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.
Find a freelance job posting site. Upwork, Freelancer.com, Textbroker, and even Craigslist are generally considered the most popular options.
Post your project. Outline what the job entails and what skills are needed to complete it.
Choose the best freelancer for the job. This can be based on their past work, their reputation, or after their completion of a test project.
Freelancer is offered project and completes work. Details of project are provided and freelancer successfully completes it.
You receive work and pay freelancer. Work is delivered on time and freelancer is paid.
Easy, right? Yeah, but if you’ve ever worked with freelancers, you’re probably laughing at this.
The thing is, steps 3-5 almost never go according to plan.
If you work with freelancers long enough, you’ll find that misleading portfolios, missed deadlines, and subpar content are more the norm than the exception.
That creates a whole lot of time and energy wasted.
Working With Writing Agencies
Working with writing agencies is a whole different story.
Interestingly enough, a lot of writing agencies are created by successful freelancers that couldn’t handle all of the work that was coming their way.
That’s exactly how Express Writers got its start.
You’ll also find that most successful agencies have a simple yet effective process for working with clients.
At EW, our process looks like this:
As far as the actual content, it involves six stages.
They include:
Your Input. Your project starts when you send us your relevant project details.
Assigning. Our Content Manager assigns your project to the writer that best fits your topic, industry, and content type.
Creating. Our writer, along with the Content Manager, editorial team, and designer, completes the project.
Editing. Our editorial staff reviews the content using a 5-point quality process that we developed in-house.
Additional Creation. This step varies depending on what type of content you’ve purchased.
Your Review. Content is uploaded for your review and you’re granted up to two free revisions within 20 days of receiving the content.
While this is how we work, it’s fairly common for most agencies to follow a similar process.
The Advantages of Working With a Writing Agency
At the end of the day, the major advantage to working with a writing agency is that we eliminate your risk.
We take care of the hiring process and make sure that the writers handling your project are qualified to deliver the best possible work.
We make sure that you don’t have to worry about missed deadlines or poor quality content and have provisions in place to protect you if this does happen.
Best of all, we make sure that you receive great content that will deliver ROI for your business.
While I’m not saying that you can’t find a freelancer that can do the same, I am saying that it will take a lot more time and energy to do so.
With the time saved and ROI produced, it’s hard to argue against the value that agencies provide when compared to freelancers.
3. Using Your Content Calendar to Guide Your Hiring Process
Hopefully you’ve already gone through the process of creating a content calendar that outlines what type of content you need to produce and when it will be published.
If you haven’t, you’ll want to get on that as soon as possible.
Your content calendar, also known as an editorial calendar, doesn’t have to be too complex. Here’s an example of a simple one created through Excel:
If you’re looking for something more in-depth, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you put together a solid content calendar in just a few minutes.
Regardless of the method you choose, the important thing is that you use it to plan your content ahead of time so you know when you’ll need to outsource the writing.
How Far Ahead Should You Plan Your Content?
This is where things get tricky. It’s almost impossible to identify a timeline that works for every business.
A lot of larger blogs prefer to plan their content at least six months into the future. Others tend to go with a monthly calendar that they add onto weekly.
As much as I hate to say this, it’s impossible to provide a one-size-fits-all answer here.
If you’re unsure of where to even begin, I would suggest starting by outlining your content for the next month. Then, every week, pick a day to plan out another week of content.
So long as you’re able to consistently carve out a day every week for future plans, this process should work just fine.
Identifying Who Will Write Your Content
So you’ve got your content topics and publishing dates lined up.
Now it’s time to plan out who will actually complete the writing.
This is a fairly simple process.
Here is an example of how the team at Shape and Sound does it in their content calendar:
As you can see, they create three pieces of content for each topic. Each type of content has an author listed.
By doing this, they know exactly who is accountable for each piece of content.
Since you need to outsource some or all of your writing, you would simply plug in the freelancer or writing agency responsible for the work.
Like I said, simple stuff.
By having your content calendar, and the author section, filled out at least a month in advance, working with writers will be a much smoother process.
Creating and Handling Deadlines
When creating your deadlines for the freelancers and agencies that you work with, it’s always a good idea to set a deadline that is at least a week in advance of when it will be published.
This helps you avoid many of the issues caused by missed deadlines. It also helps ensure you have time to revise poor quality work or, if needed, hire another writer to rewrite the content entirely.
In addition to protecting yourself by setting your deadline a week ahead, you’ll also want to set a policy for what happens when work is delivered late.
Most professional freelancers and agencies will offer a discount when this happens (20-50% is common).
In order to protect their reputation, some will even complete the project for free.
There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to handle deadlines. The important thing is that there is a clear policy established between both you and the writer before work begins.
4. How Much Should You Pay Writers?
This is easily one of the biggest questions in the content marketing world. If you’re like most businesses, you have absolutely no idea how much to pay your outsourced writers.
To identify how much you’ll have to budget, there are a few basic factors that you’ll need to consider. They include:
Length of content. We’ve already identified that long-form content produces optimal ROI.
Depth of content. Are you looking for a beginner, intermediate, pro, or expert writer?
Visuals or no visuals. Content with visuals is optimal, but it will come at a higher price.
How quickly the content needs to be delivered. Rushed content will come at a premium.
While there are many other factors, most freelancers and agencies create their prices after considering these four things.
For a general list of the prices you can expect to pay, take a look at this infographic:
On the expert level for this chart, you’re looking at $400+ per email.
Now you’re probably looking at this and saying, “I can’t afford those rates!”
And fortunately, you don’t have to. You can still get amazing content delivered by professionals at rates significantly lower than $.15-.50 per word.
You just have to know where to look.
Our writing levels include expert and authority, and we’re reasonably priced! Check out our pricing page here.
A Word of Caution
Before we start diving further into what you should expect to pay writers, it should be noted that the old saying, “you get what you pay for,” is as true in writing as it is everywhere else.
If you make your way over to a freelance platform like UpWork, you’ll quickly find that there are many job postings that look like this:
Yes, you can find freelancers that will write your content for $.01/word.
99 times out of 100, however, the content they deliver will be low quality content that’s littered with grammar mistakes.
You don’t want that for your brand.
How Much Do We Charge?
At Express Writers, we’ve created a Content Shop detailing how much every piece of content that we produce costs.
To ensure we offer options that fit the needs of our clients, we offer two options; general copywriting and expert copywriting.
For a long-form article (1,500-2,000 words) by a general copywriter, you’re looking at a price tag of $140.
For that same article by an industry expert, you’ll be paying $300.
So, for high quality content that delivers optimal ROI, you’ll be paying $.10-.20 per word.
The General Consensus
In the end, if you want to maximize the ROI of your content marketing efforts, you should expect to budget at least $.10/word.
While you can find freelancers that will produce content at a much lower rate, be aware of the risk involved when compared to the detailed processes and deadline provisions provided by a writing agency.
5. Maintaining Communication Throughout the Process
Whenever you’re outsourcing content, communication is absolutely vital to the success of the project.
This is true whether you decide to work with a freelancer or writing agency.
As Tamila McDonald, our Client Engagement Specialist, says:
Successful communication starts with providing clear instructions to your writer about exactly what you want your content to accomplish.
You won’t find too many writers that complain about detailed instructions.
You will, however, find plenty that become frustrated when instructions are too brief or general.
On the writer side, be wary of writers that don’t respond to update requests or questions within 24 hours. This is especially common when dealing with writers on freelancer platforms.
If the communication isn’t there, it may be time to move on.
6. Focusing on the Long Term
You’re hopefully already aware that success in content marketing doesn’t happen overnight.
It takes week after week of consistently producing high quality content.
But when can you expect your content marketing efforts to finally bear fruit?
Well, as Neil Patel tells us, “At the beginning, you’ll grow slowly and will need to add value drops to your content creation pot. Once your pot is filled considerably, you’ll start seeing the enormous benefits of content marketing.”
This visual by HubSpot shows us that, for most companies, inbound traffic grows fairly slow in the beginning:
Once these businesses hit the 300 blog post mark, however, their traffic begins to take off.
While it’s unlikely that your blog will follow this exact pattern, it illustrates the fact that it’s important to focus on the long term.
Proof that Your Long Term Commitment Will Pay Off
Business owners like Neil Patel have used content marketing to become authorities in their industry and build multi-million dollar businesses from scratch.
At Express Writers, we’ve built a million dollar agency by using content as our only marketing strategy.
Both of us have used outsourced writers to help us get to where we are today. And you can do the exact same thing with your business.
Building Long-Term Relationships With Writers
As you begin outsourcing your content, you’ll find that there are some writers that just get it.
They’re consistently on point with following your instructions and never fail to produce engaging content.
When you find these writers, do everything you can to keep them on board.
Work to develop long term relationships with writers that consistently prove themselves to you. You’ll be saving yourself a whole lot of time and stress in the process.
Outsource Your Writing and Take Your Content Marketing to the Next Level
You now have everything you need to move forward and use outsourced writers to help you dominate your content marketing efforts.
If you’d like some help along the way, feel free to contact us to hear more about what we can do for you!
A few months ago, I was asked by Express Writers to write about my own journey as a creative copywriter.
It was thrilling. I strive to be honest with others, so I have to say that after a regular schedule of writing content for clients who take my words and use it for their needs, it was exciting to have something with my name on it.
I shared it on Facebook without reserve. My husband shared it with the comment “my wife wrote this.” People liked it, and I was in writer’s heaven.
It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. As a kid, I kept journals and I received high grades on writing assignments. For the last several years, while working with a nonprofit, raising three kids, and going back to school, writing has been at the back of my mind.
I’ve always known I am a writer. “I just need to write.” (Jeff Goins)
Searching for Answers (On Google, Of Course)
If you type “how to get started in copywriting” into a Google search, you will see that there are almost 700,000 search results.
There is a lot of different advice out there, including tips like:
“You can become a well-paid freelance copywriter with NO experience!”
“Get a job in sales to help you prepare.”
“Become a freelance copywriter and earn a 6-figure income working from home.”
While I respect the journeys that others have taken in their writing and the advice they can share, not all of these statements have been true in my own experience with copywriting.
I never had a job in sales. I definitely don’t make a 6-figure income.
And while it is true that you can work your way up to “well paid,” it doesn’t come without at least some experience (and a full pot of coffee, but maybe that’s just me).
Every person who wants to get started in copywriting will be at a different place in life, have a different income requirement, and bring their own skills and experience to the industry.
I would not want anyone to fall for a scheme or believe that this job requires little work for big bucks.
Copywriting is not a get-rich-quick gig.
At the same time, previous experience and/or an education could push you to the higher end of the pay scale in a faster amount of time. Low-end freelance writers can make anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 per year, while those who are more high-end can eventually earn 6 figures.
Moving from Writing Wannabe to Creative Copywriting: How to Get Started
When you are thinking about moving from a writing wannabe to a creative copywriter, you will no doubt have some questions. Whether you are a recent graduate looking to break into the industry, a stay-at-home parent who needs extra income, or you just love writing, there are legitimate opportunities that can work with your schedule and abilities.
Here are some common questions you might have:
1. Is online copywriting the same as general writing?
Copywriting and general writing are two very different types of content. As Search Engine Journal reminds us, the distinction lies in the purpose behind the writing. Copywriting is used for promotion and in marketing, to entertain and draw the audience in so they engage with the company or brand.
Content marketing is backed by an objective, a goal, that is supported by authoritative research in an effort to connect with the readers and sell the idea. It is professional yet warm, engaging yet relevant, and seeks to build trust while also maintaining a conversational tone.
Copywriting can be sarcastic, funny, creative, or focused. It’s used by big and small companies, entrepreneurs, medical professionals, business-to-business (B2B) markets, and just about anyone who needs to promote a brand or message.
2. Do I need to be a fantastic writer to get started in freelance copywriting?
First, writing needs to be, at the very least, something you enjoy. If content writing is something you are seeking out just to have some extra pocket cash, that’s okay, but there needs to be some passion behind it.
Your level of writing experience could be minimal, especially if you are working with a company like Express Writers. When I first signed on, I had written previously on a casual basis, but not as a job. Thankfully, our team of editors has been patient and willing to guide me in the right direction as far as meeting the clients’ needs, etc.
Over time, I have grown to really enjoy long-form blog writing (like this piece) and for those tasks I don’t like so much, I fake it. I research the particular industry and try to put myself in the place of a customer for that particular company. What would he or she be looking for?
This is true for blogs, web page content, and social media posts.
A copywriter will work to create high-quality content or improve the existing content to fit a specific need. So, you do need a basic understanding of proper grammar, proofreading, and sentence structure.
At the end of the day, clients are counting on you to deliver to them a product that they can use. And you will find that the longer you continue to write, the more you will grow and continue to improve.
3. What types of writing should I be familiar with? (Source – by our CEO, Julia McCoy!)
Depending on the position, a copywriter can receive a number of requests from clients with very different objectives.
For example, a startup that is looking to jumpstart their business with powerful social media posts may request your copywriting services at the same time as a restaurant professional wants a website makeover.
Web Content: This textual or visual content appears on websites of all varieties and may include images, video, and page descriptions. Web content should be original, useful, and relevant to the industry for which you are writing.
Here are some content writing examples and tools to reference.
Blogging: This type of writing is best done in long-form, beginning with a powerful introduction and including engaging sub-headers throughout. This is where research becomes important, as well as eye-catching visuals and relevant screenshots.
If you’ve never written blog posts before, take a look at this article.
Social Media: A basic knowledge of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest is a good place to start. Take some time to research what works and what is not as effective. Learn about the best times and days to post. It’s okay in this type of content to have teasers that will entice the reader to click through to the post.
Check out how to craft social media posts in no time flat.
Advertising/Sales Copy: Ad copy can take the form of a clickable advertisement that grabs the reader’s attention and leads them to a specific link. Ad and sales copy is a combination of search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing tactics for a variety of industries.
This article explains a bit more about how to write effective ad copy.
Industry Writing: When you write for a specific industry, there is often a bit of research that needs to be done first; this is especially true if you are not familiar with the topic. Industry writing is tailored for various businesses to share about a brand.
Here is a good post on how to write content for an industry you know nothing about.
Journalism: This type of copywriting involves gathering information, assessing sources, putting together the content, and presenting all of it in a written format. Journalism is a unique type of content creation, especially as our world has moved to delivering more news online.
Here are some journalism examples from a few years back.
Creative Writing: Creative writing can take many forms, including poetry, personal essays, speeches, fictions, and plays. This type of content varies but can be a fun and unique medium for expression in a specific niche.
While every client has different requirements, there are some general guidelines to keep in mind when writing online content.
Titles and headlines need to be strong, and breaking up content with sub-headers helps to separate information so that it’s easy to skim. You can see from the graphic below that readers tend to prefer headlines with numbers and that are addressed to the audience.
The beginning of the content can be formed using the inverted pyramid approach, which presents the most important information first followed by secondary details. This encourages your audience to stick with you until the end.
Practice consistency in each section of content. Vary sentence style, including length and structure, and find a rhythm that fits your voice. This may take some practice, but with time you’ll find your style.
Relevant quotes and statistics have the potential to add authority and fresh voices to your written work, as long as they are used effectively and at the best time.
Sentences should be short, adding clarity to the content. Too wordy, and you’ll lose your audience. Graphs and screenshots can contribute greatly to audience engagement and interest if they are relevant and trustworthy.
5. Can I take inspiration from other online writers?
Absolutely! There are so many expert writers who consistently deliver quality content that is relevant and timely. Check out Neil Patel, Jeff Goins, and Seth Godin, just to name a few.
There will always be those who have gone before us who know more, who have more experience in copywriting, and who will offer us the best tools with which to work.
Follow these experts, read their content, and pay attention to the advice they give. They know what they’re talking about!
Here are some good blogs to follow, even though the writers may vary:
Also, check out this post on the best books to help you learn copywriting.
Connecting with a Content Writing Service
One important factor involved in the process of becoming a copywriter is choosing a company to work with that hires individuals for copywriting. How to get started?
A simple web search will result in many companies who hire copywriters, but you don’t know the people behind the screen. Do they pay fair? Are they realistic with deadlines, expectations, and treatment of their writing team?
When I started with Express Writers back in 2014, it was through a blog writer who had put together her own recommendations for work-from-home solutions. I read through reviews of the company and thought a lot about the decision before applying, and I am very fortunate to be working with this team.
Here are a few places to start when you want to find out more about companies that hire individuals for copywriting:
BloggerLocal has a list of top 10 blog writing services and article content writing services. The site provides valuable information about local businesses and helps to connect people with their local area.
Jeff Bullas put together sites that will pay for content pieces. His experience as a blogger and author has landed him featured pieces in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and with Forbes.
B2C’s list of content writing services includes companies that aspiring writers can contact to see about hiring them. Business 2 Community features thought leadership, articles, and real-life experiences from thousands of contributors who know what they’re talking about.
Would I Be a Good Freelance Writer?
Freelance writing is a bit different. If this is the route you want to take, you will have more freedom to set your own schedule. While the flexibility may be convenient, it also means you won’t get paid for the days or weeks you choose to not work.
If you plan to go into freelance writing with zero experience and you aren’t well-known in the industry, this path may choose to be more challenging. However, if you have built up an audience and you have gained respect, the possibilities here can be endless.
Advice from a Fellow Freelance Writer
When it comes to breaking into the freelance industry, the rapid-fire market research approach may be the best one for you.
Just like you wouldn’t create a restaurant menu and then ask customers what they like eating, it might not make much sense to write a bunch of content that isn’t tailored to a prospective client.
When Danny over at Freelance to Win was looking to get into copywriting, he did research first and found out what paying clients were looking for, then tailored his writing samples around those particular needs.
He reminds us to not dive into a writing job that requires special knowledge about subjects we aren’t familiar with. It may be wiser to start slow so that you don’t get in over your head with work you aren’t able to complete.
By looking at the description of writing jobs first, you can get a picture of what the client needs and then move onto creating a portfolio.
Remember that his opinion is just one of the many you will hear in your journey.
Creating a Minimum Viable Portfolio
No one wants to put sweat into creating a portfolio that doesn’t mean anything, so instead, Danny the freelancer also suggests creating a simpler set of content samples for a client to have.
The writing sample should be simple but not exactly what the client needs.
The writing sample should be short and provide the client with a glimpse of your abilities.
The writing sample should be completed in about a half hours’ time.
Other experts suggest keeping a portfolio of your best copywriting content, always adding to it and adapting as you gain more experience. This, too, can be tailored to the type of job you will want to pursue in the future.
Whether or not you choose to keep a portfolio of your work is a personal preference. Keeping a collection of your best work as you go along could end up being a valuable resource.
Never be afraid to be proud of what you’ve done. While your content may need to go through a refining fire (thank you, editors), it is your work and your efforts are something to be proud of.
To Hone Your Writing Skills, Remember: Practice, Practice, Practice
Experts will tell us that in order to be good at something, we have to practice.
Remember learning to ride a bike? Ever play an instrument? Memorize a long passage or give a speech from memory?
All of those skills take practice, and writing is no different.
It may not be that you keep a journal or blog on a regular basis, although these may help you. At the same time, when writing becomes a daily habit, you will find that you grow in your creativity, your ability to craft high-quality content, and the types of writing you are able to produce.
What Are You Waiting For?
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to copywriting. How you will get started depends on where you are in life during this season, your writing background and skills, and whether or not writing will be your primary income.
The most important step you can take is to just go for it. Use the tools I’ve given you today, read the writings of content experts, and begin to familiarize yourself with the basics of content writing.
Subscribe to our The Write Blog and be inspired by our team of writers; we come from all different backgrounds and levels of experience. And just like you, we were all once asking the same questions you are.
And, join our CEO’s free masterclass, an introduction to her six-week training course where Julia shapes and teaches new content creators to become expert, in-demand content marketers.
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 link to the blog gallery on their social media pages. Friends and family of that client, many of whom have been looking for reputable photography services, see the link and contact you to shoot their events. That’s the best-case scenario, right? When you run a reputable blog and update it frequently, it’s also a very likely one. Blogging makes your content shareable, which is critical for a salient photo business.
5. Blogging Helps You Establish Your Personal Brand
Differentiating yourself from the competition is essential for photographers, and blogging makes it easy. Everything from the layout to the color scheme of the blog can be customized to suit your brand image, not to mention that you have complete control over the voice you use to interact with customers.
How to Blog for a Photography Business: 10 Actionable Tips for Your Photography Blog
If you’re reading this, you’re likely considering blogging for your photography business for the first time. While it can seem intimidating to start your first business blog, it’s not nearly as difficult as it might seem. Just follow these guidelines.
1. Understand Your “Why”
The key to a successful blog is having a reason for doing it. While it’s true that blogging is an essential part of running a modern photography business, it’s also not enough to just have a blog you update only occasionally.
Instead, you need to make a conscious decision about why you’re operating your blog and what you hope to achieve. For example, is your blog going to act as a strategy for recognition, helping your customers recognize your work and your brand where it appears?
Or is your blog a movable portfolio that you’ll update regularly? If you’re like most photographers, the answer will be several things at once.
No matter why you’re operating your blog, though, you need to understand the motivation behind it and what you’re hoping to gain from the blog. This will help direct everything else.
Of course not! For one, not all these people are interested in hiring you, and even the fraction of them who need a photographer won’t hire you for various reasons, ranging from geographical issues to a different preferred style.
One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make in their photography blogs is trying to talk to everyone. In addition to being impossible, it’s tiring to be everything to everyone.
As such, you’ve got to pinpoint your audience.
Who are the model customers who hire you? And how can you speak to them more effectively?
Answering these questions by constructing a target persona is an essential method for starting your blog off strong and stable.
The best photography blogs out there succeed because they’re relevant. For example, a great wedding photographer might blog about how many hours of wedding coverage customers should consider purchasing (most people assume they need less than they do, and a relevant blog about how long everything takes would be helpful).
Photographers that specialize in alternative processes might talk about why cyanotypes are so unique, or how large format cameras play into modern-day photography. Photographers who specialize in newborn and maternity portraits might offer helpful tips for getting your baby to pose on picture day or how to help other siblings join the photos in a constructive and equal way.
The more relevant you can be with your blog post topics, the better. In addition to helping your customers connect with your content, it will also make them want to come back for more.
4. Make Converting Simple
When you start blogging as a new photographer, you want to make it as easy as possible for your blog to draw new customers. Initially, this means making it simple for your customers to convert. For best results, ensure that the blog posts you write have all the information your customers need to feel comfortable and trusting in your brand.
This goes for your website, as well, which should feature everything from your location and contact information to your pricing and testimonials. You’ll also want to find creative ways to incorporate calls-to-action (such as “book your session now” or “Get a quote”) throughout your page. The easier your blog makes it for readers to convert, the better off you’ll be.
5. Be Consistent in Your Blogging
You know what’s worse than no blog at all? A stagnant blog that never gets updated. Not only does this show customers that you don’t care about your content, but it also sends the message that you’re not very good at following through. Instead of falling victim to this dreaded fate, ensure that once you start a blog, you can update it regularly.
While the frequency will depend on you and your goals, it’s wise to update your blog at least once a week, if not more often. Once you’ve found a blogging schedule that works for you, stick with it. This is the only way to earn readers and grow your audience, after all.
6. Integrate With Social
If you’re not integrating your blog with your social media accounts, you’re missing out on a large piece of the puzzle. Today, blogs and social media go together like peanut butter and jelly. Without one, the other can’t reach its full potential.
Every time you write a new blog, share it on your social profiles, as well. Most blogging platforms, like WordPress, for example, offer built-in functionalities that make it easy to share the blog post automatically. As you gain likes and shares on your social profile, you’ll also gain readers on your blog.
7. Save Your Best For The Blog
Thanks to the immediacy of blogs, people often assume they’re a place for half-baked thoughts and hastily rattled off ideas. Not so. In fact, your blog should be the home of your best and brightest content.
With this in mind, ensure that everything you publish on your blog has been vetted thoroughly by your quality-control methods. You want to proofread everything adequately, showcase only your best photos and ensure that the formatting of the blog is perfect before you fire it off.
Don’t ever write and publish anything in one day, if you can avoid it. Instead, start drafts and then hone them until they’re perfect. While it’s true that this takes more time, it’s also true that it will deliver better results in the end. When it comes to blogging for your photography business, it’s always quality over quantity.
8. Keep It Professional
Photography is a very personal profession, and that’s bound to come out on your blog. For best results, though, you want to keep it personal but still professional.
This means always getting permission from your clients to share their photos, using discretion when sharing intimate or private photos, and being careful to protect the identities of the people you mention. Over-sharing isn’t cute in any aspect of business, especially photography. When in doubt, don’t share it.
9. Learn Some SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a critical part of blogging, and learning the fundamentals of it can take your blog from good to great. Ideally, you’ll want to learn how to include target keywords, how to format headlines, meta descriptions and titles, and body content, and how to optimize the images in your post so Google can discover them.
While these sound like complicated steps, they’re not!
Here are a few tips to follow:
Keep Your Paragraphs Short
Paragraphs should be between 2-4 sentences.
Include Keywords Naturally
If you’re targeting “portrait photographer in Boston,” you’ll want to include it in your headline, a sub header or two, and throughout your body copy a few times. Don’t overstuff your content with it, though, or you’ll come off as spammy and cheap.
Optimize Images With Alt Text
When you plug an image into a blog, it’s important to use alt text to help search engines “Read it.” Right now, Google can’t interpret images without alt text, so this is a critical SEO component of ranking well. Here’s an example of what good alt text looks like, from Yoast.
Write like you speak. While you always want to be professional in your blogs, it’s also essential to be natural. The more natural you can be in your writing, the more attractive and approachable you’ll be to readers.
10. Keep your topics fresh
It’s easy to get stale as you blog for your photography business. Fortunately, you can keep your topics fresh by writing about things like your recent work, adventures you or your clients have taken, your personal experiences, and general photography tips, tricks, and questions.
Be sure to keep an ear to your readers to ensure you’re writing about topics they find interesting, and covering the areas they want to read about. For example, topics like “10 Tips to Prepare for Your Engagement Shoot” or “What’s the Right Age for Newborn Pictures?” are both great topics.
Your topics should be narrow enough to match your niche. For example, if you’re a portrait photographer, you might not want to write about which lenses to use for landscape photography.
The more you can narrow your topics and your niche, the more successful your blog will be.
How to Blog for a Photography Business, Made Simple
While blogging for your photography business may seem like a new idea, it’s one of the smartest ways to make your company stand out from the crowd.
Learning how to blog for a photography business is crucial. In addition to labeling you as an authority, boosting your SEO, and making it easier for would-be customers to find you, blogging also helps you hone your skills and expand your offering to clients.
This, in turn, can boost your entire business and help you grow your bottom line in a big way.
For more information about blogging for your photography business, or to find a team of writers who can help you create content you’re proud of, contact Express Writers today! We have photography writers ready to create your blogs, and blogging packages that are completely hands-off.
When you launch a new website, investing in the right content is critical.
In addition to “beautifying” your site with great copy that supports your company’s goals and talks to your audience, good content helps you gain online exposure in the SERP results, rankings, leads, traffic – and boosts your chances of converting new clients.
But which types of content should you invest in, if you’re just starting out?
It can be tough, with questions like do I start a blog, do I create 11 or 50 pages of web copy, launch social media content (and if so, how?), just to name a few. We’re here to help with a guide on ten critical content types for every new site. Keep reading!
Content By The Numbers: 5 Reasons to Invest in Content
First, let’s explore why you should be considering a long-term investment in content marketing if you’re just launching a site.
1. More Than 200 Million People Are Currently Using Ad Blockers.
While this might not seem like it matters much for your site, it means that great content is one of the only ways to access the inboxes and computers of the customers you want to reach.
2. Content Helps To Produce Brand Recall.
In 2015, IBM did a Digital Experience Survey that proved that 56% of content marketers believed that personalized content helped promote a higher engagement rate with customers. The easier your brand is for customers to remember, the easier it will be for you to drive engagement through content.
3. People Spend An Average Of 37 Seconds On Content.
If you want people to spend more time on your website, one of the best ways to do it is to invest in content that makes them feel something. According to Content Marketing Institute, high-quality, relevant content encourages readers to stay on your website longer.
4. Content Marketing Is 62% Less Expensive Than Outbound.
Although many people assume that content is expensive, it’s quite a bit cheaper than traditional advertising and outbound methods. What’s more, it’s also three times as effective.
5. Content Drives Higher Conversion Rates.
When people adopt content for their marketing strategies, they enjoy conversion rates roughly six times as high as those of their competitors.
With these numbers in mind, it’s clear that not only can you not afford to invest in content for your website, but that deciding which content works best with your brand is crucial to overhauling your online marketing strategy.
10 Content Types Every Website Needs
If you’re building a new site, don’t launch it without first ensuring that you have each of these ten types of content:
1. Web Pages
What would a website be without web pages? While many of today’s websites are long-page, one-page sites, it’s still crucial you have some pages for your site. For most companies, an “About Us,” “Contact,” and “Services” page will do, although you may choose to add or subtract pages as you see fit.
Remember that the length of your web pages is an important consideration.
Too long and you risk losing your reader’s attention, especially if you don’t format your pages correctly. Too short, and you risk not providing enough information or detail to be helpful for your readers.
As a general rule, web pages should have at least 300 words of copy on them. While this will be too short to cover most topics, it’s a good benchmark to keep in mind as you start creating the web pages for your new site.
2. Ongoing Blogging
Listen carefully: you need a blog.
Without a blog, your website will not only not perform as well as you’d like it to, but you’ll miss a valuable opportunity to provide your readers with relevance – one of the most coveted and important factors in online marketing.
Although many companies underestimate the importance of a blog, Impact Branding And Design reports that:
Websites with blogs tend to have 434% more indexed pages than their competitors.
What’s more, 47% of customers interact with 3 – 5 pieces of content before they ever talk to a sales rep.
Businesses that publish over 16 blogs/month (4+/weekly) get 3.5x MORE traffic than businesses that publish 0-4 posts.
Wow!
3.5x more traffic than your competitors, just from consistent, volume blogging.
So why are you not already?
Having a library of quality, relevant content can make all the difference between converting a customer and losing them to the sea of other companies vying for their attention. If that weren’t enough to change your mind, B2B marketers that blog regularly earn an average of 67% more leads than marketers who don’t.
Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to integrate a blog with your website. Today, content platforms like WordPress offer built-in blog functionalities that are easy to manage and use, even for beginners. To manage your blog effectively, use its scheduling feature to post consistently and give your readers something to look forward to regularly.
One of our favorite content services is ongoing, consistent blogging maintenance. We write, schedule, create imagery, and publish in our blogging packages.
3. Meta Content
Meta content is an often-overlooked form of online content.
While it doesn’t get as much attention as sexier forms of content like blogs or social media, it serves a crucial role in the online world.
When you Google something, meta content is the snippet of material that appears on the search engine results page or SERPs. Here’s what it looks like:
Meta content works to give you an idea of what information an article contains, and helps you understand what you will learn from a given piece of content.
As such, it’s crucial to get it right. If you don’t know how to write meta content on your own, it’s smart to hire someone who does. When done correctly, meta content will boost your SEO and help improve your click-through rate, both of which can have dramatic and long-lasting impact on the salience on your website
4. Product Descriptions
If you have an e-commerce site where you sell things online, great product descriptions are critical.
Think about it: if a person can’t pick up and touch your product, a product description is the only thing to help them understand the item’s specifications and its value.
To help your product descriptions perform as well as possible, keep them succinct, exciting, detailed, and tailored to your target audience. And to help them rank, use key terms in your product descriptions that are SEO worthy.
Check out this amazing product description from Dollar Shave Club:
When it comes to the “contact us” page, lots of marketers get stuck. Although virtually everybody knows to include a contact form or your contact information here, it can be tough to figure out if you need to add any content, and if so, what type.
Contact pages are no different than any other page on your website, though, and they deserve content crafted with love.
With this in mind, consider hiring a writer to help you craft great “contact us” copy. Think of this page as the ultimate call to action: the more compelling your contact us page is, the more likely people will be to reach out.
6. “About Us” Content
One of the most clicked pages of any website is the “about us” page.
When people navigate to your site, they’re naturally curious about who your brand is, and what you do, and they head to your “about us” page to find out.
It’s essential to make this section of your site as informative and authentic as possible. Stop for just a minute, though; you don’t want to make this sound like every other “about us” page out there. While website content serves the purpose of giving your site some structure, it also helps you brand your company.
As such, it’s important to find ways to imbue your personality into this key page, and ensure that you speak to your reader (and potential client) about your priorities, goals, and objectives as a company. This is a great spot to include some information about your founders, partners, staff, and how you got started as a company.
Take a look at how we do this on our “Who Are We?” page at Express Writers:
We recently did a case study on how much our site conversions improved after we changed our site copy around and included a Values page! Check it out here.
7. Social Media Profiles
Think social media profiles don’t have anything to do with your website? Think again.
When people come to your site, they want to find other ways to interact with you. One of the best ways to learn more about your company is through your social media profiles. This means that when you launch a website, you should have clickable links to your various social profiles in a place where would-be customers can see them.
Before you launch your website, take the time to set up at least a Facebook and Instagram page. Most marketers use more than two social platforms, but the ones you choose to pursue will depend on your brand and personal goals. Keep in mind that you don’t want to over-commit to social media, so you should only establish the profiles that you can maintain. A stagnant profile is much more damaging than a non-existent profile. Once you’ve created your profiles, link them to your blog, so that your followers can get instant updates about all your new posts.
We’ve had new clients find us from our Twitter feed, @ExpWriters, which is managed by a dedicated social media manager. Because of the high quality that she dedicates to writing and sharing content there, the referring traffic have included high-level inbound leads that went straight to purchasing after talking to one of our team members.
Here’s a look at our Twitter feed. You can see that we even join in quite a few Twitter chats, besides maintaining our own:
8. Service Descriptions
No matter what you do, you want to include some information about the services your company offers on your website. Make sure each service description is comprehensive and detailed. Bonus points if you can provide an example of services you’ve provided or jobs you’ve completed in the past.
Although there is some debate about whether you should publish your prices, many experts advocate doing so. This is because publishing your prices makes it easier for customers to get all the information they need the first time they visit your site, which helps make your site more valuable to them.
Besides being upfront with pricing on everything in the Content Shop, we have an overview pricing page. In an industry where very few competitors are transparent, we get consistently good feedback from new leads that can find our rates in a few minutes after landing on our site for the first time.
9. Home Page Content
If you’ve ever sold a house, you know that one of the first things every realtor will advise you to do is improve your home’s curb appeal. The curb appeal is the way that the house looks from the curb, and it’s one of the most important things in the world of real estate.
Think about the homepage copy of your website like the curb appeal of your house: it’s the first thing people see when they pull up. As such, optimizing your home page content is essential. This isn’t a place to skimp.
For an example of excellent homepage content, check out KISSmetrics:
This copy is informative, attractive, easy to read quickly, and it features social proof.
When you write your home page content, strive to strike a balance between being approachable and professional. The text should give readers an immediate idea of who you and your company are, and what they can expect from the rest of your online material.
10. Good Data
One of the most powerful things you can use to convince people about something is data. With this in mind, you might consider including some data about why your service or product is valuable on your website.
For example, if you sell a back brace that helps people heal from back injuries, you might include some statistics about how common back pain is and how support is effective at treating it. These data points should feature prominently on the home page of your site, where they’ll be most visible to your customers
Your New Site Doesn’t Work Without Exceptional Content
Your focus shouldn’t be unequally divided on development. Don’t be that business owner that drops all focus on their copy because “we didn’t think it was necessary.” You can lose every quality lead that’s on your site, due to poor copy.
Think of launching a website is 50% tech (development), and 50% content.
It’s easy for new website owners to get so wrapped up in launching their site that they get sloppy with their copy, but this is a death sentence.
The more professional and cleaned up your site looks when it launches, the easier it will be to get off to the races with your new business or website.
While these forms of content will help make your site feel complete and unique, you’re not done here. Be sure you have an editor and a writer involved, so you’re not missing any critical typos that will make your brand look bad.
Is it time to invest in content for your new website? We’d love to help. Talk to us today!
Most copywriters know exactly what this conversation feels like:
“What do you do?”
“I’m an SEO copywriter!”
“Oh…great! So, what do you do?”
When you say you’re a writer, most people assume you’re an aspiring Hemingway, tapping away at your typewriter in pursuit of the next great American novel.
Unless someone has experience in the digital marketing, content marketing, or online world, few people know what a copywriter does. (Not a copyright-er. I have another post on that.)
That said, though, everyone is familiar with the work of copywriters, whether they know it or not. In a world as marketing-dense as ours, copywriters essentially make the digital web spin. They write the scripts for television commercials, radio ads, mail and email marketing materials, and articles that help people find answers to problems and learn new things.
In other words, copywriters are everywhere!
As such, it’s never been more critical than it is right now to understand how copywriting works, and what a massive role it plays in our modern world.
What Copywriters Are (and What We Aren’t)
First things first: not all copywriters are clones of Don Draper.
Although romantic to imagine, that was way back when. Today, it’s 2017. There’s much less drama, smoking, and drinking in the office in this industry than what you see in the Mad Men series. 😉
That said, however, copywriters today fulfill a vast selection of positions.
Here are just a few of the things that define what copywriters are:
1. Copywriters Write Copy for Various Industries and Specialties
Depending on a copywriter’s unique job description, he or she might create marketing copy for a website or work one-on-one with an SEO company to write their website or create their Facebook posts. In other cases, copywriters write physical text material, like books, pamphlets, and educational sheets. No matter what industry they work in, copywriters work with words daily.
2. Copywriters Work with Other Teams to Create Marketing Copy
In most cases, copywriters work with other specialists, like SEOs and sales teams, to create well-rounded marketing copy that fulfills a broad series of goals.
3. Copywriters Wear Many Hats
A great copywriter is also a part-time marketer, editor, and publisher. While copywriters typically work with teams of editors, these skills are indispensable, and the best copywriters must know how to evaluate their content for quality and figure out what will and will not work for a client.
What today’s copywriters are NOT:
1. Novelists. While copywriters do sometimes create text copy, they’re not developing books that sell as novels. Those are typically ghostwriters or other forms of writers. Instead, copywriters may create ebooks, articles, or white papers.
2. Machines. Good copywriters pay a lot of attention to each piece they create. They don’t just churn out work in a one-size-fits-all manner. Instead, they collaborate closely with teams and managers to build customized material for each client.
3. Outbound Marketers. The wheelhouse of copywriters is to create material that makes people want to connect with a company. They don’t typically push themselves or their content on other people. Instead, they work hard to create content that delights readers and makes them want to interact with a brand.
The following graphic applies very much. 😉
What’s Under the Hood at a Copywriting Agency: What Express Writers Does
Here at Express Writers, we know a thing or two about copywriters. Not only do we hire them – we are them! Before I founded my company, I worked as a copywriter on various freelancing platforms. I landed hundreds of gigs and dozens of clients, and within three months of self-teaching as an online copywriter, I went on to start my agency. (Check out my full story here.)
Today, my agency has a full-service Content Shop with over 40 products:
ALL this content is created by our handpicked copywriters, strategists, and editors, who specialize in different industries, content types, and services.
This gives you a pretty good idea of exactly how diverse copy offerings can get!
What Qualifications do Good Copywriters Have?
The field of copywriters is a very diverse one. While some copywriters attended school for degrees in English or Journalism, others have spent their pre-copywriting lives working as attorneys, cooks, or dog mushers! Copywriters come in all shapes and sizes, and this unique assortment of backgrounds allows copywriters to bring their experiences into the field, creating more diverse and interesting copy.
As it stands today, there is no one-size-fits-all educational program for copywriters. Instead, a copywriter that’s going to succeed in the industry just needs to possess a few key traits. These are as follows:
1. Creativity
First off, copywriters need to be creative. While many people assume creativity is only necessary for people writing novels and short stories, and not people writing marketing copy, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Since copywriters write for such a diverse selection of clients, they need to be agile enough to think on their feet. Storytelling is central to great copywriting, and the best experts out there know how to access their creativity to weave compelling, unique copy that will engage an audience and help a brand meet its goals.
2. Strong Writing Skills
While copywriters don’t need a college degree to excel in the field, they do need strong writing skills. While it’s true that copywriters write about everything from firearm safety to SEO, the center of all that work is writing, and it’s essential that those skills are rock-solid. Copywriters need to be comfortable with the written word and know how to bend and command it to do what they want.
3. An Ability to Work with Others
While many copywriters work remotely, they are not lone wolves. Instead, copywriters work with teams of SEOs, advertisers, designers, and sales professionals. As such, the successful copywriter has strong teamwork skills and knows how to work collaboratively with other people to create a comprehensive product.
4. Strong Research Skills
One of the questions I frequently get as a copywriter is “what do you do if you don’t know the industry?”
Although some copywriters specialize in certain sectors, such as the financial or medical industry, many copywriters write on all topics for their clients. Because of this, it’s critical to have strong research skills. For example, if a customer asks you to write about choosing an engine lubricant for your sports car, and you’re not an expert on sports cars or their engines, you need to know how to use the web to find quality information that can help you write the article.
If you didn’t receive any formal training as a copywriter (and even if you did), criticism is a central part of the job. You can’t always “nail it,” and great copywriters expect to get the occasional negative feedback from editors and clients. In these cases, excellent copywriters take the feedback and learn from it, while people that won’t make it in the industry crumble beneath it.
6. A Hunger for Knowledge
Copywriting intersects with other industries, like SEO and digital marketing, and copywriters who will rise to the top of their industry are continually seeking to learn about these things. In addition to strengthening your writing, these simple tricks will also allow a copywriter to stay on the bleeding edge of his or her industry.
7. A Willingness to Learn
Copywriters who aren’t familiar with the industry before they start need only to want to learn it. Things like social media, proper blog formatting, and good SEO practices can all be learned, and dominating them is what sets one copywriter apart from the next.
The answer to this question varies depending on how much a copywriter works, who he or she works for, whether they’re employed by a company or by themselves, and where the copywriter is.
According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for copywriters is $55,000 annually.
That said, though, it’s not uncommon for copywriters to earnfar more – as in five figures per project when they work for large corporations or run a successful self-employed business. Joanna Wiebe, famous conversion copywriter, doesn’t work for less than $60,000 per project.
As the world of digital marketing changes, copywriters who also learn relevant and in-demand skills, like video script copywriting and some graphic design, can supplement their offerings, provide more value for their clients, and make more money. Copywriters can also boost their worth by creating a longstanding history of quality content for a variety of customers. When companies see that a copywriter has successfully increased conversions, helped companies draw new customers, or overhauled a company’s online presence, that copywriter becomes more in-demand in the industry.
Public speaking (especially at TEDx stages) can also significantly boost a copywriter’s rep and net them far higher-earning projects and prospects.
How to Find Copywriting Jobs
If you’re a copywriter looking for work, your options are virtually limitless. You can work for almost any major company, on your own, or with a dedicated content creation agency, like Express Writers! Here are just a few places to start looking for work:
Express Writers. We’re almost always hiring! Send in a resume as a writer and an editor. You must have at least 2 years of writing or editing experience for either open position area.
The ProBlogger Job Board. The premier copywriting work resource, the ProBlogger Job Board features thousands of writing jobs refreshed daily. It’s a wonderful filter for high-quality writing jobs. This job board features many major, well-known accounts, such as Canva and Thrive Market. Targeted directly at copywriters. The brainchild of one of the best copywriters out there, Darren Rowse, this is a job board made by writers for writers.
Private Companies. Content marketing is growing at an astonishing rate and, as such, virtually everyone needs copywriters for their businesses. As such, you’ll find that many private companies need copywriters to help them develop their online material. If there’s a company you admire, look at their job board to see if they’re hiring copywriters. If they’re not, you can always reach out and pitch your services according to best pitch practices.
Local Companies. Local companies in your area may need copywriting services to grow their online presence. Keep your eyes peeled for companies in your area in need of copywriting services and offer your expertise when you find them!
How to Hire Copywriters
We put a guide together on how to work with your copywriter! Check it out here.
One of the tips our Content Development Specialist, Tara, had to share is a great key of working with writers.
Our content creation agency works hard to staff the very best copywriters on the web. What’s more, we offer some benefits that individual freelancers don’t, namely the ability to take on far more content and the assurance that your content will always get finished, even if a freelancer falls ill or has a family emergency. As if that weren’t enough, we also staff a selection of industry-specific copywriters so that you can find a professional financial, marketing, or medical copywriter for all your online needs.
5 Things That Make Online Copywriting Great
Now that you know a little bit about how copywriting works at the foundational level – who copywriters are, what they do, how to be one, and how to find one – let’s talk about what separates the wheat from the chaff regarding the actual writing that goes into copywriting.
If you’ve ever read a batch of college essays, you know that not all writing is created equal and that ten different people writing about the same topic can create a series of ten very different results. With this in mind, how do you tell what’s great copywriting and what falls short?
The answer is simple: great copywriting possesses the following things:
1. Detail
Copywriting is nothing without extensive detail. Today’s readers are more discerning than ever, and they’re not easily placated by fluffy, low-hanging content that doesn’t do much to appease their needs or help them find solutions to their problems. As such, great copywriting digs deep.
Here’s an example: if two copywriters had an assignment to write about coal mining in America, the sub-par copywriter would give a definition of coal mining, talk about where and how people do it, and then be done. A great copywriter, on the other hand, will do some research, provide in-depth statistics about how coal mining has grown and changed over the year, discuss the challenges facing modern coal miners, and provide a realistic outlook for the future of coal miners.
The more detailed online copy is, the more useful it is for your readers. This, in turn, helps you create material that ranks well and allows you to stand out as an authority in your industry.
2. Quality
No copy ever rose to the top of the web for being riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. Today, quality is more essential than ever in online copywriting. In fact, Google itself even made this explicitly clear back in 2015, when they released their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. Their “Characteristics of High-Quality Pages” section stated explicitly that pages that were to rank as high-quality must possess “a satisfying amount of high-quality main content.”
Today, it’s easy to create low-quality content that doesn’t take user experience, SEO, or flow into account, and writers who do that are a dime a dozen. To truly stand out, though, copywriting needs to be high-quality, free of spelling and grammar mistakes, and tailored specifically to a company’s unique audience. When all these things are in place, content can not only do its job of educating and entertaining audience, but it can also claim and maintain a prominent spot on the web.
3. A Focus on SEO
Neil Patel has said that SEO and content go together like peanut butter and jelly, and he’s right! Without content, search engine optimization (or SEO) can’t function, and without SEO, content would just drift around the web, homeless and hungry for an audience and a place.
To succeed in today’s digital world, online content needs to marry SEO best practices with quality writing. This means including relevant keyword phrases naturally throughout the material, utilizing strong internal and external links, keeping sentences short and the reading level low enough to appeal to various audiences, and using headers and subheaders to break up text and make it accessible for readers on all devices – from mobile phones to desktop computers.
If copywriting doesn’t focus on SEO, it’s simply not worth investing in!
4. The Right Voice
While a brand like Poo-Pourri can get away with writing in a lippy, off-the-cuff fashion, the ACLU can’t. The difference is the culture of these two organizations. While Poo-Pourri, a “spray before you go” toilet product, is sassy to its core, the ACLU is a serious legal organization where people expect to find professional, informative information. As such, the voice for these two platforms is very different, and great copywriting takes this into account.
Today, a large part of what makes copy successful is its voice. Even if content is well-written and compelling, it won’t perform well unless it’s speaking directly to a platform’s audience and readers. As such, great copywriters must know how to adapt and adjust their voices depending on publication and platform.
5. A Willingness to Play the Long Game
There’s a distinct difference between outbound marketing and inbound marketing. Outbound marketing goes out, from the organization it begins with, to capture and engage customers. Think purchased email lists, unsolicited phone calls, and door-to-door sales.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, seeks to provide material that’s good enough to bring customers in. Think blogging, social media, and video marketing.
While copywriting can be used for outbound marketing (copywriters create most of the material you find in your mailbox), most copywriting jobs today are in the inbound marketing sphere. And this is for a good reason. Today, content is much more effective when it doesn’t shove readers. For evidence of this, all you need to do is look at the rise in ad-blocking software (which Seth Godin wrote about back in 2015) and the fact that the majority of direct mail is never opened.
Today, people want content that builds relationships, rather than trying to jump right into their pockets. As such, the most successful copywriting currently on the web is the stuff that builds trust, explains difficult concepts, offers solutions, and doesn’t try to sell anything at all. While it may be tough for companies to understand why they would invest in a copywriter who won’t try to sell things to their clients, the truth is that, in 2017, the best sales pitch is no sales pitch at all.
Great Digital Copywriting: The Stuff That Makes the Web Go Around!
Today, the web runs on great copywriting. It’s everywhere you look!
From the banner ads that pop up as you cruise a website to the social media posts that make you laugh and the blogs you turn to when you need to learn how to change a bike chain or navigate your newly updated Instagram feed, copywriting is what makes it all work.
To find out more about the ins and outs of online copywriting, check in with us at Express Writers and follow The Write Blog. As one of the premier copywriting agencies on the web, we know a thing or two about hiring writers, connecting writers with companies, and keeping you up to date on all the great news, happenings, and events in the world of online copy!
