Blog Writing Tips – Blog Writing is Bread and Cheese But Avoid the Mould

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Blog writing has become a great way of driving traffic to a website, and also an effective way of establishing regular visitors, capturing email addresses and a very important part of a social media marketing (SMM). Most business owners don’t have the time to maintain a blog, and most would be stuck for ideas anyway. Not to mention that blog writing is a skill that requires a unique style of writing that I like to call ‘personal engagement’. For sure, different industries require a different tone, but essentially good blog writing is about making the reader feel you are talking to them personally and entertaining them with your wisdom, humour or wit.

The fact that most websites run a blog means a abundance of blog writing jobs, and that means there is money to be made as a blog writer. But before you go hunting for blog writing jobs,  let me give you some sound blog writing tips. Not on how to construct a blog post, but on how to ensure you are good a blog writer and  actually earn some money

Once you start getting regular work as a writer you will get referrals. Now referrals are great but they often bring with them a particular amount of obligation. For example, you may have been working for a client with great success. Suddenly she says a friend wants a daily blog written on cake baking. You want to turn it down but could do with the money and you don’t want to disappoint that great client of yours.

…STOP RIGHT THERE.

BE STRONG. Don’t make the mistake of ending up with 5-10 daily blog writing jobs, half of which cause you serious pain because you know nothing about the subject matters and the research takes forever. If I could give you only one blog writing tip it is this:  MAKE A LIST of your specialist subjects. A list of things you could write 300 words on efficiently and effectively. Market your services toward those areas of industry – REMEMBER, PEOPLE PAY MORE FOR EXPERTISE.

BLOGGING FOR THE SAKE OF BLOGGING is lose lose. You lose time and money trying to squeeze out something compelling on a subject you know nothing about and have no interest in, and you end up producing something substandard for the client who blames the referee – who in this case is one of your best clients.

Blog writing for hire isn’t always good money, but it’s good bread and cheese money to pay the bills in a bad month, so take on a manageable amount and mix it up with your other writing jobs. But, whatever you do, don’t get bogged down in blogs that take away your time from more lucrative work that you enjoy. Taking on difficult, boring blog writing jobs is stressful and unrewarding. The last thing you want to be feeling is that you might as well return to your old 9 to 5.

Like I always say, discover and target your niche areas. Don’t beat yourself up for turning work down that you don’t feel comfortable with. Become well known for being superb at what you know and take pride in, not average for what you don’t know and hate doing.

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Guru.com Freelance Heaven or Hell

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Over the last few years Guru.com has become one of the most popular freelance work opportunity websites. Along with elance.com the two pretty much share the market. Guru has given a number of people worldwide the opportunity to earn extra money freelancing and for some a chance to become completely self employed. For others Guru promotes slave labour and is ruining industry by allowing outsourcing companies to undercut western professionals. Many freelancers are aggrieved that  Guru is taking work away from the West and outsourcing it far too cheaply to Asian countries. Guru would argue they are merely the go-between in a world where trade boundaries have all but disappeared as the web opens up a free for all.

Designers Are Feeling the Pinch More Than Anyone

Where design work is concerned I feel the pain of western freelancers. A website build that would usually cost $1000 is now being outsourced to India for $150-200; the high cost of western living permits no potential price matching. It used to be the case that outsourcing meant poor quality workmanship and awkward communication; not any more. The bar has been raised and Asian firms have stepped up their game to offer equal standards on both the work and communication aspects of business. The only thing that can save the western design world is conscience and old fashioned business principles. If domestic business owners have a moral persuasion to help industry survive and prefer doing business in the traditional face-to-face method then perhaps there is hope.  I ask myself whether there is an ethical issue here; granted, living expenses are cheaper in India, but surely if this is truly a global market, standards should reflect price across the board, thus creating a level playing field and fair competition, right? From some angles it appears like imperial exploitation.

Copywriters and Marketers Slip Under the Radar

When it comes to copywriting and marketing communications, freelancers on Guru.com are slightly luckier than designers. Writing and marketing requires solid native English language skills and a working experience of marketing in the western hemisphere. For sure, Guru.com does have its idiots who want fifty 300 word articles for $50 in order to plague article directories with poor grammar, uninteresting and useless affiliate marketing articles. But then I for one am happy to leave such jobs to students, mums making extra pennies and non native English speakers.

Guru.com Is Always Frustrating at First

In Guru’s defence there is money to be made in you stick with it and put the effort in, at least for writers and marketers anyway. When I first started out on Guru.com I was frustrated, you can only land jobs if you have good feedback or bid at an exceptionally low price, so hard work needs to be put in to get off the mark. When you do land a job and get paid via the Guru safepay service they steal a fair portion of your fee, which is again quite demoralising. The combined Guru fee and method of payment charge can hack as much as 9% off your total fee.  The way I see Guru though is not as a place to earn your full living, but as a springboard and networking arena. Look at it like an industry gathering you go to weekly where you pay a monthly fee to be exposed to potential clients. Your main objective should be to lure clients away from Guru and work with them outside of the website and the fees.

Get Clients – Get Referrals – Get Out

The more successful I became at landing jobs the less time I spent on Guru.com. This was because I was achieving a good referral rate from my newly acquired client base. And I often find that once I have completed one job for a client they ask for a variety of different jobs to be completed.  I have also found that most employers can’t be bothered to keep posting on Guru. Good employers who run successful businesses don’t want cheap, they want quality and someone who can identify immediately with their brand and write copy accordingly; this is where marketing experience becomes a vital part of copywriting.  So when an employer finds a good match for their business they take things outside of Guru and work directly via email/Skype and Paypal.

Avoid the Cheap Charlies and Discover Your Niche

Once you have been on Guru.com for a while you can spot the cheap charlies a mile away and you simply don’t waste your bid. You become familiar with the tone and terminology of those seeking to exploit cheap labour. As a writer, copywriter or marketer on Guru it is important to discover your niche. For example one of my niche areas is Press Release writing, this comes as a result of years working in music/media.  I have seen a million of these things and subsequently know how to write them. I land a large percentage of Press Release work I apply for on Guru, not because I am the cheapest, far from it, but because my examples are of a high standard and my feedback is 5 star. A company putting a product to market for the first time can’t afford to launch with a substandard copy. Better they pay $30 more for a pro and get it right than pay peanuts and get ..well, you know the saying.

So recognise your niche areas and plug away. Once you have built up some feedback, proved yourself and got a few clients, the referrals will come. Set out your fee for each area you work in and put some effort into your cover letters. Don’t send in templates whatever you do. By all means have generic replies ready to go but always tailor them personally to the job for which you are applying.

Quality Will Prevail but Guru.com Must Go Ethical

Guru.com is a pool of negatives and positives. I feel whole heartedly for the design industry and Guru do need to take some sort of ethical stance to protect their freelancers, after all, Guru is a western based company and built its foundation upon western freelancers. When it comes to writing, editing and copywriting, things aren’t as bad and there are good jobs hidden amongst those clients who couldn’t care whether you were homeless or not. However, competition is fierce and it is no easy task to land work. But I believe that when it comes to the crunch quality will prevail. Many businesses start out advertising for cheap labour on Guru, only to realise that by doing this they create more work in the long run editing, rewriting and hiring someone who can actually represent their company in the way they require.

Written by Peter Litchfield

Peter is a copywriter, marketer and communications specialist with over 11 years experience in media related industry. He provides marketing consultancy and strategic copy to companies across Europe, America and Asia.

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Google Mayday Update – Why Quality Copy Has Suddenly Become So Important

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Sure, it SOUNDS a little daunting—“Google Mayday,” as if somehow Google is about to hit a giant Internet iceberg and sink to the bottom of the Webby Sea. In reality, Google Mayday isn’t nearly that frightening—in fact, if you’re a smaller business owner looking to capitalize on the constantly changing world of SEO (In 2009 alone, Google switched things up with its organic search algorithms between 350 and 550 different ways), the Google Mayday update may prove extremely beneficial to your site’s traffic, especially if you put in the effort to provide higher quality content to your visitors.

The question remains, however—what exactly is this mysterious Google Mayday update? Well, as explained by Google’s Matt Cutts, Google Mayday is “an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries.” This indicates more of a change in the ranking system itself, and that these “long tail” searches allow smaller sites more opportunity to be found than shorter one or two word searches. Sites are still indexed, but some are just not ranking as high based on “quality” of their content. The sites that seem to have been most affected by Google Mayday are major ecommerce sites that, without individual links into their item pages and with those item pages traditionally buried within their structure, may be lacking in unique content.

Cutts suggested that if this was the case, site owners should re-evaluate what their site has to offer in regards to these long tail keywords and perhaps add or redesign in order to offer something new (think user reviews or fresh daily content) and provide visitors with more than just static information. Become KNOWN in the community you serve—you want your site to be the authority on the subject, not just another source of the same information searchers can find in a dozen other places. This also means that gone are the days of tossing in keywords willy-nilly just to up your SEO—Google Mayday’s focus on higher quality also means focusing on content that does more than simply drag traffic in to look at a set of buzzwords. Higher quality Web sites means just that—higher quality content, images, and writing are the new “keys” to snagging traffic, allowing new opportunity for the promotion of quality over quantity.


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Why Text is The Most Important Aspect of Your Website

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Websites are based on text, yet text is often the last thing people consider when building a website. Website text is neglected in favour of paying attention to images, animation and colour coding. In my experience text is the last thing to be worked on, and often hurriedly so.

SEO Text

Search engine optimisation (SEO) rules the internet. Everything a website does in the modern day is to appease the search engines and achieve higher search rankings. Every website owner needs SEO text to increase visibility and popularity. This is done not just through on page text, but through external SEO text activities such as posting on social media websites, press release writing, article writing, external landing pages, business listings and more. No matter how technologically advanced the web becomes, we will never be able to move away from the importance of text. Ultimately, a website’s entire search engine optimisation campaign relies on the quality and the delivery of compelling copy.

The Importance of Hiring a Native English Copywriter

Website text is responsible for reeling in the consumer, text must be compelling and grammatically correct. Often text requires the use of colloquialisms which must be delivered appropriately and thematically. When a reader with a decent grasp of the English language suspects or spots grammatical errors in a piece of writing they instantly feel put off by the text and interpret the source as unreliable. Equally if the text feels uneasy and the use of colloquialisms or even adjectives feels unnatural, the reader will be discouraged. This is why employing a native English copywriter is of the utmost importance.

Tips for Writing Web Copy

When writing website text a number of things need to be considered, not just for professionalism, but for SEO and consumer psychology.

1. Sentence Construction

Wordy sentences make readability difficult, for example, opening the first paragraph with a lengthy sentence will instantly make the topic hard to follow and subsequently turn the reader away.

2. Spelling Mistakes Reflect Unprofessionally on Your Business

Triple check your spelling. It is easy to make a spelling mistake, but spelling mistakes make copy look rushed. Rushed text suggests you will conduct business in a similar way and projects a sense of unprofessionalism to your readers.

3. Ensure the Correct Communication

The text on your website should reflect the branding of your business or service. Therefore, if your website sells technical products to the general public, be sure not to include technical terms that the average person will not understand.

4. Reflect Your Brand

If your product is fun and quirky then the wording within your website should reflect the theme. If you run a legal services website then your text should be professional, concise and factual. Your text speaks to the consumer like a shop floor assistant would do in a physical setting. The text on your website must represent your brand appropriately.

5. Precise Meaning

If your copy appears slightly ambiguous at the time of writing, then it will almost certainly be misinterpreted by those reading your website. Do not leave room for misinterpretation; customers won’t take the time to contact you and ask what something means, they will simply go elsewhere.

High quality, professional text is an investment. Don’t neglect your website, start improving your website text today.

Written by Peter Litchfield

Peter is a copywriter, marketer and communications specialist with over 11 years experience in media related industry. He provides marketing consultancy and strategic copy to companies across Europe, America and Asia.

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Google Caffeine Set To Shake Up The World of SEO

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No, it isn’t a new innovation by Starbucks or a new chain of Google coffee shops. Google Caffeine is the latest Google web indexing system. Quite often the search results you get on Google are up to 2 weeks old, this is do with how the algorithm layers work – but I won’t get technical. Caffeine is set to change the speed and frequency of indexing with real time results up to 50% fresher than the results you see presently.

More Tweets – More Blog Posts

Google Caffeine has been a long time coming and will be a pain in the butt for SEO experts whose clients organic spots could potentially be temporarily stolen by news stories, blog or forum posts.  Google are changing the way they search to respond to an ever demanding internet community who require everything instantly – what a demanding bunch we are!

Google are responding to user expectations and bringing the search engine king in line with how the new generation are consuming content. Tweets, blog posts, videos and images have become more than just amateur content, users want to see such content listed as it is created in the search rankings.

So What Does This Mean For Your Website

It means ‘fresh content’ is essential so make sure you hire a decent copywriter because you will be needing an abundance of new blog posts and articles etc. Static websites with aging info should turn off the lights and shut the door behind them – the information super highway is getting faster and information an hour old is, well… old information. Seldom do people read much anyway, so the faster content is rotated the shorter it must become in order to be consumed – perhaps I will cut my blog posts down to 200 instead of 300 -400 words.

The Future of Google Search – Google Caffeine and SEO

Part of the ongoing Caffeine initiative is to change the way results are displayed according to user requirements. Apparently what we type in is not what we actually want, most of the time… Therefore Google is studying how to develop a mathematical model for language to interpret what we are actually searching for. Head of the Google ranking team Amit Singal explained in a recent interview; “When it comes to human language understanding we are still at the toddler stage,” “But over the next ten years we will attain the level of an eight or nine year old. We’ll be able to perfect experiences we don’t fully trust today”. That means speech recognition that works, and putting databases together so that they play nicely”.

This will be another nightmare for SEO specialists targeting specific keywords. How would one know which words to target if Google are secretly interpreting them in their own way?  Anyway, this is a long way off, and for now we only have to deal with the new ‘caffeine’ way of interpreting search results.

Written by Peter Litchfield

Peter is a copywriter, marketer and communications specialist with over 11 years experience in media related industry. He provides marketing consultancy and strategic copy to companies across Europe, America and Asia.

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What to Look for When You Hire a Copywriter – 5 Key Attributes

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Seeking Out Professionalism

With the popularity of freelance websites like guru.com and elance.com growing exponentially, the web has spawned a new wave of amateur copywriters all bidding for extra pocket money. Many are university students looking to reduce debt and some are second jobbers trying to make ends meet, and why not, if you are good at the job then by all means go for it. Sadly however, 1 in 5 of my clients now come to me with work to be heavily edited or completely redone because of shoddy workmanship. Now, I am not here to slag off other copywriters, for there are some serious experts to found within the ranks of Google and indeed the freelance websites, but what I am here to point out are the key things an employer should be looking for when hiring a copywriter.

1. Marketing Experience

Many a person can write, and write very well, but copywriting is not just about decent grammar and punctuation. A copywriter must have a good head for marketing and preferably the experience to back it. Most copywriters don’t study to become a copywriter, they just fall into the job as a natural progression following a substantial stint in marketing, promotions, advertising or media related work. They are usually people who have written all types of professional documentation and marketing material across a range of industry.

2. More Than One Voice

A good copywriter has more than one voice. By that I mean being able to produce 3 pieces of writing which to a stranger look as though they could’ve been written by 3 different people. A copywriter should be able to write creatively, technically and in a conversational style.

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Knowledge

In the modern day, 50% + of a copywriter’s work will be optimising copy for the web. A copywriter will be asked to target keywords and strategically work keyword strings into a piece of copy. The copywriter must have a solid knowledge of the different ways of targeting search engines through keyword driven copy. The copywriter must have at the very minimum a basic understanding of on-page and off-page search engine optimisation.

4. US and UK English

Technology allows a copywriter to conduct business globally from a PC anywhere in the world, so naturally clients will come from a variety of countries. It is important that the copywriter can write in American English and UK English in order to adapt to different markets and meet the language needs of the client.

5. Versatility

When hiring a copywriter you will be looking for someone you can call on at a moments notice to complete varying tasks. It is not uncommon for a client to ask me to structure a business proposal one day and then ask me for a conversational blog post the next. This is the nature of the job and a copywriter should be able to turn their hand to a range of writing disciplines.

As an employer those are the key things you should be looking for when hiring a copywriter; for sure there are a number of other weapons a copywriter should have in their arsenal but I will cover them in part 2 at a later date.

Written by Peter Litchfield

Peter is a copywriter, marketer and communications specialist with over 11 years experience in media related industry. He provides marketing consultancy and strategic copy to companies across Europe, America and Asia.

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Writing a Press Release – A List of Online PR Companies

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The Evolution of The Press Release

Press release marketing online has become somewhat of a phenomenon. With newsfeeds, newsgroups, Twitter, Facebook and a heap of other ways to share information, the press release has been propelled to the forefront of internet marketing. The press release has steered away from a mere traditional announcement and become an effective online advertising tool. The press release is no longer the unbiased, neutral format it once was. It isn’t just a new CEO or product line that warrants a press release these days, re-announcing dated services and products is commonplace in an effort to drive new traffic and convert leads.

Press Release Writing – Balancing ‘Newsworthy’ with the ‘Subtle Sell’

Presently I am writing on average 5 press releases a week for various clients who submit them to a variety of paid and non paid sources. This suggests the activity of posting press releases online is effective and lucrative. What I am finding as a copywriter is that the style guidelines for each PR company can differ somewhat. Companies will often reject press releases that incorporate too much of a ‘sell, market, advertise’ methodology. The skill in writing a press release lies in walking a fine line between newsworthy and subtly selling the product or service.  Some PR services are definitely more lenient than others. For example some allow the use of ‘first person’ writing whereas others will not even accept one addressing the reader directly.

A List of Online PR Companies

Anyway, I thought it would make for a useful resource to post up a list of online PR companies who between them provide a variety of press release distribution services. Some are paid others are non-paid, some are easier to deal with than others but all provide a means to generating more traffic to your website.

1. PRWeb.com: A free and paid service

2. PRLeap.com: A free and paid service

3. 1888PressRelease.com: A free and paid service

4. 24-7 Media release: A free and paid service

5. Business Wire: A paid service (membership required)

6. Express Media: A paid service

7. i-Newswire: A free service that allows one PR per week

8. Media Syndicate: A free service

9. PR Newswire: A paid service (membership required)

10. PR Urgent News: A free and paid service

11. PR.com: A free and paid service

12. PRBuzz.com: A paid service

11. PRLog: A free service

12. SBWire: A paid service

13. The Open Press: A free and paid service

Written by Peter Litchfield

Peter is a copywriter, marketer and communications specialist with over 11 years experience in media related industry. He provides marketing consultancy and strategic copy to companies across Europe, America and Asia.

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Writing Articles For SEO

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SEO Article or Not – Its Still an Article

Let’s face it, anyone can keyword stuff. It doesn’t take much skill to hash 300 words together and scatter keywords and keyword phrases throughout. What does take skill however, is the ability to strategically place keywords within text to create a piece of writing that won’t instantly be dismissed by the reader as an unhelpful cheesy marketing effort. After all, an article is supposed to be exactly that – an article; an informative piece of well constructed writing designed to engage the reader.

Google Doesn’t Like Keyword Stuffing

Many newbie internet marketers are under the impression that keyword stuffing with draw the attention of search spiders more effectively than articles written with a human feel. It is true that a percentage of an article should be made up of keywords, but keyword stuffing may well result in the article being ignored. Search engine algorithms are getting smarter all the time and stuffers are being increasingly ignored. An ideal keyword density would be between 1.7-2%

Strike a Balance Between Writing for Humans and Spiders

Good SEO article writing is about striking a fine balance between writing for search spiders and writing for humans. If the text looks unnatural it will turn the reader off and encourage them to click ‘x’ and go somewhere else. This is problematic when being asked by a client to use keywords in their purest form, for example, how do you incorporate, “improve cooking skills Burmese” into a sentence. Not easy I know, but by using bullet points, lists and clever paraphrasing this can be done. If the inclusion is  impossible, then having one or two instances within the text where a word looks to be missing is fine if the rest of the article is compelling enough to hold the reader’s attention.

At the end of the day what will encourage the reader to click a link is interesting and useful  information delivered in a grammatically correct way, not a poorly written hash of keywords, bolded text and poorly constructed sentences. The fact that the article you are writing is an SEO article should be incidental, the writing should be treated with the same respect as if you were writing for a magazine or newspaper.

Written by Peter Litchfield

Peter is a copywriter, marketer and communications specialist with over 11 years experience in media related industry. He provides marketing consultancy and strategic copy to companies across Europe, America and Asia.

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