearly 6x higher than non-adopters. You’re finally ready to take the plunge and focus on content marketing as a key strategy in your lead generation arsenal. But then it hits you. How are you going to produce all this content? HubSpot is telling you that, in order to optimize your efforts, you need to publish 16+ blog posts per month. “16 per month?!? My team and I can’t produce that many high quality blogs per month!” Fortunately, you don’t have to go at it alone. The proven effectiveness of content marketing has helped to create tens of thousands of capable blog writers that you can handle much of the work for you. You just need to know how to efficiently find and work with them. And, through this post, we’re going to teach you how to do it. Let’s get started. The Business Owner’s Guide: How to Work With Blog Writers to Create & Publish High-ROI Content Let’s start at the fundamentals: outlining your writing standards. 1. Creating Writing Standards to Communicate to Writers If you have a blog, then you probably already have some type of vague writing standards in place. And while your current standards can be used, they will almost certainly need to be expanded upon now that you’ve decided to outsource your writing. Your standards set the stage for how you will communicate, hire, and work with your blog writers. Establishing the Goal of Your Blog The first thing you’ll need to do is to clearly establish the goal of your blog so it can be communicated to the writers you work with. HuffPost contributor Danny Wong provides a few options. Some of them include: Tell your brand’s story Express your brand’s identity Build an email list Attract top industry talent Build credibility Become an authority figure in your industry Connect personally with customers and fans Capture media attention Facilitate word-of-mouth Create a competitive advantage After browsing this list, you’re probably wondering why you can’t just focus on all of these goals. The simple answer is…because having too many goals and priorities doesn’t work. As Harvard Business Review contributors Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi have said, your business needs to stop chasing too many priorities. According to a survey they conducted, having fewer strategic priorities can actually lead to higher revenue growth for your business. If you’re determined to chase multiple goals, make sure they work together. For instance, your goal can be that you want to build your email list while connecting with fans and facilitating word-of-mouth marketing. Or, it can be to build credibility and become an authority figure in your industry in order to create a competitive advantage. Each example has three goals that work together. Hone your focus and create goals that you can clearly communicate to your writers. It will make working with blog writers a much smoother process. Helping Writers Create Amazing Content You know that creating amazing content is essential to high ROI content marketing. You may even know how to do it. Don’t assume, however, that the writers you’re working with automatically follow the same rules of creating great content that you do. If you’re looking for a checklist to provide to your writers, KissMetrics Director of Marketing Sean Marks created a great one. It includes nine ingredients. They are: Make sure the content is original Focus on creating a strong headline Make the content actionable Provide answers to reader’s questions Include accurate reporting and sourcing of information Make the content engaging Communicate through visuals Eliminate fluff and get to the point Update the blog regularly Your outsourced writers will be responsible for producing content that includes the top eight ingredients. You and your team will be responsible for the last one. Determining Content Length for Writers While it will obviously be much easier to get to 16 blog posts per month if they’re of the 400-500 word variety, the argument for long-form content is too convincing to ignore. If you want to achieve your blog goals, ranking for targeted keywords on search engines is the ticket to getting there. And if you want your content to rank on search engines, long form content is the way to go. Just take a look at this illustration produced by SerpIQ: Sure, it’s going to be more expensive to outsource long form content than it is to do the same for 500-word articles. As you can see, however, the ROI of long form content is significantly higher. And isn’t the point of marketing to achieve the highest ROI possible? Breaking it Down At this point, you should have a solid understanding of what you want your writing standards to look like. Now you just need to communicate them to your writers. Here’s a quick example of what you can tell them: Focus on the goal of our blog Utilize the ingredients of creating amazing content Make sure the post is long form (1,500-3,000 words) 2. How to Hire the Perfect Writers for Your Blog Your writing standards help create an overview of the type of writers that you want and need for your blog. Your job now is to seek out writers that have already proven capable of following the standards that you have established. This can, for the most part, be done in one of two ways; hire a freelancer or work with a writing agency. Freelancers vs. Writing Agencies Ahh, the great debate. Should you hire freelancers or go with a writing agency? And while there are many advantages and disadvantages to both choices, your decision should always come down to the value provided. Let’s break down the process of working with each so you can make the best possible decision for your business. Working With a Freelancer The typical process for hiring a freelancer involves a few steps. They include: Find a freelance job posting site. Upwork, Freelancer.com, Textbroker, and even Craigslist … Read more

The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Blog & a Regular Posting Schedule

June 19, 2024May 10, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Writing a blog can be difficult, especially for busy, nonstop marketers and agency owners. We know it – trust me! With blogging as a #1 means of earning our traffic and revenue, we sympathize. It’s never been easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding to maintain a business blog and write consistently. To do it consistently, and to do it well, you need a process. Your process serves as your guidepost for making sure you never just sit stuck, wondering what to do next. The goal of this guide is to show you that process and give you a in-depth bird’s eye view of everything you need to write a blog and do it consistently. Then, we’ll dive into the nitty-gritty of how, when, where and what when it comes to impactful blog writing. Ready? [bctt tweet=”Get a bird’s eye view of everything you need to write a blog for your business, and do it consistently. ??” username=”ExpWriters”] The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Blog & a Regular Posting Schedule: 7 Step-List Know the Foundations of Writing a Blog that Matters The Golden Rule in Writing Blogs How Long Should Your Content Be? 4 Steps for Creating Compelling Headlines That Click With Your Audience 6 Steps for Writing a Blog and Doing it Consistently Self Editing Like a Pro, Even If You Aren’t One (Infographic) How to Come Up with Blog Ideas (Infographic) Let’s dive in! Know Your Foundations: Writing a Blog Post That Matters Here’s a quote to inspire you (Chuck Close): Just like anything else, the blog writing process starts with a foundation. Without this foundation, everything else becomes confusing and inefficient. With it, you can regularly create great content that your readers will love. The foundation involves three things: The “Golden Rule.” Write for ONE reader. Determine Content Length. Focus on creating the right content. Create a Strong Headline. Intrigue your ONE reader. [bctt tweet=”The foundation of #writing a great blog post: write for 1 reader, determine length, create a strong headline. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] Let’s dive into these a little deeper. 1. Foundation: The “Golden Rule” The “Golden Rule” of writing a blog is simple; write for ONE reader. The hope would be that you already have a good idea of who your ONE reader is. Hopefully you also have a good idea of where they are, what problems they’re having, and how they communicate. Entire books and long form guides have been written on defining, finding, and targeting your ONE reader (also called target audience, target market, etc.) You should read them. If you don’t have time for that, Forbes has a great evergreen piece on decoding your target audience. Don’t fall into the trap of attempting to write for a viral audience. As Forbes contributor AJ Agrawal points out, ‘Go Viral’ is not a smart marketing strategy. Since most viral content is based on trends, it’s not evergreen and therefore has an exceptionally short shelf-life. That makes it a bad investment. Avoid the masses and follow the “Golden Rule” by writing for ONE reader. It’s the only strategy that has long term value for your blog. 2. Foundation: How Long Should Your Content Be? Google the above question and you’ll find that there are over 179 million answers telling you how long your content should be. Everyone who’s anyone has tried their hand at answering this question – it’s clearly one of the biggest debates among content marketers across the web. I’ll say that long-form has tremendous benefits. I’ve created an argument for long-form content here: in all reality, it does the best for SEO purposes. That’s also why I launched authority content at Express Writers last year. But along with realizing the benefits of long, authoritative content, you want to think most about how to do the right content. Less of the wrong, high-volume, no return content: more of the right content. Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, has a great statement on this point. He says: to focus on creating more of the right content. What does the right content accomplish? Fishkin outlines four things: The right content serves visitor’s intent by answering their questions and helping them complete their goals. The right content delivers an easy, pleasurable, accessible experience on every device and every browser. The right content gets the right information and experience to visitors FAST. The right content does all of the above better than any of the competitors in the space. But that’s all well and nice to hear what you need to do. How do you actually go about creating the right content when writing a blog? You create your content with these things in mind and use your editing efforts to ensure that they’re followed. 4 Steps for Creating Compelling Headlines That Click With Your Audience While I’m sure you’ve heard it more times than you can count, compelling headlines are crucial if you want readers to actually read your blog. Copywriting legend David Ogilvy is famous for saying: But you know the headline is important. How do you create one that works? Do you use a template that so many others have already used? That’s certainly the easiest option. Do you list a dozen different options and narrow them down one by one until you find a winner? That can work too. Do you include a number or ask a question? Sure, go for it. The truth is, there isn’t a stand-alone strategy that works best for creating compelling headlines when writing a blog. What is a given, however, is that you must identify who your one reader is and you build your headline around what would intrigue them to read on. How to Actually Create the Headline While your headline will differ depending on your ONE reader, there is a simple formula that you can use to short-line the process. After all, writing a blog is hard enough. You don’t want to spend five hours coming up with an intriguing headline. Jeff Goins, founder and owner of the popular … Read more

How to Blog for a Photography Business: An Essential Guide

December 31, 2020March 29, 2017 by Adam Oakley

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But that doesn’t mean that photography businesses get off the hook when it comes to content marketing. 😉 Today, everyone that has a business presence needs to blog. Blogging is essential in the current digital landscape, and photographers have a unique opportunity to harness the power of blogging for their benefit and online reach will fall behind. Fortunately, you can take proactive steps to learn how to blog for a photography business successfully and enjoy a more lucrative business, as a result. Here’s how. How to Blog for a Photography Business: Why Should I Blog? If you’re thinking, “Come on. I run a photography business! Why does blogging matter to me?” you’re not alone. Today, lots of companies are confused about how and why blogging has become so critical to a good online presence. The answer, however, is simple: blogging is the most efficient way to communicate with customers online, right now. What’s more, it’s seriously lucrative. Here are a few quick stats about how blogging impacts your ROI and bottom line, from Impact Branding and Design: Websites that blog have an average of 434% more indexed pages than websites that don’t blog. 47% of customers view 3-5 pieces of content before ever talking to a salesperson. Companies that prioritize blogging are 13x as likely as their competitors to enjoy a positive ROI. Compared to outbound leads, which have a close rate of 1.7%, inbound and blogging-focused leads have a close rate of 14.6%. Businesses that blog earn 97% more inbound links to their site. As many as 80% of customers ignore the paid ads at the top of Google’s results (this is a BIG deal for photo businesses!) and only focus on organic results. Blogs are currently the web’s 5th most trusted source of online information. We ourselves at Express Writers rely on consistent content creation to generate our inbound leads. (Here’s a case study on that.) As you can see, effective blogging has a massive impact not only on your company’s visibility on the web but also on the way people perceive your brand. If you’re bypassing blogging for paid advertising or (worse) no digital strategy at all, you’re missing out! How to Blog for a Photography Business: An Example of Success Jasmine Star is a great example of a Google success as a photography blogger. She writes a lot of posts and even offers tips that appeal to a typical photography buyer, but aren’t necessarily photography related. Her target clientele is marketers and those who need beautiful professional photography, and she blogs in a wide sphere of topics that will get the attention of her target clientele. How to Get Your Social Media Posts Seen By More People is one of her blog topics, for example. Are you sitting down for this? Her blog ranks in the top 3-4 organic results of Google for the highly competitive keyword photography blog. Jasmine’s consistent, awesome blogging has won her a top spot in Google’s organic results. And for a HUGE keyword. To find out just how huge, I took that keyword to my favorite SEO tool, KWFinder, and found that this keyword brings in 22,200 monthly visitors. Jasmine’s blog gets an estimated large chunk of that volume. Keep in mind this is traffic fueled by Jasmine’s blog, fully organic, without a paid advertisement. She gained this incredible keyword spot solely through her blogging chops! Take inspiration: your one time investment per blog, as long as it’s quality and matches what your readers would expect to read (and will love and share), can last for years! 5 Reasons Blogging Matters for Photographers, Specifically There are more reasons than the tremendous value in SEO traffic, although that’s pretty huge alone. While it’s true that blogging is critical for all brands, everywhere, it has some unique benefits for photographers. Let’s break it down: 1. Blogging Lets You Show Your Customers Who You Are For people outside the photography business, it might seem like all photographers are the same. Of course, you know this isn’t true! While all photographers take pictures, each has their own individual style, focus, and strengths. Luckily, blogging helps you showcase these. By using a blog, you can show your customers what’s important to you and what you value as a professional. This, in turn, helps you connect with the most valuable, relevant clients and build a sense of recognition on the web. 2. Blogging Allows You To Showcase Your Work Today, it can be tough for working photographers to find a way to display their recent photographs. After all, few photographers have physical galleries, and, even the ones who do don’t get tons of foot traffic to them. Fortunately, blogging solves this problem by giving you a centralized location to display your newest work and update your customers. This helps you keep your portfolio fresh and ensures that your clients always see your latest and best images. 3. Blogging Boosts Your SEO in a Way Portfolio Sites Never Could Some photographers address the issue listed in the point above by creating an online portfolio. And while this is a smart idea, it’s not a super effective approach when it comes to SEO. The reason being that portfolio sites don’t do much in the way of including keywords, offering indexable pages, or providing valuable, customer-focused content. They just exist. They seldom get lots of traffic, and they certainly don’t do much to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). Blogs, on the other hand, are much more symbiotic – as we saw in Jasmine’s example. Designed to allow you to communicate directly with customers, blogs make it easy to target relevant keywords, keep your content fresh, and answer the biggest questions your customers have about your services, different photographic methods, and the industry as a whole. 4. Blogging Makes Your Content Shareable Imagine this: you shoot a wedding or maternity shoot. You post the photos on your blog and share them on social media (with your customers’ permission, of course). The customer sees them, loves them, and shares the … Read more

Hook ‘Em: How to Write a Killer Blog Intro

December 31, 2020March 28, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Eight seconds. According to Time, that’s how long the average human’s attention span is these days. For content marketers, that means grabbing someone’s attention is a lot of work and you have less time than ever to do it. This requires more than a little bit of strategic thinking. How do you claim your readers’ attention? Is it even possible? The truth is, you still have the chance to do it, but that chance is slimmer than ever. It all comes down to your introduction and the first few sentences. But no pressure! 😉 To help you craft that picture-perfect intro, here’s everything you need to know about crafting killer blog intros in the modern world. Why Are Your Blog Intros So Important? In a world of rapidly shrinking attention spans, the intro serves a critical purpose: it hooks the reader like bait hooks a hungry fish. Today, people are accustomed to making split-second decisions about people, places, topics, and yes, online content. They swipe right or left, so to speak, without giving much thought to anything beyond how the thing in question makes them feel at first glance. This can easily be bad news for your online content because it means that anything that doesn’t jump off the page as interesting, exciting, funny, or relevant is liable to get slashed. What’s more, your intros are some of the most high-visibility pieces of your content. While most people will at least glance at your intro, not everyone will take the time to read your entire body copy, which means that the intro is the perfect and one of the few places to grab those readers you so desperately want. Finally, the intro sets the tone for the rest of your content. If it’s boring, everything else is likely to follow suit. If it’s exciting and compelling, you can bet the rest of the content will be, too. By using your intro to show your readers you understand them and want to provide material they love, you can boost their confidence in you while also branding yourself as an engaging and worthwhile writer. Even a strong headline isn’t enough to do this. Many a blog had a strong headline and a weak intro and lost readers as a result. The Death of the Weak Word Writing a compelling lede is a lot like writing an impactful haiku or a great tweet: it takes technique. One of the most essential techniques you can learn to overhaul your introduction is how to kill weak words. Source: Neil Patel While this seems simple, it’s the foundation of great opening paragraphs. Think about it: if your intros are filled with weak, flabby words, they won’t be impactful, and if they’re not impactful, your readers won’t stick around. For your introductions to succeed, weak words need to be chopped out and replaced with more exciting and emotive alternatives. Thanks in large part to the dismal nature of the human attention span and the fact that introductions can’t, by nature, ramble on forever, there isn’t a lot of room to include bulky, pointless, or weak words. This means that killing them is essential. At the end of the day, learning how to trim the fat in your writing, and especially in your introduction, is the only way to create strong content that reflects well on your brand. Include weak words, and you’ll sink, cut them, and you’ll float to the top of your readers’ minds. Example of a Strong Vs. Weak Blog Intro Let’s put a strong blog intro vs. weak side by side to truly impact you on why studying how to write a great blog intro is so very crucial. Can you spot which one is “strong” as you review these two blog intros, pulled from the web? First example: Second example: The first was from GoDotMedia, the second from SmartBlogger.com. Can you see at a glance which one you personally like better? It probably took you less than 8 seconds to make that decision. At a glance, there is one that sticks out far more powerfully. Let’s explore how you can write powerful intros for your blogs, all the time, without fail. Ready? How to Write Killer Blog Intros 101: 10 Fundamental Tips for Greatness Writing great blog intros is a little bit like becoming a weightlifter – you have to work up to it and learn the right steps along the way. Here are ten foolproof tricks to get you there. 1. Embrace The Process Of Self-Editing Quick: what’s your favorite novel? Okay, now how many drafts of that book do you think its author penned? When it comes to great writing, self-editing is essential. Even the best writer needs to go back through his or her writing, again and again, to ensure it shines, and anyone who doesn’t embrace this process is likely to fall short. Hemingway is famous for having said “I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times…the first draft of anything is s&*t.” With this in mind, don’t expect the first version of your introduction to also be the last version of your headline. To succeed in this business, you must master the process of self-editing, especially when it comes to your most critical piece of content – the first few paragraphs. 2. Practice, Practice, Practice Great introductions are formulaic, which is both good and bad news. It’s good because formulas are, by definition, things that can be memorized and learned. It’s bad because it means you’ll have to put in the work required to master it. Luckily, practicing your introduction writing skills and learning which tricks help churn out the best ones is something everyone can master. 3. Minimize Modifiers Modifiers: “really,” “very,” and “literally” are “fluff” These are words that don’t belong in your introductions, or anywhere in your content! The more you can cut these out, the more impactful your headlines will be. Instead of using these low-impact filler words, use a replacement verb that’s more powerful and compelling than … Read more