Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

10 ways to get regular content for your website or blog

Sep 12, 2008 35 Comments »

To be successful on the Internet you constantly need to communicate with written words. Written words – the content on your website or blog – constantly convey your thoughts to your visitors. They attract new visitors and keep the old visitors hooked to your writing. But this also involves writing regularly. The more regular you are, the greater is the level of interaction and communication. Agreed, networking and interacting on other blogs and online forums do play a vital part, eventually it is your content that wins you the day.

Unless you have ideas of encyclopedic dimensions it is very difficult to come up with new ideas and new matter on a daily basis. You can do this without external help if this is the only thing you do: thinking about and generating content for your blog or website. But if you have only got, say between half-an-hour to one hour, to think about what to write, collect your thoughts and plan them and then write them down, it becomes an uphill task and often gets assigned to the back burner. Here are a few things that can help you get regular content for your website or blog:

1. Hire a content writer or a team of writers: You can hire writing services according to your budget but this is the best option if you have no time to research and write content for your blog or website. The person that you hire most probably has experience researching online and coming up with fresh and relevant content. This doesn’t mean that you assign the entire responsibility of creating content for your blog a website to your content writer, you will need to constantly keep a vigil and make sure that the content tallies with the fundamental philosophy of your blog or website.
2. Subscribe to RSS feeds: There can be an information overload when you are subscribed to too many RSS feeds but your RSS feeds subscriptions can prove to be the best resource to get fresh writing ideas. You just need to stick to the most important blogs and content websites while tracking your RSS feeds. Don’t rush while subscribing because this will eventually lead you to around 1000+ subscriptions and the mere number will dissuade you from even opening your RSS reader. Subscribe to RSS feeds judiciously and follow them closely in order to get fresh updates.
3. Use blog search: Many search engines, including the good old Google let you conduct searches on various blogs. You can use your favorite search term to check what all people are writing on it and then come up with your own content accordingly.
4. Read about your topic: Reading gives you lots of writing ideas as it fills your mind with your thoughts and wisdom. Whether you agree with what you are reading or not you have something to say, either pro or against. Reading also expands your knowledge-base and the more you know the more comfortable you get writing on your topic. Read books relevant to your field, read blogs and websites that talk about your topic, and interact on online forums. Of course you will need to keep a tab on your time in case you don’t have much time to spare.
5. Visit content aggregation websites: Content aggregation websites such as popurl.com, alltop.com, digg.com, etc. publish lots of highly relevant and contextual links with great regularity. Make it a point to visit these content and aggregation websites routinely. It is better if you can go to them at least once a day but you can decide your schedule according to your work schedule.
6. Interact as much as you can: Regular interaction exposes you to newer opinions and varying ideas. Interact with people who are already doing great things in your field. For instance if you want to write about blogging then you should try to regularly interact with people who are successful bloggers. You can use social media networking websites like Twitter and FaceBook to keep track of the ongoing conversations. For these social media networking websites there are many online tools that help you track conversations according to topics and keywords. Actively participate in these forums. But be sure of what you are communicating.
7. Use your existing content for new ideas: Many of your existing blog posts and articles may carry further topics and subtopics. Sometimes an entire article can be created out of one subheading. For instance, if you wrote a blog post on the benefits of regular blogging you might have written about using blogging as a great blogging tool and you might have written just one paragraph on the topic. Why not write a complete blog post or an article on that?
8. Invite your visitors to give you ideas: Lots of bloggers ask their visitors what they would like to read on the blog. I think this is a great way of getting new writing ideas because after all the most difficult part of writing regularly is getting writing ideas. Once you have a topic it is much easier to come up with the content. You can ask your visitors to give ideas regarding what they would like to read on your blog or website through the comments section.
9. Maintain an ideas file: Ideas are like the sparkling fireflies; they happen randomly and unless you have reached Nirvana, you can hardly control them. It is always better to devise a mechanism to preserve them whenever they grace you. You should maintain an ideas file and keep storing ideas whenever they occur so that you can refer to it whenever you need to get some new writing ideas.
10. Be passionate about your topic: Your mind brims with new and exciting ideas when you are passionate about the theme of your blog or website. Your passion helps you focus and work harder towards collecting your thoughts and expressing them; people can feel the passion in your words and expressions. But can you be passionate about something you are not comfortable with? This dilemma is often faced by professional writers because they have to write on myriad topics with unwavering interest. How do they keep the flame of passion burning all the time? They derive their passion from the fact that they have to write well no matter on what they are writing. In a similar manner you can seek passion in your topic too.

Aside from these activities you can also syndicate content from various organizations that provide regular content to blogs, online magazines, online newspapers and websites.

When you regularly update your website or blog it shows that you are serious about talking to your visitors. It doesn’t always have to be prim and proper and you can be especially yourself on your blog provided you are not discussing your pyjama parties and doggy excursions all the time on your Internet marketing blog; the content should always be relevant to your theme and must always have a target audience.

What matters? Content quality or content quantity?

Sep 09, 2008 36 Comments »

These days I get lots of queries from clients requiring bulk content on various topics, for instance, real estate market or car rental service. They want cheap content, mostly centered around their keywords and key phrases and they aren’t bothered much about the quality. They want plenty of pages having their keywords, and they don’t want to seem spammy to search engine crawlers. They want traffic from search engines, and they’re often sure that once they get lots of traffic, they’ll generate business too.

Why you need content for you website?

You need content on your website to convey ideas, to convince your visitors to buy from you or do business with you, or to describe your products and services. Your website needs to communicate to your visitors. You can use videos, graphics, images or text to convey your message. Since on this blog we mostly deal with written content I would like to talk in terms of textual content on your website.

Why quantity matters sometimes

Quantity does not mean putting all sorts of junk on your website. Even when you talk in terms of quantity content has to be there; maybe the quality is not that good. When you have lots of content talking about your topic it makes your website into a resource – okay, maybe not a quality resource but still there is lots of information on your website that can be derived from the massive quantity of content you publish. Quantity, as long as it is not out and out trash, is also good for your search engine rankings. It gives plenty of pages to the search engine crawlers to crawl and index with a wide selection of keywords and important key phrases.

Why quality always matters

Some top blogs on the Internet have merely 500 blog posts but they still have thousands of comments and great traffic. This could have only been achieved by high quality content. Quantity rarely attracts genuine traffic, but quality does. Quality traffic makes your blog or website into quality resource that people like to visit again and again. Quality content also gets linked to from other websites a lot; this way you get lots of inbound links and this is good for your search engine rankings.

A combination of both is good

Personally I always suggest that one should focus on quality and a little bit of promotion. Junk content is available all over the Internet and it hardly matters how much of it you have on your website. On the other hand quality content is rare to be found and therefore people really like it and treasure it. Quality content, and lots of it, is a killer combination. Add a little bit of promotion and you don’t have to spend on some other kind of promotion.

Given a choice you should always prefer quality over quantity when it comes to your website or blog content. This is not some idealistic sentiment; it really does work.

Getting new content writing ideas

Aug 25, 2008 24 Comments »

It doesn’t matter whether you publish a regular website or a blog; in order to get traffic you need to generate content on a regular basis. Generating valuable, regular content for your website or your blog achieves the following for you:

• Bring targeted and qualified traffic from search engines
• Bring repeat visitors on an ongoing basis
• Develop an interactive community around your product or service
• Encourage people to link to your website or blog from their own websites and blogs
• Facilitate social media marketing
• Develop your expertise and consequently, your brand
• Create lasting loyalty and fan following

All these are overwhelming benefits and very hard to ignore especially when almost all your competitors are leveraging them. But as a small business generating valuable content again and again can turn out to be a real challenge especially when you run out of ideas after a few weeks or a few months. I am an online copywriter and I still run out of ideas for a couple of blogs I manage, and of courses I need to keep the content on my copywriting and content writing website fresh and relevant too. Here are a few things you can do to get fresh ideas for your blog or website:

Hire a professional writer

This is the easiest way if you can afford it; once you have hired a writer for your blog or website then it becomes his or her headache to come up with new ideas for your blog or website or both. I take up this headache for many of my clients but ironically I lack the effort when it comes to writing for myself. I know the best writer for your business would be you but if you can better utilize that time doing something else then it is prudent to hire a professional writer for your content needs. Here is a detailed article on how to hire an online copywriter for your blog or website.

Take ideas from whatever you have already written

If you have been publishing web pages and blogs then by merely going through them you can get lots of writing ideas. Pick up a sub topic and expand upon it. Randomly pick up an expression and see what you can write around it. This will not only be great fun it will also give you plenty of new ideas. Also go through the comment section of your previous blogs; plenty of times people ask questions through comment sections and those questions can be easily answered as full-blown blog post or web pages.

Visit other blogs and websites

As a busy person this is perhaps the hardest task. You can assign a particular day for this task. Create a compact list of websites and blogs that you would like to keep a tab on to get new writing ideas. Either bookmark them or subscribe to their RSS feeds. The benefit of subscribing to their RSS feeds is that you don’t even have to visit them and you will be notified the moment something new is posted there. Instead of simply visiting other blogs and websites you can also try to interact with the publishers or other visitors because this also stimulates your mind and gives you knew writing ideas. Online forums and social media and networking websites too are a great source of new writing ideas.

Become knowledgeable in your field

The more you know the more you have to write. Becoming knowledgeable not only helps you write better it also improves your professional prospects. Continuously try to learn new things and devise ways to do existing things in a better manner and then share your experiences through your website or blog.

The content of your website is far more important than you think

Aug 19, 2008 3 Comments »

Mitch Joel on his blog explains why your business website is as important as your retail store and it is as much a part of your company as any other crucial component needed to run your company. I would like to add, so is the content on your website.

Your business website is there to help your customers and clients do business with you, it’s not merely a piece of decoration hanging from the wall of your lobby. It contains information that educates, informs and assists your customers. This information can exist in the form of informative textual content, or product listings extracted from your inventory database. Mitch refers to the product listing sort of content when he discovers that the information on the website does not match with the ground reality at the product store. My usual focus is on the textual content; content that doesn’t merely throw numbers and facts at your visitors, but establishes a rapport with them.

Although it depends on your market, it could easily be the case that most of your exposure happens through your website, that means, more and more people do business with you after reading what’s there on your website. Even if you are not doing online selling, people might be visiting your office or store after gleaning information from your website. The content on your website has the ability to send your visitors away, or draw them closer to making a purchase.

Why is content so crucial for your website? The answer is quite simple; in the absence of a human, it’s your content that welcomes your visitors. It’s your content that helps your visitors perceive a voice amidst an avalanche of cacophonic sounds. Even the first line of your content can decide whether your visitor stays on your website or moves on to the next link.

The problem with writers

Aug 12, 2008 7 Comments »

On an average 4-5 writers contact me through my copywriting website for content writing and online copywriting work. Most of them send badly-written queries, but some of them do write well and I often ask for samples and most of the time they send the samples promptly. The problem with almost all the writers is that they want guaranteed work without putting anything at stake. This casts doubts in their sincerity and commitment.

For instance, recently I sent an email to 15 writers regarding a new assignment. Since I’m now seriously considering hiring writers and focusing more on marketing and promotion, I’m considering creating a reliable team. So for the new assignment I asked them to submit a sample so that I could decide whom to give the project. It’s been 4 days, and none of them has even sent a reply-email, forget about sending a sample. These are the very same writers who are constantly asking for work and desiring good pay. How can I assure them good pay and a steady flow of work if they don’t respond when there is real need?

Their main problem is that they want to eat the fruits but do not want to sow the trees, as I’ve been doing for the past 10 years, first as a programmer, then as a web designer and then finally as a content writer. If you want to work as a freelancer work doesn’t just fall onto your lap; you have to strive for it, you have to remain committed to your work, and sometimes you need to work hard, really hard, without expecting a return. Then gradually you start getting assignments that can sustain you.

I don’t know what to do with these 15 writers now. Should I remove their contacts from the database and start preparing a new list of writers? I think I’ll send them another email. I’m not worried about the current assignment; I’ll put in some extra hours and complete it. For many months I’ve been planning to outsource more and more writing assignments and focus on getting more work. I also need to concentrate more on my singing, on blogging, and on some literary writing.