You take a bunch of words, string them together, complement those sentences with striking images and stick out there for your fans and followers. If you have the know-how you can add a couple custom images, videos or even podcasts…maybe an infographic or two.
You tweet, post and holler like crazy–until your content goes viral.
It’s that easy, isn’t it?
If only!
Building Customer Trust Through Branded Content Marketing
The lure to create, curate and then distribute content is so strong for brands because it works.
Brands and marketers who prioritize blogging as not 5, or 10 but 13x more likely to enjoy a positive ROI. That’s huge.
Content marketing generates 3x as many leads as its more traditional counterpart, outbound marketing, but costs more than 50% less. So, how come only 30%of all content strategists consider their efforts effective? And, there’s a lot of B2B marketerswho seem lost in translation between their actual business results and content marketing efforts.
So, what’s going on? What’s missing from the big picture? Is branded content marketing really “all that?”
In short: content marketing is all that.
The longer answer: content marketing will work if you care enough to delve into that nitty-gritty element of gaining your reader’s trust and creating content that is catered to them.
Here at Express Writers, we think of branded content marketing as something much bigger than merely a tactic.
It’s an essential tool. Better yet, it’s your lifeblood online to help you build meaningful relationships with customers and prospects. What you put out makes you, online. Or breaks you, if you don’t put anything out. Be the brand that does content marketing right.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Content is your lifeblood online to help you build relationships with prospects. -@ExpWriters” quote=”Content is your lifeblood online to help you build relationships with prospects. -@ExpWriters”]
Building Relationships Rooted on Trust
The swiftly and ever evolving digital landscape has made it entirely possible for brands to overcome all sorts of weird and wonderful barriers in order to reach out to their target demographics. Brands and markets can now effortlessly seek and segment prospects, garner information and very readily respond through a whole shopping list worth of platforms. And best of all, feedback arrives in a matter of seconds.
This all sounds great, doesn’t it? And it is. But you cannot force your services and products on your tribe once you’ve found them. You’ve got to work at building relationships, one solid piece of content at a time.
For every piece of content you post, your number one goal should be to gain trust and elicit a real response from your audience in favor of your content (an action, whether that’s conversion-oriented or a simple responsive comment).
Gaining Trust: Emotions vs. Logic
Charts, statistics data – they’re all pretty cool.
They’re like the geek squad who unwaveringly support your brand’s claim or cheer on about why you’re the best thing to ever happen to your niche.
But hang on just a second.
Have you ever stopped and thought about how your customers and prospects go through the gamut of emotions on a daily basis?
Whether you’re promoting hip replacement surgery, selling a bread knife, or convincing your readers that a holiday to Bali is just what they need, it’s important to craft content that makes them feel.
You need to be creating content that will have them nodding in agreement, chuckling at your humor and leaning in closer to read and share your words.
In due time, it’s those emotions that will draw them to subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for a free trial and ultimately, seal a deal.
According to Roger Dooley, brand campaigns with highly emotional content perform twice as well as content that is rational. Emotional content also does a little better than mixed emotional and rational content.
What’s more, the more positive the readers feel with your content, the more likely they are to start talking about your brand.
5 Ways to Build Trust With Your Branded Content Marketing
To whittle it down: emotions drive buying decisions, and to evoke emotions in your readers, you need to build trust in what you put out online. Let’s explore how.
1. Who Is Your Audience & What Are Your Intended Outcomes?
Brands always need to consider who they’re writing for and why. It’s a lot easier to build trust (which leads to sales) when the right reader is presented with the right content. Then brands need to think about why they’re writing: what’s the goal of your content marketing? If your object is trust – and it should be – make sure you’re not pushing too hard, too soon
2. Determine Content Type, Frequency & Location
While these three elements alone won’t build trust, trust really begins by placing the information your audience wants somewhere where they’ll benefit from it. So let’s say your audience mostly looks for content on Reddit, make sure you make it available to them in their favorite space.
3. Share > Promote > Engage
In order to build trust, you need to get word out that your content is available. That being said, there’s a fine line between spammy promotion and a little nudge towards awareness. Share on the platforms where your audience is most active and curate your content carefully to help the reader realize that want to read it.
Finally, once a reader takes time to engage with your content, reach out and let them know you appreciate it.
4. Make It Easy To Connect With Your Brand
If you’re working hard on your content, chances are good you want to make it easy for people to connect with your brand, right? So make sure interested readers can easily connect with you, be it through RSS, email, phone or any other means.
5. Analyze Responses, Optimize for Next Time
Brands need to look at their content to what’s being viewed, shared and, of course, engaged with.
If particular content is attracting a good response and other posts are being ignored, then you need to pivot and customize to create more of what your readers are connecting with. This will help drive more readers and create new opportunities to build trust.
Here’s What Your Audience Wants You To Know About Gaining Their Trust
Without good old fashioned face-to-face interaction, gaining the trust of your audience can be pretty intimidating.
But, you can gain trust from content marketing. It’s a proven fact.
In order to do so, you have to know what’s in the minds of the common audience as a whole. Here are a few questions and statements that could be surging within your audience, if you’re not on the right path as a content marketer:
I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me. What’s the most important thing you want me to know? What’s your Unique Value Proposition?
Please don’t tell me why your services or products are the best in the whole wide world. Tell me how they can add exceptional value to my business, life or relationships.
Who the heck are you? Why on earth should I listen to you? What exactly have you done in the past to become an authority on this particular subject?
Entertain me with a good story. Stories tend to make people experience, as opposed to see, things. It is stories that elicit those emotions. Stop placing all your efforts on that hard sell and start focusing on communication your brand’s story.
Stop rushing me into doing something, leave me to decide at my own pace. Substantial results from content marketing should take time.
What new tidbit have you taught me today? Will I be able to use this information to improve any aspect of my life, business or relationships that I seem to struggle with?
Please, stop telling me you’re perfect. I’d rather hear vulnerability or honesty when you’re wrong. Being perfect is just too suspicious to me.
Draw on Trust As Your #1 Content Writing Objective & the Sales Will Flow
Content that is successful, is content that takes time to accomplish.
Brands who infuse care, thought, honesty, and the right voice for their audience into their content marketing will win more than those who don’t.
Putting all other aspects of marketing aside, the genuine goal to help along with pure authenticity, as reflected in your content is for sure going to get your brand noticed and talked about, nay, raved about.
Too many marketers try to take shortcuts between each point.
Other marketers blindly create content wastelands instead of becoming content warriors and creators of wordy evergreen gardens that allow the sales to flow like stunning waterfalls.
Which camp are you in?
More importantly, which camp do YOU want to be in?
Don’t let your online content land up in the forgotten pile. Talk to Express Writersabout your brand’s content marketing. We’ll help you build the trust of your audience with great, custom-written content suited to their needs.
If you’re an online content creator – be it blogger, podcaster, vlogger, group creator, Twitter expert or Instagrammer – you already know you’re an important part of a wider public discussion.
You probably also know that your role in creating content for your traffic comes with a great responsibility.
Where you should be respectful, honest and fair to your audience and about the content you’re creating. In other words, you need to know your content marketing ethics – and we’re about to lay them out for you in this post. Keep reading!
Why Ethics Are A Core to Great Content Marketing
As a matter of fact it is: it’s the club of the most impactful art form there is (well, we think so). It’s the art of creating content.
Why exactly do content marketers need some sort of ethics guideline? It’s simple: words are incredibly powerful.
In fact, over 50% of consumers trust branded websites and editorial content, according to a Nielsen report. Unlike the editorial content that is published by journalists, there doesn’t seem to be a set-in-stone code of ethics for content marketers. Sure, we know there are a few things we should be doing. But do we follow through?
Chances are, the content you’re creating now is going to outlast both its relevance and your own lifetime so it’s critical that it is a truthful representation of the topic for those who access it today and those who access it in the future.
Above all else, as a content creator, your job is to be sure you present opinion as opinion and fact as fact. And that’s where the Content Code of Ethics comes into it.
While content creation for marketers is very clearly different from journalism, it is still essential to the future of content marketing that we don’t squander the trust of our audiences. That’s why we’ve gone ahead and created our own content marketing code of ethics.
A Brief Content Marketing Code of Ethics in 9 Simple Guidelines
See what you’re missing, or check off the points you’re covered on. (As you’re reading, tell us in the comments what you’d add to our list!)
Here’s a share-worthy summary of our guidelines in a graphic you can save. Print, frame, etc. 🙂
1. Know Your Role in Content Marketing Society
Some of the most basic elements of a democracy include the freedom of information, freedom of speech and freedom of content creation, be it in hypertext, video, print or audio. So the ability to both produce and distribute independent content is an important democratic right.
So, content creator, it’s up to you to protect the freedom of speech. That means not succumbing to the pressure from anyone who may want to prevent the free flow of information, prevent open debates or deny free access to sources.
Furthermore, it is the right of a content creator to share information on what goes on in our society and also uncover and disclose matters that may be subjected to criticism. (Disagree? Let us know below! We’re always open to feedback; it’s how we learn and grow).
2. Maintain Responsibility & Integrity
No pressure, but you also carry full and personal responsibility for the material contained in your work, no matter what form you are working in. So you should be guarding your own credibility and integrity if you want to be free to act independently.
It’s up to you to reject attempts to break down clear distinctions between unbiased content and advertisements. Ads that are intended to exploit or imitate an editorial product aren’t a good idea to take on. Nor are advertisements that undermine trust in your own integrity and your independence in general.
You have an obligation to provide your audience with accurate information. That means that every piece of content you create needs to be thoroughly researched. By researching properly, you can avoid error and provide context for your information.
By the way, when you’re distinguishing between content marketing and advertising, advertorials and paid guests posts need to be disclosed.
3. Know & Identify Accurately Your Sources
As a rule, all your sources of information should be identified, unless this happens to conflict with source protection or some sort of consideration for a third party. You need to be critical with the sources you choose and ensure the information provided is correct. It’s good practice to aim for relevance and diversity when choosing your sources.
All your sources of information, data and quotes have to be properly cited. Try to link to further information as often as you can.
4. Fact vs. Fiction: Know Your Rules for Publication & Abide Within Them
It’s important to be clear about what is comment and what is factual information.
Respect a person’s identity and character and not draw attention to private or personal aspects if they aren’t relevant. You should ensure that introductions, headers and leads don’t go beyond what you’re dealing with in the text.
Draw a line between fact and opinion. By all means, make recommendations and offer advice through your content, but represent your opinions as just that.
If you’re using graphics, illustrations, photos, audio, video or any other kind of content, it’s important to always credit the original creator. What’s more, you need to be cautious when using photos in any other content than their original intention.
5. Build Audience Trust
As a content creator, do you understand that your first and most important responsibility is your audience? A brand possibly pays your salary, but you have an obligation to build a relationship with the target audience through that honest, accurate and helpful content. If you have not done that, you have not done your job.
If you want to gain that audience trust, make sure you never distort facts or use any material that misrepresents your content. That also means avoiding imposing your own biases or stereotyping on the information your creating.
6. Know that You Have an Obligation to Be Transparent
We don’t need to tell you that content marketing’s ultimate goal is to boost a company’s bottom line. Did you realize that includes your audience? At the end of the day, they do realize that you work for a company that wants to do business with them.
Here, the important ethical line is whether or not you are transparent about your interest in working together.
You as a content creator should be concentrating on a long-term relationship that is built on trust, while continuing to strive to provide your audience with the most accurate relationship you possibly can.
This May, Express Writers went through a crazy month of discovering that the managers we’d trusted for three years were actually dishonest. I was honest, authentic, revealed the truth to my audience and client, and even put a podcast together (that took me four weeks to say). This genuine approach won: many of our clients respected us more afterwards. Listen below or click here to read the show notes & more.
7. Content Marketers Should Always Show Respect
As a content marketer, you should always aim to treat others with dignity and respect. Dialogues that take place on public platforms can sometimes (possibly more often than we like) leave openings for trolls and competitors to join in on the conversation. So no matter what, make sure you are treating others with respect.
This means showing good taste and avoiding the use of salacious content just in an attempt to boost numbers. It also means being sensitive when writing about, major new events, especially when there’s a chance it could impact someone unfavorably.
8. Take Accountability for Your Content
Both your and your business’s name is going to be associated with your content creation. Recognize that both your business and you can and will be held accountable for your marketing efforts. So do act accordingly.
You need to remember that content is a conversation, so don’t be scared of listening to other people’s thoughts and be open to their critiques and responses.
We’re all human, and even you, can make mistakes. Own up to them. And then try to correct those mistakes and, whenever you possibly can, learn as much as you can from them.
9. Always Reach for Excellence
Always, always, always take pride in your work.
Place your focus on quality over quantity and work towards telling the very best story you can.
Yes, there are always going to be those clients who are adamant that word count is the be all and end all. After all, they may be paying per word so they want every single syllable. It’s up to you as the respected, experienced and professional content marketing creator you are to guide them, advise them and use those words to focus on quality.
Conclusion
So, if you’ve been winging it for a while, or hoping no one would really notice the odd nicked quote, stat or “eureka!” thought here and there, it’s time to ‘fess up, buckle up and knuckle down.
Here’s your code of ethics – go forth and prosper!
Need great content creation? We’re your best backup! Visit the Content Shop to order your custom content from our stellar team.
Have you ever torn a page out of a book in sheer, desperate anger?
I definitely haven’t. I don’t think I know anyone who has.
As a writer, if I saw someone tear a page out of a book I published, it would feel like they were tearing a page out of my soul.
What a silver lining it’d be to know my writing could compel someone to interact with my book by ripping apart the page and sharing their anger.
My writing mattered to them. My content was enough for them to act on it.
That, despite the undesirable reaction, would make all the difference.
Having words powerful enough to engage the reader is a goal every content writer works toward.
Crossroads of Memory Lane and Opportunity Drive
Back in the day, before dial-up and “You’ve Got Mail!”, a world existed without the Internet.
Farther beyond, a realm without television or movies existed for the majority of recorded human history.
Books were very valuable. Compiling information onto paper for leisure, education, and communication was the cornerstone for sharing our thoughts across the distant lands we couldn’t travel to ourselves.
Now, we live in a world where people can search galactic amounts of information, share their opinions with millions of people, and express their disapproval at the click of a button.
More importantly, we live in a worldwheremore content is created than is consumed.
This pivotal moment in history is crucial. It’s the fundamental underpinning all strategic content writing. With more and more people creating content, the industry is becoming overstuffed and armies of content writers are springing up everyday. Grabbing a large slice of your own readership may appear to be a fool’s paradise.
Or is it?
When my closet is overstuffed, it’s an opportunity to throw out what I don’t need. It’s an intriguing moment, because it forces me to sit down and actually think about what I want to see in my closet every time I open it. I have to be aware of my daily priorities.
And that’s what counts, isn’t it? We live in a world with billions of readers, but it’s what matters most that we’ll want in our lives everyday.
Sorry, Not Sorry: It’s Not About You Anymore
I was never impressed with TIME magazine’s May 2013 cover. The “ME ME ME Generation” concept is a theory that could be applied to every generation at some point.
Still, there is a level of entitlement to young adults today. We are keenly aware of the options offered to us. We get to choose our celebrities and news sources, a freedom not readily available to those born before the ’80s. We don’t have to settle for a handful of cable networks and newspapers to spoon feed us the information we seek.
Industry Standards Are Steadily Rising Everywhere
Having so many options available, consumers are much more selective. Standards are being raised across all industries, and the dependence on monopolized profits is a tune business owners don’t get to sing very often.
A higher standard doesn’t necessarily mean working harder; being smart about your approach and listening to other experts in the field is a tried and true way of propelling your own career.
In fact, listening to anyone other than yourself is a fantastic idea if you want to improve.
Playful sarcasm aside, this shift in the business world has been a positive one, and what’s becoming more important is our responsibility to quality. It’s our duty to improve our skills every day and learn from others; there are no shortcuts in the world of content.
The Ethos of the Internet Community
This shift is apparent in the world of marketing. No one gets to walk in, dressed as Don Draper, and tell you an advertisement is going to work because they say so. Today, internet marketers are expected to use statistics and structured plans of action to sell you on an idea.
A prevalent theme across successful social media marketers is the rule that you should interact with your followers ten times for every post you make. People want to be acknowledged, and everyone values this connection with other people. These interactions are reciprocal in nature. Engaging with your follower is often met with an engagement in return.
It’s cringeworthy to some, sure, but people often place depthless value in the number of likes a post receives or the number of followers who read their tweets. And aren’t most of us guilty of feeling the same? When you speak out, isn’t it great to be heard?
This isn’t specific to the millennial generation, but it’s particular to the new world of social media networking. Now, more than ever, understanding one another is increasingly advantageous.
Everyone Online is a Content Creator
People may not view themselves as writers or content creators, but they love to write Facebook posts. In 2012 alone, Facebook users were publishing over 293,000 status updates every 60 seconds. That’s a lot of writing.
Human beings love to share. They’ll share what’s important to them. If it makes them laugh, they may share it with you. If it solves a problem they’re researching, they may share that as well. And if it means a lot to them, they’ll definitely share it with the world.
Sharing is caring, so what do people care about most? That lies at the heart of the single, most effective strategy for creating highly engaging content.
Repeat After Me: Create Content That Matters
I’m not asking to abandon what matters to you. I personally have a blog with content that is of the utmost importance to me, but I’ll be the first to tell you it has less traffic than a back road in the rural parts of North Dakota.
However, when you want to build a loyal readership and maximize your traffic, knowing what matters to your demographic should be at the core of your content strategy.
And some of you may ask, “how do I find out?” There’s an easy solution.
If you read ten times as much as you write, I’m positive you’ll start to understand what’s important to your readers.
Find Your Keys to Engaging Content
The door to success has more than one key. Creating engaging content is an art. Many seasoned content curators are always designing new techniques to raise the bar and perfect their strategy.
Unlocking the true potential to creating engaging content requires using your own brand of ingenuity. Writers are creatures of creativity; it’s not a stretch to apply that creativity to the way we think about our writing, too.
Being a content specialist, I’ll never get tired of the exhilarating rush I feel when one of my strategies results in lucrative success. I’d love for every content writer to feel the same. One ingredient that will always be found in a winning strategy is relevance, so knowing what matters to your readers should always come first.
Allow me to share some of my own unique practices for understanding your audience and boosting the relevance of your content.
Five Things That Make You Smile
Before I share my nuggets of content wisdom, I’d like you to take part in an exercise with me.
Find a scrap piece of paper or open up a blank document and create a list of five things that make you smile. Once you’re done, read them over carefully and continue with the article.
Here is my list.
kittens
compliments
a slice of cheesecake
someone else’s smile
witnessing a random act of kindness
Perfect! You’ve successfully completed the exercise. Let’s find out why you participated.
Strategy #1 A Positive Mindset Leads to Positive Engagements
Be positive!
I can’t stress it enough. Having passion won’t always win people over; combining passion with positivity is an incredible way to engage your readers.
Dr. Bill Conklin at Psychology Today discusses the impact positive actions can have on shaping our brains, such as physical exercise or mindfulness meditation. Instilling a healthy attitude and avoiding unhealthy thought patterns strengthens the part of your brain that activates when you’re happy. Conversely, these activities weaken the part of your brain that is usually more active when you’re sad.
I can attest to this philosophy. It’s been over a year since I read “Buddha’s Brain” by Rick Hanson, and I’ve practiced many of the exercises I found inside. Today, I feel happy by default, as opposed to an attitude I had to work hard to maintain. This lesson in self-improvement has consistently helped me to connect with readers on higher level.
Write a mental list of things that make you happy before you start writing content. It’s an easy way to get yourself in a positive mindset before writing. Imagine each one and embrace the warmth as you prime yourself to serve your readers the same experience.
It’s also a healthy way to evaluate your form; if you’re having trouble feeling happy, it’s probably not the time to be writing meaningful content. Instead, it may be an opportunity to talk to a friend and resolve whatever dilemma is bogging you down.
Strategy #2 Walking 10,000 Steps in Someone’s Shoes
The average American only walks 5,900 steps a day, significantly short of the 10,000 steps recommended by most health communities.
American Writer Nelle Harper Lee, commonly known as the author of the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, once wrote a line based on one of her favorite Cherokee proverbs, helping to launch its popularity and facilitate widespread usage:
Most people have seen a variation of the phrase, “before you criticize a person, walk a mile in their shoes.” The idea behind the message is rooted in empathy, a skill best described in this context as the ability to understand a person’s emotions and problems without experiencing them firsthand.
Developing empathy requires a higher level of emotional intelligence. It’s a type of intelligence that is less dependent on how well someone can study feelings and more dependent on the ability to experience them. Interestingly, the ability to understand one’s own feelings is often demonstrative of the ability to understand the feelings of others.
Empathy is a key component of writing engaging content. If empathy doesn’t come easy to you, it may feel difficult accomplish this goal. That’s exactly why you can’t give up—some of your readers feel that same frustration!
When you work hard to understand the problems your demographic faces, you’ll be able to serve them with insightful and helpful content. This level of thoughtfulness will be met with multiple, positive engagements from the people who read it. In return, you’ll feel exponentially more fulfilled for receiving the well deserved feedback on your hard work.
Empathy is a skill you can hone for the rest of your life. There’s no need to try mastering it overnight. Lots of people who walk 10,000 steps a day have seen improvements in their own health, which has led to a higher quality of life. It’s up to you to improve your own emotional intelligence and mentally walk 10,000 steps in someone else’s shoes, every day.
Strategy #3 Learn to Drive More Traffic With Poetic License
Let’s be clear: I don’t suggest deviating from the facts. Rather, it’s essential to start straying away from the conventions of writing and individualize your voice.
I grew up being taught that paragraphs had 3-5 sentences, a sentence never ended in a preposition, and five-paragraph essays were the best way to share a subject with three discussion points.
Can you imagine if a normal conversation followed that format? The thought sends shivers down my spine.
Online writing is a relatively new landscape and content writers are the leading architects. In similar fashion to the pilgrims who voyaged to America hundreds of years ago, we are allowed to build communities in our own style as we carve reputations across the blogosphere.
Many successful content writers can agree on the foundations of quality writing, but no one will give you a step-by-step guide that doesn’t require a little innovation on your end. Write with words you’ve never used, styles you’ve never adopted, and suggestions you’ve never taken. Experimenting as a writer will lead to personal growth, a positive affirmation that nurtures our creativity and fosters the willingness to share our human experiences.
Your Most Loyal Reader is You
I’m willing to bet no one has read your writing as much as you have. You know your strengths and weaknesses best, so it’s your job to seek out ways to improve your writing.
Every writer is effectively an entrepreneur. As such, we’re responsible for the satisfaction of our service to our customers. We are in the business of influence, and always challenging our writing skills to reach new heights will ensure the growth of our readership. If you learn from your failures and capitalize on your successes, you’ll find it becomes increasingly easier to speak from experience.
Writing about having a problem and finding a solution will feel much more natural when you’ve become familiar with its process (as opposed to leaning on empathy to imagine how it feels). I recommend frequently looking at ways you can innovate your writing and always being eager to read about other people’s experiences. Taking these steps will mold your current perspective and give you constant opportunities to reinvent your content.
No single approach to creating successful and engaging content will ever encompass the complex, individual needs of different industries, but one universal rule rings true. If you want to write engaging content for humans, you need to be an engaging person.
Never stop growing.
Interested in learning more about how to create a content strategy for YOUR brand that engages your readers? Download our free ABC Content Strategy checklist.
You wouldn’t hire a carpenter to give you a root canal, would you?
Nor would you head to a sandwich shop for auto body work.
Some professional skills are best left to professionals and trying to outsource them to anything less results in a poor job (at best) and a complete disaster (at worst).
This is as true for web copywriting services as it is for anything else—perhaps even more so.
When it comes to your online content, nothing but the best will (and should) do, and there are dozens of great reasons to hire professional web copywriting services.
A lot of this has to do with Google and their current standards.
Read on to learn more.
[bctt tweet=”Let’s face it – some things just require skill. You wouldn’t hire a carpenter to give you a root canal. Nor would you head to a sandwich shop for auto body work. Don’t hire a non-writer to write your content. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
The Real Reasons Businesses Need Professional Web Copywriting Services
Why do you need web copywriting services?
Let me count the ways…
First of all, Google doesn’t exactly love hack jobs pretending to be copywriters.
Last year, the search engine released a document called the “Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.” The original document was 160 pages (it’s since been updated to 146), and it dispersed all sorts of useful information about how Google’s quality evaluators were to assign rankings to websites.
One of the most important things the guidelines laid out, though, is the need for professional web copywriting services.
Shocked? Stay with us.
In the original version of the guidelines, Google went to great pains to define two critical acronyms: EAT and YMYL. Here’s what you need to know:
EAT
EAT stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.” According to Google’s guidelines, high-quality pages have high levels of EAT. Low-quality pages don’t. According to section 4.5 of the guidelines themselves, “High-quality pages and websites need enough expertise to be authoritative and trustworthy on their topic.”
While Google stops here to clarify that “expert” pages can cover topics ranging from fashion and gossip to specialty pages, it’s clear that the search engine wants to see authoritative, quality content – no matter the topic.
How do you get quality content?
You hire expert web copywriting services.
You see, great content is about more than just knowledge. It’s also about structure, formatting, SEO, and linking. By hiring web copywriting services that specialize in your given industry, you get all of the knowledge required for a high-EAT page, combined with the technical know-how that’s needed to rank well.
Talk about a winning combination.
YMYL
YMYL stands for “Your money or your life.” This acronym is a lot like EAT in that it defines what good pages should have, but it’s also different because it talks about a particular subset of pages. You see, YMYL pages are those that, according to the guidelines, “could potentially impact the future happiness, health, or financial stability of users.”
Examples of these pages include the following:
Financial or shopping pages: Any website that allows customers to make purchases or pay their bills online is a YMYL page
Pages that provide financial information: Any page that offers financial advice on topics ranging from investments, retirement, or taxes is a YMYL page
Pages that provide medical information: Any page that provides information about drugs, diseases, mental health and well-being, or nutrition is considered by Google to be a YMYL page
Pages that provide legal information: Pages that offer legal advice or information on critical things like divorce proceedings, child custody, or immigration are YMYL pages
Any page that may impact the health, safety, or wellbeing of people: Other pages may be considered YMYL pages if the content within them has a significant impact on people. Consider the example of a car repair website, for instance, which tells consumers how to replace their car’s brakes. If written poorly, this page could have a negative impact on the safety of the people reading it.
When it comes to YMYL pages, professional web copywriting services are especially needed. Because Google pays extra attention to these pages, it’s critical to get them right, and hiring a team of expert copywriters, editors, and SEOs is a great place to start.
[bctt tweet=”According to Google, high-quality content should have EAT and YMYL. Know more about these two critical acronyms in this post on why you should hire web #copywritingservices” username=”ExpWriters”]
10 Good Reasons to Hire Professional Web Copywriting Services
Still not sold on the need for professional web copywriting services?
Here are ten solid reasons to jump onboard.
1. Hiring a team of professionals means you’ll save time
Content marketing is a time-consuming business! When you look at social media alone, the statistics are staggering: 64% of marketers spend 6 hours each week on social media, 41% spend 11 hours or more, and 19% spend upwards of 20 hours each week on their social media accounts!
With these numbers in mind, it’s not difficult to see how hiring professional web copywriting services can free up lots of time, energy, and resources. By turning content creation, distribution, and SEO over to a skilled professional, you allow yourself to reclaim critical time to focus on other things – like running your company.
This, in turn, improves everything about the way your business operates and ensures that your social, blog, and on-page content isn’t suffering for lack of time.
2. Professional web copywriting services take a third-party approach
As paradoxical as it may seem, many companies have a difficult time explaining their services.
When you hire professional web copywriting services, though, this problem is a thing of the past. A team of skilled copywriters can evaluate your mission statement and services and craft an intelligible, comprehensive, and compelling statement about what it is that you do and why customers need it.
This, in turn, creates more interesting content and prevents you from getting stuck in that odd, “I don’t want to toot my horn” place.
3. Expert web copywriting services can keep you in line with trends
One of the best ways for a company to demonstrate its relevance and validity is to stay abreast of current industry and social trends.
Right now, for example, companies like Content Marketing Institute are using the Olympics as a foundation to create unique, fun content that appeals to their readers.
Without the help of web copywriting services, it’s unlikely that you have the time, energy, or (let’s be frank) attention span to create this type of on-trend content on your own.
When you hand your content creation and distribution over to the pros, though, you can rest assured that your copywriters will take a look at your industry and the world around you and use current events to make your content more relevant and exciting to users.
This, in turn, sets you apart from the competition and makes it easier to stand out in your industry.
4. Grammar & spelling issues? Not with web copywriting services
Grammar and spelling are tricky things, and even the best brands get it wrong from time to time.
Think, for a moment, about Old Navy, which famously released a sports t-shirt that featured the slogan, “Lets go!”
While this snafu may be funny now (and only because you’re not Old Navy), these mistakes can do significant damage to a company’s image.
Luckily, businesses that hire web copywriting services have better protection against these types of easily preventable errors. With the help of professional web copywriters, it’s easy to avoid grammar and spelling mistakes and to ensure that all content that gets published is content that deserves to be online.
5. Web copywriting services can help boost creativity
Many major companies blog dozens of times each month. With that kind of demand, it’s easy to understand how coming up with topics would be difficult.
Fortunately, web copywriting services are used to this type of thing and have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves to keep creating quality content, no matter the demand.
From crawling your competitors’ pages to conducting keyword research and social listening, there are dozens of ways web copywriting services keep you fresh, creative, and on-trend. While going stale in your content is a real risk for busy companies, hiring professional web copywriting services can help you avoid this problem.
6. Web copywriting services can spot SEO pitfalls
If you’re not up-to-the-minute on today’s big SEO topics, that’s understandable. SEO changes more often than Kim Kardashian’s husbands, and it’s difficult to stay abreast of what’s going on. Unless that is, it’s your full-time job.
Web copywriting firms do more than just write content, they also conduct keyword research, implement good SEO, and spend a great deal of time learning about Google’s recent changes and updates.
When all of these things combine, you get a quality, trustworthy series of web copywriting services that can truly help your company grow.
Using copy-and-paste meta descriptions? Lacking alt. text for your photos?
Not optimizing your pages correctly?
A good web copywriter will be able to spot these things and remedy them before they damage your rankings.
[bctt tweet=”Web copywriting firms do more than just write content, they also conduct keyword research, implement good SEO, and spend a great deal of time learning about Google’s recent changes and updates. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
7. Web writers can cater to different content formats
To craft a well-rounded content presence, you’ll need to expand out into different content formats. Unfortunately, many companies only know what they know. If you’ve been writing blogs for five years, and the prospect of an infographic terrifies you, web copywriting services are right up your alley.
In addition to helping you understand which types of content are trending in your industry, a good team of professionals will also be able to help you create content that works for your company and your readers.
For example, a web copywriting service may recommend that you create a mixture of textual, video, and visual content to engage your audience.
Then they’ll help you do it. How’s that for full-service?
8. Web copywriting services can act as advisors
Have a question you don’t know where to turn to and ask?
Always curious about how you should capitalize those headers?
If you’ve hired web copywriting services, you have a source to turn to.
In addition to creating quality content, web copywriting services also have their toes in the industry and possess a deep understanding of what it means to succeed within it. Because of this, they can often advise you on everything from the best SEO practices to how best to display your content. This can be invaluable to companies who are trying to build their reputation or get found online.
9. Web copywriters are diverse
If you’re concerned about sounding like all of your competitors, hiring web copywriting services is a smart idea.
In addition to helping differentiate your voice and keep your content fresh, good web copywriting services can also help you build your unique brand voice, which can go a long way toward inspiring customer recognition and building relationships that last with your consumers.
10. Skilled copywriters just make it all easier
We live in a unique time: while the sky is the limit in terms of online success, building a great online business is hard, and you need a good team behind you to make it work.
When you hire professional copywriting services, you gain immediate access to a team of online experts who know what it takes to build a good brand in today’s web-based climate.
From SEO to content creation and social media, web copywriting services can alleviate some of the burdens of growing your business and help you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
[bctt tweet=”From SEO to content creation and social media, web copywriting services can alleviate some of the burdens of growing your business and help you succeed beyond your wildest dreams. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
The Case for Good Web Copywriting Services
Great web copywriting is worth its weight in gold.
By helping you create unique, relevant, targeted content, and push it out to your readers in a way that works for your company, these services can help you grow your online business and gain a real and lasting spot in Google’s coveted SERPs.
Content creation is hard enough as it is, and you shouldn’t have to go it alone. Professional web copywriting services can help streamline your company’s growth and create an environment where you, your customers, and your copy all work together seamlessly.
To get custom, high-quality professional web copywriting services for your content marketing, visit our Content Shop today!
The tests were originally developed under contract with the US Navy and were designed to assess the difficulty of understanding in technical manuals around the year 1978. Within a few years, the tests became the standard within the Department of Defense and quickly spread throughout government.
What do the tests test for though? Essentially, the tests break text down into two parts (word length and sentence length) and then evaluate both parts for readability. Ideally, all parts of a piece of content should be written at a ninth-grade reading level. This ensures that the content will be easy for virtually everyone to understand and ensures that technical manuals, insurance policies and medical documents are not out of reach of the common reader.
There are two parts of the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests:
Flesch reading ease test
Flesch-Kincaid grade level test
They both measure word and sentence length and their results relate conversely to one another.
For example, if a piece of text has a high Reading Ease score, it should have a low grade level score.
We put together a short visual guide to visually display the readability tests. Cred to our designers @ Express Writers!
The Flesch Reading Ease Test
When a piece is evaluated with the Flesch reading-ease test, the higher the score, the better.
0-70.0: easily understood by 15-15 year-old students
0-100.0: easily understood by most 11 year-old students
Reader’s Digest, for example, is a 65 on the readability index while Time is a 52. The highest possible readability score is around 120 and consists of easy words, monosyllable words and sentences like “the dog chased the frog.”
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Test
These tests are popular in the education field and present a piece of text based upon its readability for a US grade level. This makes it easy for adults to judge immediately the difficulty or ease of a piece and to ascertain its suitability for certain groups. Additionally, this test helps ascertain how many years of education a person needs to have in order to read a piece of content. The formula for this test is as follows:
A Content Writer Guide for Better Flesch-Kincaid Readability: 4 Tips
Now that you understand what the tests are, it’s time to talk about how you can be a content writer that adheres to these formulas.
This is important because, when content is simple to read, it’s more likely to grab a reader and maintain interest.
Additionally, all great business writing is simple, clear, and to-the-point.
This cuts away the amount of muck a reader has to wade through and makes it easy to cut to the heart of the content.
To write great content that gets good scores on the readability tests, follow these 4 tips:
1. Keep sentences per paragraph low
Nobody wants to wade into a never-ending paragraph by a wordy content writer. In addition to being ugly, these paragraphs are tough to read and, as such, they’ll earn you a low readability score.
To keep readability up, break your text into nice, neat paragraphs rather than huge blocks of content.
2. Keep words per sentence low
Run-ons, begone!
To keep your readability score high, use no more than 25 words per sentence you write. This keeps our subject clear and makes your writing easy to read.
This also allows you to separate your thoughts and allow your readers to breathe before you leap between ideas.
3. Keep character per word counts low
Unless you’re writing a technical piece, keep your words simple. For example, use “went” instead of “intended to go to.” This makes your text more readable and inherently makes it easier for readers to discern the meaning of.
4. Do away with passive voice
Passive voice is the silent enemy of writers everywhere.
In addition to being annoying, it makes writing confusing.
“The apple was being eaten” doesn’t make nearly as much sense as “Sam ate the apple.”
Keep your writing clear by writing in active rather than passive voice.
Testing your readability
If you write in Microsoft Word, you’ve already got a valuable readability evaluator you probably didn’t even know about.
How cool is that?!
To tap into it, run the typical “spelling & grammar” check from your toolbar:
From here, click the “options” button at the bottom of your screen and check the box that says “show readability statistics:”
This will magically give you all of the stats you need to boost your readability score: including sentence-per-paragraph, words-per-sentence and characters-per-word sentence.
It will also give you your passive sentence percentage and both your Flesch reading ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade level scores.
How Readability Affects SEO
By now, we all know that goodSEO means great content.
Specifically, content that is easy for search engines and people to locate and read.
And, since simple content allows readers to scan quickly and find answers, it’s generally preferred by SEO.
So, it makes sense: writing that falls within desirable Flesch-Kincaid scores can be more desirable to SEO and easier for readers to find and love.
Although most writers are unfamiliar with the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests, tapping into the power of these simple metrics can help you improve your writing and deliver clearer content for your readers.
Get engaging, readable content that matches Flesch-Kincaid standards from our content writers! Check out the Content Shop to order yours today.
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