We’ve all been there: a time when a simple misspelling caused a big problem.
I’ve watched a colleague write an entire report in which he misspelled “public” as “pubic” – as in “the department of pubic affairs.”
Talk about embarrassing.
When simple misspellings slip past a big company’s editors, though, the problems run deep. It can cause embarrassment on a national scale, where fun is poked at your error for as long as the internet is around, or it could even mean a huge loss of funds.
If you’ve ever thought, “Help! I need an editor!” read on to be inspired to do just that by learning more about some of the costliest misspellings that occurred.
I Need an Editor: 10 Prodigious Spelling Mistakes That Cost Thousands (And Maybe Lots, Lots More)
It’s not just dollars that were lost by some of these grammar snafus…it’s reputations. Check out some of the world’s biggest brands who experienced a few simple grammar errors that are still reverberating around the internet. For some of them, it was down to just a few wrong numbers or one piece of punctuation.
A branch of Japan’s second-largest bank, Mizuho Securities was working on a project to sell shares of a company via the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The project was clipping along well enough until one of the employees at Mizuho made a big typo.
While the company had intended to sell single shares for 610,000 yen, the employee got it backwards and listed 610,000 shares for the low, low price of 1 yen.
Within less than 24 hours, the company had hemorrhaged $340 million.
2. Missing apostrophe’s, Old Navy?
Old Navy is famous for producing comfortable, stylish t-shirts with catchy slogans, but the brand cost itself lots of money when it mistakenly printed an entire run of sports-centric t-shirts without the apostrophe in “Let’s Go!”
(Missing apostrophes make my teeth chatter…)
Needless to say, this snafu cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars and delayed its ability to deliver the product to the consumer. What’s more, the mistake also resulted in plenty of Twitter jeering and joking on the part of former Old Navy fans.
3. Grammar snafu at Victoria’s Secret
Like Old Navy, Victoria’s Secret is famous for being cheeky when it comes to their clothing. It seems like the massive lingerie brand could use an editor, though, especially after they released a Secret Body campaign in 2013 with this catchphrase…
“You’ve never seen body’s like this!”
Yikes. Despite the fact that Victoria’s Secret has a completely massive marketing budget, it seems like they couldn’t afford a bit extra to pay an editor.
4. Dear America: Mitt Romney’s ad campaign demise
When Republican candidate Mitt Romney ran for office, he made a big mistake in his own campaign. To the delight of his opponents, Mitt’s mobile app misspelled America to “Amercia.”
As you can imagine, Twitter went wild and, while the campaign never went on record about the snafu, they fixed it hastily, losing many supporters and backers in the process.
5. Think you’re genius, H&M? Think again
Ah, H&M, your story has been a long and bumpy one.
Despite its position as the go-to clothing company for Millennials, H&M has made several simple grammar mistakes that could have easily been prevented by an editor.
One great example is a t-shirt the company released that featured a Thomas Edison quote wherein the world “Genius” was tragically misspelled:
6. Poor Nike support (grammatically, that is)
While we appreciate Nike’s willingness to address its customers’ issues, the Nike Support team made a massive grammar mistake when it confused “then” and “than.” While we understand that grammar mistakes happen, the Twitter jeering that resulted from this particular grammar mistake isn’t good for anyone.
It would be better if @NikeSupport had posted “you have more [than] one” instead. ‘Then’ doesn’t compare; ‘than’ does.
Even HubSpot, our dear influencer in the world of all things content marketing, makes a mistake now and again. The company was the first to call itself out on a Facebook post that said: “Are your press releases been keeping up?”
Luckily, a bit of humor is the best medicine for grammar mistakes, and the company recovered quite nicely.
Thumbs up to Hubspot for handling it the right way.
8. Run towards better grammar, Reebok
What happens when you build a faulty advertising campaign and post it all over New York subways? You get ridiculed, that’s what!
Unfortunately, Reebok experienced this exact fate when it published its “Run Easy New York” campaign, which read like this:
9. Stella Artois: Great taste, bad grammar
While everyone loves the crisp and refreshing taste of imported beer Stella Artois, not everyone loves the grammar mistakes the company used to make in its marketing campaign. One notable example is this apostrophe splice, which did some serious damage to the brand’s credibility:
While this simple snafu could’ve been avoided with the help of an editor, it looks like the company didn’t have the budget or time for such things!
10. L.L. Bean finds out that misspelled phone numbers make bank
L.L. Bean made headlines when it sent out a back-to-school catalogue to millions of homes. Unfortunately, the catalogue hadn’t been edited well enough and, instead of including their own phone number, the company had included the phone number of a Virginia company that was in no way related.
The mistake became costly when L.L. Bean was forced to buy the phone number from the Virginia company in question, at a cost of upwards of six figures.
5 Easy Ways to Avoid Misspellings in Your Online Content
As you’ve seen from the examples above, grammar mistakes can cost you big in your content, business, and even your overall reputation.
Regardless of whether it’s a simple comma splice or an all-out misspelling, these things have the potential to steal thousands and even millions of dollars from your company.
Luckily, there’s a way to avoid this fate.
Here’s five easy ways you can avoid spelling and grammar mistakes in your online writing:
1. Take your time
There’s no way to argue that HubSpot didn’t understand what was proper grammar and what wasn’t. Instead of being born from a lack of knowledge, their grammar mistake was likely born from a lack of time. This is a common problem.
When you’re rushing to create advertising content, it’s easy to make mistakes.
Avoid this outcome by taking your time and ensuring that everything you write is on-point before you push it through to your followers.
2. Read through your content
The more eyes on a piece of content the better.
Before you push it out to your readers, go back through and give the material you’ve written a read.
You’ll likely catch mistakes you hadn’t noticed in the writing process and be able to fix them before they move through to an editor.
3. Use a grammar checker
Since grammar has become so essential in online content, there are several excellent, free grammar checkers available today.
While the spelling and grammar check built into your word processor will likely do an excellent job, third-party services like Grammarly are sought-after for their accuracy and comprehensiveness. I love Office Word for its built-in spell checker.
Give your text a run through a service like this before it gets published.
4. Keep an eye on your comments
If by chance you do miss a spelling or grammar mistake and it finds its way into your online content, your followers will likely be the first to notice.
With this in mind, keep an eye on your comments and mentions.
If someone sees a mistake you missed, fix it immediately to keep the follower backlash and potential financial repercussions to a minimum.
5. Hire an editor!
That’s right – you need an editor!
Want to know a secret? I involved multiple editors in the writing of this post. That’s right. Even though I’m a professional copywriter, I know I’m not the best editor for my own content.
You need that “final eye.” Even if you’re a long-time, professional writer with a background in all types of great content, hiring an editor is a simple yet efficient way to make sure embarrassing spelling and grammar mistakes don’t populate your content.
In addition to catching mistakes before they go public, a good editor can also help you craft better content, cater more efficiently to your reader’s needs, and develop a brand voice that helps grow rather than damage your company.
Say it with us, “I Need an Editor”
There’s not a single company on earth that couldn’t benefit from the services of a good editor.
Because spelling and grammar mistakes are so easy to make and can be so incredibly costly, hiring a great editor is a wise business decision that can potentially save you millions down the road.
Even if you’ve never worked with an editor before, enlisting the skills of a good one can completely overhaul your business. With this in mind, don’t hesitate to get to work hiring an editor sooner rather than later. While some of the spelling and grammar mistakes listed in this article may be funny, you won’t be laughing when and if they come to affect your business.
While many brands balk at the expense of an editor, the fact of the matter is that a good editor is much, much cheaper than the longstanding costs of a preventable (and embarrassing) spelling or grammar mistake. Don’t lower your standards to rush or be cheap: hire one for your content.
That’s a truth humans have experienced since the introduction of the wheel.
The caveman who used a hammer and chisel surely got the job done faster – and better – than his neighbor with chipped teeth.
Another way to word this philosophy? Work smarter, not harder.
If you’re a business owner, this is your new mantra (if it wasn’t already).
Now, how about some tools to make the content marketing part of it all easier?
The Right Tools Make Your Content Marketing More Effective (Read: Possible)
Running a business is a lot of hard work.
It doesn’t matter if you’re managing a corporation of 100+ employees from a mahogany board room or running a scrappy insurgency of “me, myself, and I” from your breakfast nook.
That’s over 200 million people, all contributing to the $1.5 trillion done in global e-commerce sales.
If you’re not going digital with your business, you’re shortchanging your business.
The catch is that people have to know you’re there before they can care – or register, purchase, donate, sign-up, re-post, or even click through to your site. And you can’t just expect any old online presence to pay dividends.
The right online presence – crafted with the right tools – will make the difference. And that difference is huge.
Chitika, an online advertising firm, studied millions of clicks and determined that people click on only first page results a whopping 94% of the time. Sarah Wai, of Tribute Media, says effective online presence is obtained with “social media presence,” “search engine prevalence,” and content.
So without further ado, let’s plunge into our top 10 picks for these categories:
Content Marketing
SEO
& Social Media
Content Marketing: Your Go-To List of Top 10 Tools
Content marketing can be summed up like this:
It’s a way to build your brand for a specific audience so that they will take action on what you’re offering (convert on a service or product).
That may sound simple, but the moving parts required to make that process work are incredibly complex.
Optimization, tracking, metrics, split-testing, and other business best practices can be hard to keep track of.
That’s where these 10 content marketing tools come in handy:
1. BuzzSumo. This all-in-one monitoring tool offers content research and insights, studies influencer activity, analyzes competitors, provides real-time alerts concerning keyword searches and shares, and so much more. We absolutely love this tool and use it constantly, both for our own content and clients. BuzzSumo helps people understand influencers on the web by being able to follow and compile a list of influencers, and differentiate between topics and domains. Read my guide on how to use BuzzSumo.
2. Qualaroo. Gain qualitative information on web content by moving beyond traffic analysis to understanding the intent of website visitors. With Qualaroo, customized, targeted questions are deployed at every stage of your website, from home page to “deep in your conversion funnel.” Content marketers can easily use Qualaroo’s insights to intelligently adjust their online content to better user experience and drive higher conversion.
3. Typeform. This gorgeous and fun tool makes boring forms a work of art. A simple and intuitive drag-and-drop user interface allows people to build informative, thorough, and appealing websites across all media platforms. Tablets, smartphones, laptops – Typeform is programmed to perfectly interact with a mobile world. Typeform’s Basic plan is full of features and absolutely free.
4. Optimizely. This is a powerful, sweeping testing platform helps content marketers deliver truly personalized digital experiences to their visitors and consumers. Optimizely makes it easy to test multiple variables across multiple pages, so marketers can truly understand how even the smallest of changes affects individual visitor behavior. A 30-day free trial is available.
5. CrazyEgg. This interactive analytics algorithm shows site owners exactly where visitors are clicking, how far they’re scrolling down the page, the number of clicks on any element of any given pages, and more. That means you can see what’s working and what’s not. Easy and fast setup allows users to immediately get up and running with CrazyEgg. Plus, all plans are free for the first 30 days.
6. UserTesting. This is a unique testing service that actually provides site owners with audio, video, and written feedback. UserTesting works hand-in-hand with companies to create customized tests that record real users interacting with the company’s web content on any platform or device. See exactly why site visitors confirm or abandon purchases; how they react to photos, videos, and other media assets; and conduct A/B testing for winning variables.
7. Google Docs/Sheets. Everyone uses Google Docs. But very few people probably use these tools to their full potential. Content is not only readily available to teams and organizations through Google Docs, it’s also highly-customizable. Users can create brand-specific layouts and designs.
Sheets offers more than just Excel-style columns. It’s customizable as well, works across all platforms and devices, and always saves your work. A feature that many people forget to use with Sheets is the Explore panel, that helps users gain insight from summaries or selected columns.
8. ContentMarketer.io. With an umbrella of three separate tools named Connector, Notifier, and Marketer, ContentMarketer.io is all about getting your content seen. Connector helps build loyalty with personalized outreach emails. Notifier instantly reaches out to influencers you’re mentioning in your content, building important networks and relationships. Marketer finds influencers interacting with your content. Plus, if you know the creator of the tools, Sujan Patel – well, he’s really cool 😉
9. ClearVoice. Dynamic and easily shareable editorial calendars help users organize what’s next and search what content has worked in the past. ClearVoice then connects companies to veteran freelances that help create engaging content. Content is then published direct to site and influencers are notified. Finally, both content and freelancer performance can be measured and quantified. Three available plans are available at customized pricing options.
Whether it’s for a blog, home page, white paper, or just about anything else, we have an expert copy team that can write for you. Marketers and business owners need only to upload their project specs, and our full-solution team takes care of the rest. All the logistics are managed by us, from planning and posting copy to handling all interaction with the perfect writer for the job. All content is combed through by professional editors and put to an originality test with Copyscape.
Better content drives higher conversion rates and top rankings–and our team is fully invested for success. We’re not just here to get your investment: we truly care about our content, and our clients.
SEO: Your Go-To List of the Top 10 Tools
Search engine optimization has undergone many changes over the last several years. Google updates have made the quality of content the key, eliminating the possibility of gaming the system with practices like keyword stuffing.
The following 10 tools will help any business optimize their content for greater exposure, better rankings, better click-through rates, better conversion, and more.
11. KW Finder. This is a long tail keyword search tool that helps located keywords with low competition and low SEO difficulty. That means it’s finding highly-searched terms that no one is taking advantage of. Cost-per-click and pay-per-click analysis is also readily available. Monthly and annual plans are available with KW Finder, or you can conduct five free searches every 24 hours.
12. SEMrush. An in-depth tool that provides a comprehensive content audit for all your web pages. Metrics used include competitor comparison, keyword difficulty and ranking, as well as on-page health.
13. RankTrackr. An SEO tool that allows users to track their site and keyword rankings at both global and local levels – indispensable for small businesses. RankTrackr can also offer competition comparisons and provides plenty of filters and data export options.
14. MozPro. Research, information, advice, how-tos, and more make Moz the go-to for SEO questions and issues. It only makes sense, then, that they would provide a complete SEO toolset that helps anyone collect and decipher their site’s optimization and how effective it really is. A 30-day free trial will allow users to see just how well MozPro works.
15. Dragon Metrics. This toolset allows users to track their site ranking in real-time, provides content analysis and competitor research, and analyzes keywords and backlinks to determine how they’re interacting with your content. With a particular focus on ranking an enterprise or global level, Dragon Metrics can be a huge time saver for larger companies or international small businesses.
16. Google Trends. View your keywords, headlines, and other content over the course of time to determine when and how they spike when they do. A thorough Google Trends user can use their charts to forecast what will be hot in the near future.
17. Screaming Frog. This UK-based company offers a full suite of content marketing tools that include conversion-rate optimization, PPC management, link building, and their renowned SEO Spider software. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool can be downloaded absolutely free. It’s perfect for in-depth SEO audits, as the software combs through massive amounts of information and every browser imaginable to find keywords and content used on your site or your competitors’.
18. Google Analytics. This tried-and-tested tool can track just about any kind of traffic. Best of all, Google Analytics can display keyword relevance and what exact search terms people utilize to find your site (and click-through).
19. Wordstream. This PPC software is designed to work closely with optimized content with a particular focus on driving CPC down and CTR and conversion through the roof. Wordstream’s 20 Minute Work Week is a sort of planning software that helps users create and manage PPC campaigns and social media advertising in very little time.
20. Microsoft SEO Toolkit. The computer giant offers more than laptops and Windows. Their free SEO Toolkit is actually a robust marketing program that optimizes content for Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Because it hails from a behemoth like Microsoft, support features for the Toolkit are second to none.
Social Media: Your Go-To Top 10 Tool List
A Shopify report showed that they had received 37 million social media visits. The same report also points out that Instagram’s average Shopify order from Instagram users is valued at over $60. Of course, Facebook dominates social media e-commerce with nearly 70% of total visits and purchases.
The thing is, it’s not just Facebook and Instagram anymore. Marketers need to be aware of Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, Snapchat, Pinterest, Ello, Hyper, Periscope, and the list continues to grow. These ten tools will help any content marketer stay on top of – and efficiently utilize – all of their social media content.
21. Tweetdeck. This tool allows users to link multiple accounts, schedule future Twitter campaigns, manage lists, and filter through categories (news, images, links, etc.).
22. PostCron. Multiple social media accounts are breeze for PostCron. It’s a post scheduler designed to show what you want when you want to show it. Plus, it protects your brand by offering automatic watermarks on media assets. PostCron can also bulk upload posts across all major social media platforms.
23. Buffer. One of the kinds of social media tools, Buffer makes posting content across all of your social media platforms and accounts simple and effective. An intuitive scheduling program, Buffer also provides performance reports for CTR on your social media posts. Plus, Buffer makes collecting and sharing content you like on other sites very easy without having to bookmark everything.
24. SocialPilot. Both a scheduler and a marketing tool, SocialPilot offers bulk scheduling and team-shared calendars. The bonus to SocialPilot, though, is that they will provide users with content suggestions based upon content performance and web users’ interactions with your accounts.
25. Jarvis. This is a light tool accompanied by a great blog for social media marketing advice and tips. The tool itself schedules posts across all your social media accounts with one click and re-shares evergreen content when you want.
26. Kuku. Kuku is a social media net that allows for greater content customization than other schedulers. Similar accounts can be gathered into individual channels. Posts can be automatically differentiated based upon their platform. It also measures follower rates, clicks, and user engagement.
27. Edgar. So many platforms are built on providing a constant barrage of new content, which can totally overwhelm users. Edgar schedules posts much like Buffer, though users can distinguish posts by categories. Where Edgar really shines, though, is that it will intelligently go back to old content and re-shares it automatically when new content runs out. Since social shares can be fleeting, Edgar’s re-shares feel like new content anyway.
28. Nuvi. The Nuvi Dashboard looks like something out of a science fiction movie. It’s a beautifully-designed set of data visualizations and measurements that show real-time numbers of followers, engagement, demographics, and more. Mobile alerts and in-depth reports make it easy to track your social media efforts from anywhere at any time.
29. Trendspottr. The gurus at Trendspottr say they “transform social media noise” into actionable strategies. When a company has numerous accounts across all the social media platforms, it can be hard to track content and reaction. Trendspottr does that for you. It follows trends and helps users know when to share what content for maximum effect – plus how to get that information to influencers.
30. Cafyne. Cafyne is an all-inclusive app designed to do everything for your social media efforts. It provides protection from online threats, monitors profiles of customers and partners, provides analytics and reports, offers post scheduling, and intelligently archives past material. Free trials and enterprise demos are available.
Build Your Perfect Toolbox
They key is to find out which apps and services work for you. Once you have a marketing plan in hand, be sure to take advantage of all the free trials and demos these companies offer. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the interfaces and dashboards. Research features to determine what programs you can truly utilize.
Then get going. Get posting. And grow your online presence. You’ll be surprised at just how much you can increase that presence by using a suite of powerful content tools.
Do you need help with SEO-friendly, high-quality content creation you’ll be proud to market? Contact Express Writers today.
Can’t wait to escape to the beach and enjoy your margarita this summer?
Hold on there, if you’re a business owner or marketer…
The sad news is your business and marketing won’t run itself, if you’re gone and no one else is left to run it.
That’s especially true of your online presence, like blogging and social media.
It might seem ridiculously tempting to just let the blog sit still for a month and take off, but here are some killer statistics that prove why you shouldn’t let your blog stagnate (even for a week).
Why Consistent Blogging Wins
Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links than those who don’t. That’s a LOT of SEO ranking juice.
92% of companies that blog more than once a day (that’s a lot of blogging) have won customers from their blog.
And finally…ready for it? Marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those who don’t.
Why would you put all of that on hold for a month? Don’t let your online exposure and presence drop because of time off.
The good news is that you don’t have to fold up that beach towel just yet.
3 Ways to Keep Your Blogging Healthy Despite the Summer Holiday
Keep reading for my top three methods to have a consistent content flow to boost your online presence despite the summer vacation season.
1. Stock topics and keyword research in advance.
This one’s very simple. I’ll break topic skeletons and keyword research topic searches into two points.
#1: Topic skeleton fodder
For the topic skeletons, all you need is Word and a couple hours of time.
Come up with great blog topics by asking yourself a few questions and digging down with solid answers. It doesn’t even have to be perfect, what you write down: a professional blog writer can finalize your content to perfection and come up with headlines that will earn more clicks than your rough sketches.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself. Outline your answers in a doc, which can be a rough sketch you send to your writer.
Your story: Your founding story alone can make multiple great blog topics. Think of the value points of your company and why you believe in what you do. For example: “My T-shirt printing company stands out because of the ink we produce and the quality assurance we give our clients.”
What are your client’s biggest pain points? Each pain point can make a new blog topic possibility. Example, “My T-shirt printing clients come to me with the problem that a lot of shirts are made cheaply. The print might come off in the wash or with use too quickly.” Aha! 7 Ways to Preserve Your T-Shirt Print-Ons, or How to Wash Your T-Shirt And Avoid Fading (Every Time). There you go – winning blog topics out of a few customer pain points.
The second side of this point can garner a double list of blog topics.
#2: Keyword Research
For keyword research opportunities to help you come up with great SEO topics, I love SEMrush and KWFinder. It’s simple to research for your best keyword opportunities when using these tools.
If keyword discovery requires too much time to figure out, check to see if the writing solution you’re using can do the keyword research for you. (We offer keyword strategy ourselves here.)
2. Invest in a blog writing service.
There’s no way around this one. If you want your blog to literally run itself, you’ll need to invest in a good blog writer (or two).
Here are key things to ask for when you’re reaching out to your potential blog ghostwriter so you can find a perfect fit:
Writing samples: This is key. Those with experience will have a large portfolio available and diverse samples.
Online & search optimization writing skills: Although the creative skills of a genius writer are at the core of successful online writing, and that should be your primary concern, you should check secondarily for a skill set in SEO content optimization skills. Make sure your writer knows how to write a unique meta description for every blog, meta title, and how to use your topical keywords naturally throughout the post.
3. Don’t just hire a writer; get a specialist who fits your industry.
Have you heard of the Google E-A-T and Y-M-Y-L standards? Basically, Google looks for expertise, authoritativeness, and trust in every post going out on the web. For the intense industries, like finance or law, Google looks for even higher standards (Your Money or Your Life).
You need an expert copywriter if your content falls in a high level category to get the most results out of your Google presence. To make sure your blogger can match these standards, ask for relevant samples in your industry and their real-life expertise in your niche (example, 10 years as a paralegal).
Conclusion
Don’t let summer get your content strategy down. With a serious, active blog strategy, your leads, online presence and revenue will stay on the rise.
It’s easy to enjoy time off when you have experts keeping your blog up. Invest in your online content today & save with code summer5. Visit the Content Shop.
Asking for shares on your content, especially if you’re starting out, might feel an awful lot like asking a friend or family member for money: uncomfortable, and somewhat embarrassing.
Luckily, you don’t have to be stuck in this share-free zone forever.
By knowing the best practices that will make your content delightfully share-worthy, you can boost its impact across the web and succeed in making your content as popular as you’re dreaming of.
Keep reading to find out our best tips to earning your maximum mileage on social media with every post you create. Let’s delve in!
The Secret Sauce to Social Shares: Simpler Than You Think (or Is it?)
Social shares, via platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc, are essential to the success of your online content (blogs, etc). It can do everything, from helping you build your brand to extending your reach – and allowing you to boost your online content marketing efforts to the next level.
But how do you start to tap into the immense power of social content sharing?
The answer is by connecting with people that can spread the word about your content, find your content truly useful to them, and boost your reputation online – your audience.
Once you’ve connected with the right audience, did you know that simply and honestly asking for social shares is one of the most effective ways to get them? It sounds way too simple, but Wordstream lists it as the #1 way to earn a share. ASK your readers!
Bloggers that don’t ask will likely never experience the level of popularity they want from their online content.
Keep in mind that to earn the recognition of both customers, readers and peers, you’ll need to craft content that earns a high number of shares across the web. We’ll share tips below with more on that.
And by asking for social shares and having content that has the potential to get somewhere (it’s level of usefulness, interest, etc.) you can expand your reach and become an authority in your given industry.
7 Best Practices for Earning Your Most Social Shares (Ever)
I’ve divided my 7 key points into two lists: #1-4 in my list below are mandatory prerequisites you should be checking off your list before you even ask for a share. Next, #5-8 will detail what to do to physically see shares happen. Learn and enjoy!
Pre-publish List: Practices 1-4
These four points are essential to make sure you get the most potential social juice out of every single post. Keep in mind the first one is optional, but absolutely worthwhile. Enjoy!
1. Optional but powerful: influencer love (mention other people in your content)
Ready to learn how to create what I call an influencer love post?
First, why is this optional? These are intensive, time-taking pieces, and they’re evergreen: you’ll only need a few if you do them right.
It would be a great idea to do them periodically (for us, once/twice a year is enough). So, you don’t have to start here, or even create this type of content right away: but it’s worth it to know how to create these, and put one on your to-do list.
Second: mentioning your influencers might sound simple, but you have to do it the right way.
If you do, it’s a HUGE key to getting somewhere – not just with social shares in numbers, but all-around online connections and relationships (what’s more, you hone in on talking to the right people, too).
Your key here is to mention your influencers in your content.
These are defined as the people who are top-notch and well-respected in your industry.
You can easily find them in BuzzSumo – once you’re logged in, it’s as simple as clicking on Influencers. From there, the Twitter influencers tab displays, and you can type in any topic to instantly see your influencers. Here’s what it looks like when I look up my industry (Joe Pulizzi is the man!):
When you mention an influencer in your content and let him or her know about your post via social media, that influencer is likely to share your content for you, leading to increased visibility and more social shares with their audience and yours.
After writing and publishing it (which took a while – several weeks to compile and check the list), we tweeted to everyone we mentioned in the post that they’d been featured. Look at the stats – over 500 shares to date. A large part of the influencers retweeted our mention to their followers, which made for even more exposure. And, we had 17 comments on the piece – many from the influencers themselves.
We even took the finished copy and designed an infographic out of it.
In total, it was shared over 300 times, and we saw retweets and social shares from the influencers as well.
Even better, an interesting opportunity came my way from the relationships built. One of the influencers stayed connected with me, and reached out just this month randomly asking if I would like to help co-moderate a G+ group. The group has over 150,000 members. He’s even going to allow me to promote my book a bit in the group.
How’s that for connections? Yeah!
2. Build reader trust before asking for social shares
Fact: content is a give-take relationship.
You can’t expect to take something (shares) from readers if you don’t give them something (i.e. expert content) first. With this in mind, it’s essential to ensure that your readers trust you before you start asking them to spread your content around.
This is important for a few reasons. First, 78% of readers share content largely to build their own relationships. If you’re providing them with content that is not authoritative or trustworthy, you stand to damage those relationships for them, which they’re unlikely to appreciate.
Secondly, 94% of people who choose to share information think so carefully before doing so. Readers want to share content that will make a difference, and taking the time to assure them that yours will is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to earning content shares.
While earning reader trust is a long-term process, it’s a necessary step that can be done through providing quality, informative content, responding to reader inquiries and comments, and pulling solid sources and statistics to share with your audience.
3. Make your social sharing buttons obvious, and sparse
Social sharing buttons are a great way to ask for shares and make it easy for your readers to take the desired action. To put this another way: readers are far more likely to share your content if you make it really, really simple for them to do so.
Even if the body of your content is interesting, inspiring, and relevant, most users won’t take the time to share it unless you make it really simple for them to do so. For best results, install social share buttons to the space right beneath your content.
Be aware that the size, shape, and color of social sharing buttons can make a big difference in terms of their effectiveness, so play around a bit and find out which ones work best for your company.
What’s more, you’ll want to be careful to avoid including too many social sharing buttons.
Too many social sharing buttons at the bottom of a post can actually confuse readers and damage the number of social shares you get from a piece of content, so it’s wise to limit your sharing buttons accordingly. CoSchedule reports that Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are the most-used social share buttons on the web, so you may be wise to stick to those three.
4. Write effective headlines
Even if the body content of your article is airtight, people aren’t going to want to share it if the headline doesn’t reflect that. Because of this, it’s critical to pay extra attention to your headline. Content with intriguing, clickable headlines gets shared more often and improving your headline is a simple place to start ensuring your content is getting the social shares it deserves.
For best results, try taking a page out of BuzzFeed’s or Upworthy’s (which, by the way, has a share pitch – “Pass ‘em on” – in its slogan) book to intrigue interest with your headlines. Cliffhangers, lists, how-tos, and “Avoid the dangers of X” articles work very well when it comes to attracting and inspiring reader attention, and many marketers have had great success inspiring social shares based on headline strength alone.
5. Add a (good) featured image
Content with images earns much more social engagement than text-only material. Because of this, it’s critical to add a featured image to your content if you’re hoping to get it shared. Adding an image improves the way that your content looks on-site and makes readers more likely to share it with their unique audiences. What’s more, adding an image can actually help boost awareness of your brand or product, especially if you create a custom image that reflects your company.
Don’t be average with your images: think of a cool custom artwork piece, use Canva to make a branded image that looks good, or just go and hire a graphic designer. The better and more striking your images, the more likely you’ll get your best mileage on social sharing.
Now That Your Pre-Publish-Musts Are Checked Off: Here’s How to Ask For & Earn Shares
Now, how do you actually do that? Let’s delve in. (It’s not as easy as just writing one or two emails. ;))
Who knew that getting people to share your content could be as simple as just asking people to share your content? Well, it is. Content is a give and take relationship. Once you’ve given the reader something valuable in the form of the high-quality, well-written content you’ve worked hard on, it’s fair to also ask them for something in return.
6. Ask for a share: via a site CTA
A call-to-action (or CTA) is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a line that tells your readers what you want them to do next. Chances are, you’ve seen these all around the web. Lines like “Subscribe now,” and “download today” are both calls-to-action.
By implementing a good call to action in your content, you can easily encourage readers to take a desired action and help your content spread far and wide across various social channels.
But, did you know that despite their effectiveness 70% of B2B websites don’t have a call-to-action? It’s not hard to see how these companies are throwing social shares in the trash by neglecting to create CTAs.
To write a great CTA for your website, blog post, or landing page, consider these tips:
Keep your goal in mind. What do you want people to do? Regardless of whether you’re trying to inspire them to click, share, or download, it’s critical to keep that goal in mind as you write your CTA. Every word should reinforce the goal and, if it doesn’t, it needs to get cut.
Make it action-oriented. One case study by Unbounce found that the owner of a B2B website noted a 38.36% increase in his conversion rates after he changed his CTA from the words “order information” to the words “Get information.” While both “order” and “Get” are action words, “Get” is much stronger and gives the impression of immediacy and relevance, which is fantastic for a CTA.
Keep your CTA short. Most experts recommend keeping your CTA to below 150 characters. This allows you enough space to give your readers a good idea of what they’re interacting with but not enough space that they get bored reading and leave your site.
7. Send an email campaign that that raves so much about your post that they have to share
Sometimes you don’t even have to blatantly ask – you just need to make them want to share.
And that can be done by writing and sending a super creative, confident email sent to your email list to publicize – and get them to publicize – your new post.
Look how Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers does this:
You really want to go read that post, now, right? I mean, 7,000 words, an ultimate destination on how to write better, whaaaa?
I’ve really upped my email campaigns for my blog this year, more than I ever have (once/week in volume, and more creativity/time spent on the writing). Lately, I’ve been adding emoticons 🙂 😉 in the headers. I’ve gotten more responses and even a new client from the email campaigns I’ve been sending.
Don’t neglect your email campaigns – tie them to your content publishing and build your list! Consistency here is key. For mail campaign tools, I love Mailchimp.
BONUS TIP #8: When asking, don’t beg for shares
Here’s a bonus tip for you.
When asking for shares, the tone in which you do it can make all of the difference. A simple statement like “Please share this post” or “Please retweet” can have a huge impact on your social share numbers across the board. Whatever you do, though, stay away from lengthy pleas for your followers to share your content. In addition to coming off as desperate, this also damages your share rates and can have an effect exactly the opposite of what you’re looking for.
Asking for Shares: A Critical Skill
While asking for shares may still feel uncomfortable, it’s an important skill to master and our top key practices can help you get it down quickly and efficiently.
By asking for and encouraging social shares on your hard-won content, you’ll be building your online reputation faster than you can say, “share now.”
Struggling to create solid content your will readers love?
Check out our Content Shop today to learn more about how our team of expert writers can help you!
“Yes, hi. We’re a content automation company and need your services.”
“I’d love to help. Can you explain your needs?”
“Well, we’ve built software to create content that hits target audiences and is personable, but we really need human writers to add words and basically clean up the text.
How good are your writers?”
“They are great at writing–they’re actually human! We’d love to help.”
**
I wish I could say we snuck in that sarcastic sentence at the end, but Sarah is actually much nicer than that.
She’s one of our Content Specialists who answers our phones daily—and that was a call she got earlier this year.
We aren’t disclosing company names for privacy reasons, but believe us when we say that a large automation company actually called in after they saw us on Google to confess that their “content automation” needed the human touch.
And they’re not the first company to feel that way.
[clickToTweet tweet=”In order to succeed today, you need to get personal, and this is something only actual people can do. -@ExpWriters” quote=”In order to succeed with today’s customers, you need to get personal, and this is something only actual people can do well. This isn’t likely to change anytime soon.”]
At Express Writers, we use and love tools that allow us to automate some form of our content marketing process: i.e., Buffer for scheduling social media posts and visuals, KWFinder for honing down the best keywords online, and SEMrush for site audit and online presence analysis.
But here’s why automation won’t come close to replacing the human writer.
The written copy, the created content that fuels the automation, is always created by humans.
Sure, you can plug the copy in any automation tool you want after it’s done, but first: you need real copy, crafted by a human.
We rely on human copywriters to create every bit of human content that fuelsour content automation part. We have a social media copywriter writing unique posts for every single scheduled post automated to go out in Buffer. We have a blogger and a content editor involved in the process it takes to create every single blog post of ours.
The day a business or brand stops relying on humans for the creation part of it all, is the day they set themselves up for failure.
On a more technical side, a few years ago WebProNews interviewed the CEO of a leading automation company, and reported that human writers aren’t going anywhere yet, because of the need for the human perspective and qualitative analysis in online content.
To further this point, let’s look at what went on when content automation has been attempted. (Because let’s face it, trying to engineer the next automated writer replacement has happened.)
A lot…went wrong.
The Facts: Stories of Content Automation Attempts that Failed
Take a look at content automation that went wrong.
Buffer: A Leading Social Media Tool Closes their Social Content Automation Feature
Remember the tools I mentioned that we use?
Well, one of them, Buffer (a leading social media tool) used to allow you to automatically schedule already-created posts. These were curated and pulled for you in a Suggestions feed. With one click, you could add their “suggested posts” to your feed and schedule – without even reading the content that you’re sharing.
It looked like this:
Guess what happened to that handy-dandy social media automation feature?
They did away with it, announcing that it was closing in 2015.
Why?
In their own words–it didn’t hold up to the standard of value they believed in, across social media. It encouraged the sharing of content that wasn’t personalized to the person sharing it.
Here’s what they said in the announcement:
(P.S. We love Buffer all the more for their commitment to truly valuable content sharing in social media.)
Now, let’s go deeper.
The last time someone tried to use actual robots for the most important part of content marketing, the writing part, things went terribly wrong.
Let’s explore the automation failures of history to show you exactly how that happened.
Content Automation Gone Terribly Wrong: The Story of Spinners & Content Farms
During the days of yesteryear, sneaky content creators tried to devise a way to spin out tons of “quality” content without bothering with hiring actual humans to write, edit, and post it.
They did this through a series of “black-hat” SEO tactics including content spinning, content mills or farms, and scraped content.
I’m going to break down the key two methods used back then: article spinning, and content farming.
#1: Article Spinning (Spun Right Down the Drain)
There were actually programs called article spinners – and they still exist today.
Take a look at the gibberish that “Free Article Spinner” gives you, once you type or copy in a block of text, enter their captcha, and hit Spin. (Yes, this program is still out there!)
Content spinning, using article spinners like these, used to actually be a thing.
Black hat SEOs used spinning software to take one article and “spin” it into dozens of new articles at the push of a button. As seen above, content spinning often resulted in low-quality, unintelligible writing that human readers couldn’t even decipher.
Google Panda Farmer is one of the main reasons no one is spinning articles anymore. It was one of the biggest algorithms that ever happened (it went down early February 2011), striking down over 11% of the spam on the web, de-ranking all duplicate and most of the spun content, and decreasing by 90% the rankings of big sites like Ezinearticles.com, hubpages.com, Answers.com, Articlesbase.com, and similar places that housed a lot of cheap, thin content written only for SEO. (See a more indepth analyses of Farmer on Searchmetrics.)
I like to think that Farmer was Google’s announcement to the web that it’s algorithm was human-based: created for humans, by humans. Not some robotic crap that you could “game.”
#2: Content Mills (or Farms): Not Your Old McDonald’s
Besides article spinning, there was also such a thing called “content mills”, or “content farms.” To produce a huge number of articles in a short period of time, these mills (usually offshore) used hundreds of writers to crank out low-quality content predominantly aimed at satisfying keyword requirements. Their writers, overworked beyond belief, ended up producing content that doesn’t even sound human.
Interestingly enough, big box brands were actually the ones behind many content farms–with the writer ending up getting paid between $2-4 an article, or if you were lucky, $5 and sometimes more. There’s a public email on SEObook.com showing a very typical email from a content farm.
Read the below and keep in mind that 200 orders could be 200 x 10, 100, or 1,000 articles per order = hundreds to thousands of articles in one week, for one brand, written to form and with no originality or thought.
That email is very typical.
How do I know?
We’ve encountered these brands ourselves, and I was wrapped up in being their employee back in the olden days (2011-early 2012, pre-Farmer).
Names must be kept secret since we signed an NDA, but you would not believe the common stores you walk into and their content creation process. The ones we encountered were hiring Indian offshore managers to manage their “human content” creation process, and then those Indians were doing some serious nickel-and-diming across the human writers they tried to hire and then demand crazy amounts of work from.
I hope all those brands are learning their lesson.
To the writer reading this: never settle. Ever.
Because the writer still taking work at pennies are the ones keeping those mills alive.
And with that, let’s move on to what the online content landscape looks like today.
Why Fresh, Custom Content Wins Today (& How Google is the Driving Force)
Throughout the last few years, Google has continued to release algorithm updates aimed specifically at punishing low-quality sites and scraped, duplicate, or low-quality content and rewarding high-quality sites that feature expert content written by real people. It’s last huge release was a 145-page Search Quality Evaluator Guide where it revealed that real humans review each website for several main factors (E-A-T, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust; and Y-M-Y-L, Your Money or Your Life, denoting the standards needed for content that affects your life and finances). I explored that doc in a 3,000-word blog here.
This obvious preference for fresh, relevant content necessitates great, human writers. This is especially true given the recent rise of content marketing.
Currently, 78% of CMOs believe that custom content (which let’s face it, computers can’t humanly create) is the future of marketing as a whole.
Additionally, 61% of consumers are more likely to interact with and purchase from a company that offers custom content… than they are one that doesn’t.
Something else to throw in the stat bucket…
4.6 billion pieces of content are produced every day. 83,000 blog posts are posted live every single hour. Every minute, 200 million emails are sent. (ACI Information Group)
In light of these statistics, it’s clear that you’re going to have to create really, really good content to get noticed.
A few examples:
Poo~Pourri stands out and has sold over 4 million products because of their extremely creative, humorous voice and copy. Neil Patel publishes such a thorough guide every week on Quick Sprout that his Facebook followers say things like, man, you crushed it again, this is the ultimate life guide to my next business move.
No matter how many leaps and bounds marketing automation makes in the next several years, it’s going to be impossible to replace the human touch altogether needed to create online content that truly shines and stands out online.
The Downside of Automation: It’s An Age of Relationships
Automation is great for many things: it’s helped us become more efficient, productive, targeted marketers who pull out a whole lot less of our hair in the process.
It’s also helped us measure our results, stick to schedules, and become better business people.
The one thing automation can’t do, however, is actually build a human relationship.
Not until we’re all a bunch of robots, at least…
Why Millennials are a Key Reason Not to Automate
I’d argue that, right now, we’re living in the age of relationships.
If you need an example, all you need to do is look at millennials. Millennials (generally defined as consumers between the ages of 18-34) currently make up a full ¼ of the U.S. population and, combined, they boast an annual purchasing power of more than $200 billion dollars.
This not only makes them one of the largest generations ever, but it also makes them the single most powerful marketing group in existence today.
In addition to the fact that they’re the largest marketing group, they’re also one of the most unique. As it turns out, millennials don’t share much of anything with other marketing groups.
The reason for this is that they’re highly connected, incredibly tech literate, and very focused on the development of relationships with brands they value.
AdAge reports that Millennials spend about 25 hours online each week and that most of that time is spent searching for custom content. When it comes to the content they choose to interact with, millennials consistently rank authenticity as being more important than the actual meat of the content they consume and they’re overwhelmingly more likely to trust personal recommendations or experts than they are random advertising and pushy sales tactics.
To put this another way: millennials value relationships – with one another and with the brands they choose to purchase from – and it’s clear that relationships are quickly becoming one of the most important factors in the purchasing decisions they make.
They value relationships so much, in fact, that 42% of millennial consumers state it’s very important to them to have a role in creating and developing the future services and products of the companies they purchase from.
Several companies have done this exceedingly well (Lays’ “Do us a Flavor” campaign is a great example) and, as a result, they’ve reaped the rewards of heightened customer loyalty and powerful advertising.
This is another example of something that’s very difficult for automated systems to do: while automated systems can schedule and scrape content, they can’t reach out and communicate directly with consumers in a meaningful and encouraging way.
Because of this, it’s clear that companies who want to build strong relationships with an increasingly millennial customer base need to do so by creating authentic, custom content using real writers.
Today is also the era of people wanting to do business with brands they LOVE.
This explains the exponential rise in the popularity of videos, images, and blog entries. In order for today’s customer to interact with a brand, that brand has to be created specifically for them.
The importance of this is evident in companies that have used storytelling to push their brand message.
Take Airbnb for example, which has used a series of beautiful, story-rich advertisements to gain favor with a millennial audience.
Another great example of the need for custom content is this: millennials are 247% more likely to be influenced by social media than previous generations, but you can bet that statistic would go out the window the moment social media started blasting millennials with stiff, unreadable, salesy content that wasn’t actually directed at them at all.
In order to succeed with today’s customers, you need to get personal, and this is something only actual people can do well.
This isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
Customers will always value personalized interactions.
While automation is important in many dozens of ways, it consistently misses the mark on providing high-quality, humanized, story-dense interaction for a brand’s customers.
5 Examples of Companies Investing Big-Time in Real Writers
1. Us – Express Writers
We publish over 40 pieces of long-form, 1000+ word content every single month across all our blog platforms, and we rely 100% on human writers to ghostwrite and deliver (I come up with all the topics, skeletons, and do the editing).
Our company has never hired an automation service to create the content, and will never do so. It just isn’t feasible. Our commitment is to provide high-quality, handwritten content services—and we believe only real writers can provide that.
We’ll never change this standard.
Yes, we will use tools like Buffer to schedule our social media posts, and we’re building a CMS system that makes all of our content assignments easier on our managers and our writers—but that’s about as far as “automation” will go over here at Express Writers!
2. Elite Daily
Elite Daily is the mammoth of millennial media in many ways. Pumping out everything from listicles to serious news-focused content, Elite Daily has risen to prominence in the world of media publications.
The company staffs a team of more than 5,000 contributing writers and a small team of in-house writers who are all – you guessed it- millennials.
The content you see on the site comes from the hands of real people and has managed to earn the platform some serious success in the form of more than 200,000 Twitter followers, over 2 million Facebook likes, and upwards of 70 million unique visitors each month. How’s that for knowing your audience and delivering exactly what they want?
3. Trello
Trello is an organizational and task management platform that’s pushing for world domination through its use of skilled, succinct copywriters. Their clear, distinct blurbs of copy are well-written:
From clear product descriptions to highly relatable web copy, this platform wins points for being obviously written for the benefit of the customers. You won’t find crappy, scraped content here!
4. ModCloth
Looking for a frock for your sister’s wedding? Why not try the Ain’t Serene Nothing Yet! Dress or the Bold to Behold dress.
Maybe you need a bag to go with it? The Maestro of Ceremonies tote is right up your alley. ModCloth is a quirky clothing company that’s been killing it in terms of copywriting for years now. From their outstanding product descriptions to their unique blog content and colorful site, ModCloth is a clear leader in the copywriting industry.
5. Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club has been making headlines lately for its quirky launch video and hilarious commercials, but have you checked out their website?
From their promise at the bottom of the home page (“No commitment. No fees. No BS.”) to their truly outstanding advertising, it’s clear to see why Dollar Shave Club has been taking the cake in copywriting for quite some time.
5 Killer Benefits of Real Writers
By now, you know that there are many things real writers can do that automated content systems can’t.
Here are a few of the main benefits of sticking with actual humans for your writing needs:
1. Real writers provide value
While it’s easy enough to schedule and curate posts using an automated content service, it’s much more difficult to provide genuine value for readers with an automated content system. Because real writers can anticipate and respond to the needs of readers, they’re always going to be better at providing valuable content than automated systems are.
2. Real writers can customize
We’ve outlined the importance of custom content in this article and while an automated system may be able to target actual dispersal of content to custom audiences, it certainly can’t create custom content. This is important because custom content is a bigger deal now than it’s ever been before.
Custom content has the potential to help increase customer engagement and help your brand stand out in its industry.
3. Real writers can respond
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that engaging with customers is one of the most important aspects of content marketing. Unfortunately, automated content systems don’t do this very well. Real writers, on the other hand, can monitor social media posts or blog interactions in order to read and respond to comments. This helps build a presence online and encourage high-quality customer engagement.
4. Real writers don’t suck
Let’s just face it –automated content sucks most of the time. (Re-read the article spinner results, circled in red.)
Because of this, real human writers have a definite upper hand when it comes to creating content people actually want to read.
5. Real writers go the distance
Real writers who are dedicated to their jobs will do almost anything to ensure their content is helpful and accurate for readers. This results in quality content, helpful information, and well-rounded sites that are valuable and exciting.
Human Writers: Here to Stay
While automated content may be the way of the future, it’s clear that human writers are here to stay.
From providing real value for readers to responding, engaging, and building relationships, real human writers can do things that automated content services never will.
Hire your expert {human} writer. Visit our Content Shop today!
