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 an appealing visual.
Try to work relevant travel based articles into your blog. Doing so is a great way to break free of the monotony of utilizing the same topics while satisfying the interests of your readers along the way.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Are you writing about today’s hottest topics on your blog? Find out via @ExpWriters!” quote=”Are you writing about today’s hottest topics on your blog? Find out via @ExpWriters!”]
Tying These Blog Topics in With Your Target Audience
As you browse through the above blog topics, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s great that these topics perform well, but my niche has nothing to do with these things.”
With a little creativity, however, you can find ways to work all of these blog topics into the content that you write.
Take Evernote for example. Their app is designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving. So you’d think they’d stick to articles about productivity and saving time.
But they don’t. Instead, they diversify their blog by writing travel articles that give users a better sense of how they can use Evernote to travel better with their app.
They also feature articles about minimalism and happiness, both of which are topics that are trending in recent years.
This article generated over 500 social shares. And while that’s nothing to gloat about, it’s certainly a worthwhile number for a brand whose main focus lies in productivity.
Choosing Topics Based on Social Media Platforms
When you’re choosing a blog topic that you want to be read and shared, you absolutely need to consider where it will be posted.
Social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk frequently talks about the necessity of respecting the platform that your content will be featured on.
Vaynerchuk is relentless about this as he feels that you absolutely must, “Respect the psychology of what people are doing when they’re on a platform.”
Someone’s mindset is much different on Facebook than it is on Pinterest. And that mindset varies even more when they’re on LinkedIn.
Vaynerchuk could not be more on point here. Kissmetrics put a post together, titled The Science Behind What People Love to Share on Social Media, that echoes his sentiment.
On Facebook, the most shared articles are those with a word count between 2,000-2,500 words. Articles between 3,000-4,000 words received the least amount of shares.
On LinkedIn, the opposite is true. Professionals there are looking for in-depth content, and are therefore more likely to share content between 3,500-4,000 words.
As far as blog topics go, LinkedIn users tend to read and share more content related to self-improvement than any other topic.
The keywords that were most often found in frequently shared content there included:
But writing about these topics and keywords on Pinterest would be an awful idea.
Their users love food, DIY, and wedding related content.
Focus on the Platform and Your Audience
As you continue to work towards creating amazing content that gets shares, be sure that you’re respecting the platform and the mental state that the audience there is in.
By doing so, you’ll put yourself in a much better position to earn the highest possible number of visitors and shares. If you’d like some help coming up with blog topics, our team of experts would be more than happy to provide assistance. Talk to us today!
Today, Pinterest is one of the hottest social platforms out there.
Valued at more than $11 billion, Pinterest is home to more than 75 billion ideas and more than 5% of total referral traffic to websites.
As if that weren’t enough, Pinterest’s recent addition of the “rich pin” feature has made it a powerful purchasing platform, as well.
As it stands now, upwards of 2 million people purchase “rich pin” products daily.
As you can imagine, these things make Pinterest a POWERFUL weapon for e-commerce companies.
While there’s no doubt that Pinterest is a valuable platform on its own, brands that want to use it effectively still need to learn to optimize their content for best results.
Here’s your complete guide.
Pinterest SEO: Why Optimization on the Pinning Platform Matters
While Pinterest offers huge potential for e-commerce companies, it also features the same challenges as any other social media platform: it’s easy to get lost in the fray.
According to some estimates, Pinterest users create roughly 5 million pins per day.
That’s a massive amount of content, and it’s more than enough to drown out anything that’s not high-quality or relevant.
Even content that is high-quality needs optimization to feature as prominently as possible on the platform. Better Pinterest SEO optimization means more views, more interaction and engagement, and, potentially, more sales.
Pinterest is an intensely visual platform, and it stands out as one of the top social channels for visual material. (Stat below from Shareaholic)
[clickToTweet tweet=”Pinterest is the #2 website referral traffic driver #social platform, coming in only behind Facebook. #stats” quote=”Pinterest is the #2 website referral traffic driver #social platform, coming in only behind Facebook. #stats”]
As such, brands that know how to optimize their content for Pinterest are in a better position to take advantage of the perks the platform offers, and grow their presence as a result.
How to Optimize Your Blog and Content for Pinterest
The article breaks down how Brian Lang, founder of the Small Business Ideas blog and prominent e-commerce developer, managed to build more than 1 million views and 10,000 followers for his Pinterest account, not to mention ranking in the top two results places for competitive terms.
Intrigued? You should be!
If you want to drive the same results, follow these tips:
1. First, Pin Consistently
Pinning consistently is the basis for all your optimization practices. If you’re not creating consistent content, it’s impossible to optimize it accordingly. And even the best optimization doesn’t count for much if you’re only posting a single pin every three months.
With this in mind, make your first commitment pinning frequently. Not only does this keep your followers engaged, but it provides an optimization boost by upping your long-tail SEO value and views.
While the ideal pinning frequency will depend on your brand and focus, CoSchedule recommends pinning at least 11 times each day, between 2:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. For a healthy mix of original and curated content, 80% of these pins should come directly from your own blog, while 20% should be outside content from third-party sources.
2. Do Your (Keyword) Research
Keyword research is essential in blogging and digital marketing as a whole, so why not Pinterest? Because people search Pinterest using search terms, optimizing your pins with your target head terms and keyword phrases can help ensure your pins pop up where they’re supposed to.
If you’ve already done some keyword research using a tool like Google Keyword Planner, you have a head start. If not, now is the time to begin. To get an idea of which keywords you should be targeting, type your target keywords into the Pinterest search bar.
The head (broad) term “recipes,” for example, renders several suggested long-tail keywords, such as “recipes for dinner” and “recipes with ground beef.”
Each of these terms is one you could target for increased Pinterest visibility.
You can take your keyword research one step further by visiting the pins that show up for these long-tail phrases. Do the boards they’re associated with have lots of followers? Are the keywords popular enough that you could benefit from making an entire board devoted to them?
Remember that on Pinterest, just as in blogging, it’s smart to cluster your content around “topics rather than terms.” In other words, find a keyword phrase you want to target, and cluster content around topics surrounding it. For example, “recipes with ground beef” becomes “Slow-cooker taco meat,” “How to drain ground beef the right way,” and “Ground beef meatloaf with balsamic glaze.”
3. Create Separate Images for Each Blog
If you’re writing blog content, you can optimize it for Pinterest quickly and easily by creating separate images for each post. We do this here at Express Writers. Each blog we upload to our Pinterest profile features a unique image that meets the requirements of the social platform.
Because Pinterest is a highly visual tool, this is non-negotiable. Original and unique images catch more attention and help Pinterest users make a visual distinction between your content and everyone else’s.
If you’re going to create custom images, though, you’ll want to be sure they adhere to size and formatting standards.
According to Canva, the ideal size for a Pinterest graphic is 735PX wide and 1102PX high:
Stick to this size for best presentation.
Remember that any custom image you create is just another opportunity for branding. With this in mind, incorporate your company’s color scheme, typeface, and voice to ensure your graphics have your brand written all over them.
4. Target Seasonal Trends
Pinterest is a go-to for seasonal events, costumes, and ideas, and brands in virtually all industries can take advantage of this. Instead of overlooking holidays like Halloween and Christmas, use them to your advantage.
Around these big days, create some seasonal content on your blog and prepare it for Pinterest. Include a fun, seasonal graphic and target holiday-specific keywords, like “Halloween candy recipes” or “Kid’s Easter outfits.”
Brian Lang notes that none of his competition thought to target seasonal trends, which was one of the major factors that allowed him to soar to Pinterest fame.
5. Allow Search Engines to Discover Your Boards
If your boards aren’t visible to search engines, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. Without this little functionality working on your behalf, you can optimize until you’re blue in the face and it still won’t matter. To check whether your boards are discoverable, follow these tips:
Head to Account Settings. Click the “profile” icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and then the “settings” icon, which looks like a metal nut.
Scroll Down to “Search Privacy.” You’ll see a bar that looks like the one below. Be sure the slider is turned to “off.”
Check Your Individual Boards. You can also check that your individual boards aren’t hidden from search engines by opening the board, clicking the “Edit” icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, and making sure the slider isn’t turned to “Secret,” as pictured below.
If you’ve had your boards hidden from search engines, be aware that it may take several weeks for them to start appearing in major SERPs.
6. Make Your Pinterest Account a Business Account
To optimize your pins and boards as much as possible, switch to a Pinterest for Business account. Introduced recently and designed to cater to the needs of e-commerce sites and small business owners, Business Pinterest accounts offer a few key differences from your standard account.
For one, they make analytics and visitation trends easier to view and verify. You also get access to the site’s rich pin feature, which allows customers to purchase a product directly through a pin and is indispensable for e-commerce sites.
Pinterest for Business accounts are free, easy to set up, and easy to use. What’s not to love?
7. Optimize Your Pinterest Name
Instead of going for a kitschy handle when you set up your Pinterest account, use your full business name. Include this business name in your Pinterest URL and throughout your profile, as well. If your company name is long, shorten it a bit. According to Wishpond, the optimal length of a Pinterest username is between 3-15 characters.
Just keep in mind that, if you intend to shorten your username, you’ll want to ensure it’s still easy for your customers to recognize.
8. Incorporate Keywords in Your “About” Page
You’ve done your keyword research and included target phrases in the names of your pins. Now it’s time to take it one step further by adding relevant keywords to your “About” page, as well.
Check out how intimates company ThirdLove has done this on their Pinterest page:
Keep in mind that you don’t have much room in your “About” section, and it’s best to keep it short and sweet, so any keywords you include should blend naturally with your content and provide value to your readers, rather than making your blurb feel unauthentic and plastic.
9. Write Good Descriptions
If you want to optimize your Pinterest presence, don’t skimp on your pins’ descriptions. While many people leave the default description intact on Pins they re-post, it’s essential to add your personal touch (and keywords) to this content.
As such, take the time to write a unique description that adds value to the pin. Tell the user why it matters or how it will help them. When you pin your original content, provide a short blurb about what people can expect to learn from it and how it will improve or enhance their lives.
Be sure to include relevant keywords in each pin description you write, as this will help your pins appear in search results and feature more prominently online.
The Case for Smart Pinterest Optimization
Today, Pinterest is rapidly rising to the top of the social media pyramid. Thanks in large part to its highly visual platform and simplicity, Pinterest has exploded well outside the boundaries of recipes and kid crafts.
Today, companies from General Electric to I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! Use the platform, and many small businesses and e-commerce sites have found it indispensable for the success of their operations.
Just because Pinterest has millions of monthly users and a high conversion rate, though, doesn’t mean it’s brainless.
If you want to succeed on the platform, you have to learn to optimize your content accordingly. Not only does this make your material more visible for customers, but it also gives you the tools and experience you need to build a productive Pinterest presence that lasts for years to come, and helps your business grow all the time.
While many marketers believe optimizing their Pinterest presence will be difficult, these eight tips go to show just how simple and intentional it really is. By doing smart things like conducting keyword research, posting frequently, creating original images for each blog, making boards discoverable in the search engines, and adding keywords to your Pinterest name and About section, you can ensure that every blog you post offers the maximum value for your customer, and the maximum visibility for you.
Get a completely managed social media plan from our copywriters and social media experts at Express Writers (includes Pinterest as an available platform). Original, high-quality written social posts and custom imagery included in the cost!
Just in time for summer, visuals are hot, hot, hot!
Anyone who’s been paying attention to content marketing trends will tell you that visuals are a big deal right now. Larry Kim said that an estimated 84% of communication will be visual by 2018!
So, how does this fit into your marketing? One fantastic way to boost your engagement online is by integrating beautiful, custom visuals into your social media content. And we’re here with just the product upgrade for you!
Big News for Our Social Media Plans this May!
If your social media is currently handled by the SMEs (Social Media Experts) at Express Writers, or you’re looking for an agency to hand the reins off to, we have exciting news for you.
You may or may not know that all of our monthly social media plans already include images. We have three levels of Social Media Plansto choose from depending on how often you want to interact with your audience, but even our Level 1 package includes three custom images.
So how could we have sweetened the pot even more?
We took a look at the images that our SMEs were creating using Canva, and although they worked, when we realized that we have the resources to do better, we immediately took action.
As of this week, all of our social media images will be created by our in-house graphic designers. That’s right. Now when you have Express Writers taking care of your social media posts, you will now also get professionally designed visuals, pre-sized for Instagram (which translates well to all social platforms) to represent your brand at no extra cost.
That’s a huge added value to our already amazing social media offerings.
How did we do it? Well, we’ve added more staff designers just for this purpose and created a new workflow where our content manager will assign all social media images directly to our designers. The best part? We aren’t even raising our prices one single penny (yet).
We value our clients’ satisfaction and want them to love each product they receive from us, but as content marketing experts it goes beyond that. We aren’t doing our job unless we are providing our customers with the best quality we can to help boost visibility and promote their message. This is just one more way that we can continue to ensure that our products and services are the best you can get!
The best thing – our social media package prices haven’t increased a bit. We want to give our customers added value – at no extra price!
What Our Social Media Levels Include
With each of our levels you receive industry influencer content curation, and you get to choose up to three platforms for us to create posts for. We can even schedule your posts for you using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer at no additional cost.
Level 1 also includes:
One post across all of your platforms every day, M-F
Three custom images/week (perfect for Instagram as well as any other platform)
Level 2 gives you:
Seven or more posts daily spread among your platforms
Four custom images every week
Level 3 allows for maximum brand exposure with:
Fourteen posts on weekdays
Five images each week, including memes
Let Us Help You With Great Social Media Services Today
Having Express Writers handle your social media means consistent engagement across all of your social platforms with your community of followers – as well as an ability to build your network, generate leads, and boost sales.
And now, it also means having professionally designed visuals to illustrate your posts at no additional costs! Check out our Social Media Plans today!
But few people know how to create one that actually accomplishes anything for their business.
Here’s a good question.
What is a “good About Page” really supposed to accomplish?
Copyblogger says that it should answer three questions for your visitor:
What’s in this for me?
Am I in the right place?
Can this person help me with my problem?
The first thing that you should notice here is that, while your About Page is about your business, it needs to be catered to your visitors.
You don’t want to turn your reader off by talking about yourself too much. Make them interested in a natural conversation with you.
To answer these three questions and get your readers to pull up a chair and stay a while, there are a few steps that you will need to follow through on.
Let’s take a look at what they are.
How to Write an Amazing About Page: Focus on Your Reader
As you go through each step, the importance of focusing on the reader cannot be overstated.
While your initial thought may be that your About Page should be about you, the fact of the matter is that your readers aren’t there for you. They’re there for them.
By understanding that your reader should be your main focus you can avoid producing an information-littered About Page that doesn’t accomplish anything for your business.
Go ahead and tell your story. Just don’t get so lost in telling it that you forget why you’re doing it in the first place.
Step #1 – Tell Your Story With Your Customers in Mind
There are thousands of examples of stale About Pages that tell weakly put together stories about the history of a company and what they offer to customers.
The thing is, people already know most of these things. They’ve made it to your page because they feel you might have the potential to solve their problems.
As Entrepreneur contributor Aaron Agius is quick to point out, “So many companies focus on business specifics in their About Page content, such as types of services and products offered.”
Agius wants you to look away from this boring strategy.
His recommendation is that, “Your About Page should illustrate your business’s humble beginnings and highlight the positive attributes of your team that helped you get where you are today.”
Here’s a good overview of the elements of a compelling B2B story:
All six elements outlined above play an integral role in ensuring that businesses see you as someone that they’d like to work with.
Make your About Page about your customers. Relate to them. Be memorable. Give them a reason to trust you.
Do these things and you’re well on your way to making a strong first impression with the people who matter.
Step #2 – Utilize Visuals to Strengthen
Visuals are a necessary part of any great About Page. And they’re especially effective when you’re attempting to tell your brand’s unique story.
Now, we’re certainly not saying that your About Page needs an infographic.
What we are saying, however, is that, if 90% of information that comes to the brain is visual, your page needs more than just words.
Visuals can include anything from images and videos to infographics and photographs.
MailChimp is one of many B2B companies that effectively utilizes photographs on their About Page.
When you see this photo, you immediately think of community. This isn’t a coincidence.
As you scroll down their page, they have a section about Community Investment and how they’re helping cities like Atlanta become, “better, weirder, and more human.”
They also feature a visual-rich section on their employees that looks like this:
When you see these photos, the word “fun” comes to mind. Now we know, without even reading a single word, that MailChimp identifies themselves as a fun, community-driven company.
They’ve told their story through photos and use words to supplement it. This is the power of visuals.
And it’s why they need to be implemented, and featured, on your About Page.
Video content is an excellent choice to consider for your About Page. Here’s how we did it on our About Page (our video story was filmed professionally and told by our founder, Julia McCoy):
And if you scroll down, you’ll learn about each of the creators that make up a core portion of our team:
Step #3 – Use Social Proof
The power of social proof in the marketing world is astounding.
And while there are dozens of examples of how social proof can help you market effectively, it can also be leveraged on your About Page to build a strong first impression about your reputation.
But with so many different ways to show that others trust your brand, which one works best for your About Page?
The type that will work best for your brand is, plain and simply, the one that will be seen as most powerful to your customers.
Gummisig, a freelance web designer, identified that listing popular clients that he’s worked with proved most effective.
Ikea is a Fortune 500 company. Showing potential customers that a company like that has trusted his services provides immediate, and incredibly effective, social proof.
But maybe you haven’t had the pleasure of working with a client with that type of name recognition.
No problem. Use the customers you do have.
Providing quotes from testimonials is a powerful way to generate effective social proof. Including actual data about what you’ve accomplished for your clients can also work incredibly well.
Use what you have to provide social proof that your unique readers will understand and appreciate.
Step #4 – Give Readers a Next Step
If they like what they see, what are they supposed to do next?
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of creating a strong B2B About Page. After all, isn’t the objective of your entire website to convert users?
To answer the question of what you want them to do next, your focus should be on what stage of awareness the reader is in when they get to your About Page.
Since they’re attempting to learn more about your business, your potential customer is likely already in the product or brand aware stage.
They understand their problem, know that there are solutions, and are now on your brand’s page because they see you as a potential solution.
The goal of any copywriter is to get customers to the most aware stage and convert them when they get there.
So, in order to convert them, you need to think like a copywriter.
When customers are on your About Page, and they’re intrigued by your story and the social proof that you’ve provided, they’re only steps away from being most aware.
Take advantage of this by implementing a call-to-action at the bottom of your page that provokes them to take the next step NOW.
Digital strategy firm Nerdery provides a great example of how to do this.
Their CTA is simple:
Their goal is to start a conversation with potential customers so they can eventually follow through and bring them on as a client.
And they’ve made it easy for readers of their About Page to start that conversation.
Find out what you want readers to do next and ask them to do it. It’s really that simple.
Conclusion
In the end, there are a lot of elements that go into creating an amazing About Page.
You want to tell your unique story and use visuals to tell it in a more compelling manner.
You also want to show readers, through social proof, why they should trust you over the dozens of other brands that offer what you offer.
What you don’t want to do, however, is get so caught up in doing these things that you lose sight of the fact that your About Page is about your reader, and what they’re looking to get out of it.
And while the line between telling your story and focusing on the reader is a fine one, it’s one that I’m confident you can overcome by using the steps above.
If you’d like some assistance in walking this line, we have a great team of experts that can help you create an amazing About Page.
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!
