WHAT IS VALUE-ADDED CONTENT IN CONTENT MARKETING?

Value-added content is defined as any unique, original, or exclusive content or information your audience cannot get anywhere else that provides true value to that audience by being relevant and fulfilling their search intent. Examples of this added value content can be found across content types, including:

• Video content
• Blog posts
• E-books
• Podcasts
• Case studies
• Original research and research studies
• White papers
• Promotional offers
• Tutorials
• Infographics

Since value-added content provides actual value, it is more likely to engage audiences and be popular with readers and is thus rewarded by Google. Because it is more engaging, valuable content it is more likely to be shared and revisited again and again for its usefulness. While most content is more like McDonald’s—okay in a pinch, yet forgotten seconds later—value-added content stands out like a multi-course, thoughtfully presented meal from an award-winning chef. You remember it fondly for months, recommend it to others, and return to it as often as you can.

HOW TO CREATE VALUE-ADDED CONTENT

• Be specific in your content. According to Sitefy, there are more than 50 billion webpages on the Internet. That means the odds of content with basic or general information about a topic already existing are high. Instead, provide unique value by going deeper with your content, as this definer does for specific content marketing words, rather than generic high level definitions of content marketing.
• Make your content actionable. While educating content marketers on the value of ebooks is informative, providing straightforward step-by-step tips on how to actually create an ebook start to finish takes the content from just informative to useful, providing immediate value to the reader.
• Find ways to make formatting your friend. Paying attention to how you format your content helps make your content scannable, attractive, and easy to read. In doing so, it also makes it easier for audiences to experience the value your content is intended to provide. 

SEVEN EXAMPLES OF VALUE-ADDED CONTENT

The best way to understand how value-added content can bolster your content marketing  is to see it in action. Here are seven strong examples to give you a clear idea of what we mean by added value:

1. BLOG POSTS THAT INFORM, EDUCATE, ANSWER A QUESTION, AND MEET A SEARCHER’S NEED

Simply churning outA blog posts regularly won’t cut it anymore. Companies with successful content marketing strategies understand a blog must both be relevant and fulfill the searcher intent. Each blog post should answer a specific need with unique content that readers won’t find anywhere else.

Unique content isn’t limited to sharing data no one else has. You can create value-added content with anything from your company’s unique perspective to the expertise and insights of an industry veteran. Value-added blog content shouldn’t be promotional or self-serving. Instead, aim for blog posts that go beyond helpful and educational to delight your your readers. If they are  actually glad they read them, they’ll be more likely to share.

• Value-added blog content example: Priceonomics

Priceonomics does a stellar job of using proprietary information to inform their audience. For example, this post focused on how much money you can save by cooking at home takes a popular topic and builds it out with their exclusive data.

Instead of learning some vague platitudes about how cooking at home is the responsible thing to do, the reader comes away with actual facts they didn’t know before as well as a compelling argument in favor of home cookin’.

2. VIDEOS THAT ARE ENGAGING AND RELEVANT

Cisco reports that, by 2022, over 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be comprised of online video. As video consumption continues to grow rapidly, including video as part of your value-added content is required to connect with audiences. With the  proliferation of Snapchat, Instagram Video, TikTok, and Facebook Live, your video can now be less  polished—and less expensive to make—than it ever has been in the past.

People are comfortable consuming more video that’s not professionally produced, as long as the content is enticing and relevant to the viewer—in other words, value-added. Plus, today’s  phones practically double as HD video production studios, removing any excuse not to add some video to your content marketing mix. Alternately, use a video content creation platform like Verblio to  turn your written content into short videos for you.

Even just posting Instagram Videos a few times a week can give your audience a more personal glimpse into your business and brand, building a sense of connection and helping you stand out in a crowded sea of content.

• Value-added video content example: Moz’s Whiteboard Friday is  the “most famous video series in all of SEO” for a reason. 

Made popular before video content “got big”, these videos, started by Moz Founder Rand Fishkin,  do such a fantastic job of adding value that Moz states they have “grown to millions of views and helped train thousands of SEOs.” Thevideo/infographic hybrid format walks viewers through the entire whiteboard, explaining best practices along the way.

The combination of the whiteboard and a dynamic delivery style keeps Moz visitors interested, as they learn useful information like why paid ads often fail. Each whiteboard presentation is specific enough that you feel like you really learned something new that you can apply to your own SEO or marketing efforts, but they are also accessible even to newbies.

3. A THOUGHTFULLY PUT TOGETHER E-BOOK

While much  has been made of how technology is causing all of us to develop shorter and shorter attention spans, the truth is our desire for long-form, in-depth content only continues to grow. An ebook can be your company’s pièce de résistance when it comes to effective content content marketing. The beauty of an ebook is its potential to go beyond e being informative and further promote your company’s personality, branding, and unique position in your industry.

Many brands are choosing eebooks as one of the main pillars of their overall content marketing strategy. Your ebook might mention a variety of topics tied together with a well-presented controlling argument. These ebook topics can be turned into complementary blog posts and social media updates. One well-constructed ebook can be repurposed into numerous value-added pieces of blog content

Another approach is to write an ebook for each topic you cover on your blog. The blog posts can be quick and easy to skim, while the ebook goes deep for those readers craving more information, context, and research.

• Value-added ebook examples: HubSpot, Verblio’s “Ignite Your Inbound Strategy with the Right Freelance Writers: A Guide”

HubSpot does a fantastic job using ebooks for lead generation throughout their blogs and newsletters. You cannot read a piece of content from HubSpot without being prompted to download an additional resource or ebook. This is enticing to readers who just learned something useful from the HubSpot blog and want to know more.

4. NEWSLETTERS THAT CURATE INDUSTRY INFORMATION YOUR CUSTOMERS DON’T HAVE TIME TO FIND

A newsletter without a purpose is useless and likely to go unread, making it a waste of precious time and resources. As the amount of information continues to grow, one unique way to position your newsletter is to curate the best articles and information in your specific industry. This is a newsletter that would provide value to your readers and benefit them by saving time. In fact, within your newsletter, you can include a link or two to value-added blog posts from your site.

• Value-added newsletter example: Benedict Evans’ newsletter

Benedict Evans works at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. His weekly newsletter cobbles together the tech news he finds most interesting. Considering Andreessen Horowitz’s influence in Silicon Valley, it’s great to see what one of their own is reading and finds particularly important.

Evans’ readers get the benefit of his wide weekly reading, distilled into just the interesting details along with links. Talk about content that adds value—by consuming this one newsletter, you get to feel like the most informed person in your office, without spending your whole life reading dry tech articles.

5. WEBINARS THAT OFFER INSIGHT INTO A PRODUCT, SERVICE, OR TECHNIQUE OR SHARE NEW RESEARCH

While webinars can still be an effective medium for providing your readers with value-added content, it’s important to make sure your webinars add enough value to attendees to make up for the  time it takes to attend. Viewers typically tune into webinars to learn about your product, get a behind-the-scenes look at your service, learn a new technique, or access information that they can’t get anywhere else.

• Value-added  webinar example:  Content Marketing Institute (CMI)

CMI has a reputation for delivering  webinars relevant to their audience. Not only are the topics relevant, the guests that appear are also well-informed, prepared, and insightful when offering advice and tips for content marketing.

The key to a good webinar is to put together something easy to follow and engaging and digestible, yet genuinely educational. To add even more value for more people, provide your webinars in more media than just one—think audio or video recordings to send out to folks who weren’t able to attend after the fact, or via Slideshare with all the major points. Luckily, many of CMI’s webinars offer tips on how to do just that.

Another way to add value to your webinar audience is to include a special offer that you’ll hand out at the end, like a special consultation or coupon code they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get their hands on.

6. INFOGRAPHICS THAT ILLUSTRATE INFORMATION BETTER THAN THE WRITTEN WORD

Some information is better communicated with images, diagrams, graphs, or charts. Infographics remain a compelling alternative—or complement—to text alone. As readers tend to skim more than read, an infographic is an effective medium for skimmers. One approach is to write a detailed blog post, then curate the main points or data into a simple, eye-catching infographic.

• Value-added infographic example: Backlinko’s on-page SEO infographic

On-page SEO can be a moving target with a lot of information for content marketers to digest. But Backlinko’s infographic communicates the best practices of on-page SEO in a succinct, easy-to-follow manner. It’s also updated regularly, adding even more value.

7. WHITE PAPERS THAT OFFER IN-DEPTH RESEARCH AND INFORMATION

Though white papers may not make sense for every company’s content marketing strategy, in some cases, they are just the ticket. A good white paper is authoritative, persuasive, and in-depth, helping to position you as a true thought leader in your niche. They are especially valuable to readers if you give them away as a free download in exchange for subscribing to your community or your email list.

Companies like Google use whitepapers to “explain the technology underlying…products and services or examine topics such as security, architecture, and data governance,” for which Google wants to be seen as a thought leader.

• Value-added white paper examples: Google Cloud whitepapers

Google Cloud’s comprehensive whitepaper selection is written Google employees, independent analysts, partners, and customers, leveraging a wide breadth and depth of expertise.  

SHOULD I GATE MY VALUE-ADDED CONTENT?

If you’re providing this content that adds value to customers or prospective customers and it meets the criteria listed above, gating some of this content by collecting some information from visitors may make sense. When you’ve put time and resources into creating a piece that’s unique and valuable to your audience, gating content can be a way of continuing that conversation and deepening the value.. This option can turn more in-depth value-added content into true lead generators.

Keep in mind, however, that some readers will balk at the idea of filling out a form in order to receive your newest whitepaper or ebook, regardless of content value. We suggest a combination of gated and ungated content to truly reach and inform as many prospects as possible.

HOW TO USE VERBLIO TO CREATE VALUE-ADDED CONTENT AT SCALE

You can find much of our value-added content in our resources section. We offer advice on starting a blog as well as the best blogging tools for businesses to consider. As our blog has grown, we also continue to provide useful and unique content here as often as possible, like this post on blogging trends in 2018 as well as data-backed case studies, based on our own data and experience as well as industry expertise in content marketing.

We know our readers and customers trust us to provide them with information that is accurate, helpful, and broken down in a useful way, and both our blog and our resources section are ideal for doing just that.

Editor’s Note: This post about how to create valuable content in your content marketing was originally published in November 2016. This content was refreshed in 2018 and 2022 to continue to provide the most current answer to the question “What is valuable content?” along with relevant advice and examples of value-added content.

The post What is Value-Added Content in Content Marketing? 7 Examples appeared first on Verblio.

Why Blogging is Important (Yes, Still)

At a time when many brands are pivoting toward more video and social media marketing, is blogging still important? The answer is a resounding “yes!” For businesses just starting to flesh out a marketing strategy, blogging is a marketing tool with a low barrier to entry and a tangible payoff. For more established brands, a blog is an ideal anchor for a multi-faceted marketing strategy.

A consistently updated, the high-quality blog remains the ideal way to drive traffic and grow your brand. As our friends at Crazy Egg point out, when a blog is managed well, it boosts your inbound leads in a major way. Google loves a meaty, frequently updated blog, rewarding great content with higher search engine rankings as an overall trend.

Blogging is also the perfect way to establish a brand voice, becoming recognizable to customers and growing loyalty. A great blog shows that your brand has its own unique personality, has tons of interesting information to knowledge-drop, and is worth spending time with.

What other marketing tool brings in leads, helps you create your own unique presence in your niche, and establishes you as a thought leader, all without the need for a full-scale marketing department or a massive budget?

Here are a few concrete examples of the importance of blogging to keep in mind:

1. Blogging improves your Google rankings

In fact, simply having a blog on your website improves your Google ranking by as much as 434%! Regular blogging with high quality content improves your Google ranking even more dramatically.

Simply having a website is not enough. Google rewards sites that publish consistent, informative content that provides actual value to visitors. Freshly updated content is even better. Blogging remains the best way to pull this off.

2. Blogging is flexible & complements your overall strategy

Blogging is adaptable and is the perfect complement to the other facets of your marketing strategy. Creating an e-book to give away on your site? Your blogs for the next few months can each hone in on a topic covered in your e-book, and link to your e-book landing page.

Blogs can be similarly helpful as an anchor for your social media updates. When you publish a new blog post that you’re excited to share, go ahead and do so via your social channels. You may find that readers click over to your blog, read a few posts, then return to your Facebook status update to comment with their thoughts. Your audience will soon learn that you are providing useful, fun, unique content across various platforms, allowing them to engage however works best for them.

Blogging, creating video content and cool downloadable graphics, and updating your Facebook or Twitter on a regular basis are all important! A thoughtful marketing strategy is made up of several moving parts that all help highlight each other. And since blogging is designed to be flexible, you can pivot your strategy over time as your marketing needs change. Want to target specific local SEO keywords? Build your blogging strategy around those keywords for the time being, until a new priority pops up.

3. Blogs are trustworthy & informative

Yes, your followers will click on a quick video out of boredom or curiosity. But when they want to dig deeper and learn more, they’ll turn to your latest blog posts.

Bite-sized, shorter blogs are a great way to share a unique take on a specific topic in your industry, quickly explore a new feature or product, or even talk about a book or podcast you know your readers will love.

Long-form posts, on the other hand, let you go deeper and become a trusted authority on whatever you are most passionate or knowledgeable about. A well-researched, thoughtful blog post can help you become the thought leader in a given area of your niche in a way that social media and other forms of digital marketing are unlikely to accomplish.

4. Blog posts are the ideal home for internal links

Internal links encourage your customers and readers to spend more time on your site. A blog is the most intuitive and logical place to work in those links, whether they lead to related blog posts, services, or products.

As long as you are linking to relevant pages using anchor text that makes sense to your readers, blogging is the most effective way to get readers to spend more and more time exploring your site.

Here is an example: Let’s say you are a fashion startup, blogging about the importance of trade shows as a way to expand your brand reach and get your product in front of more customers. You can use something like “reach more customers” as the anchor text for a complementary post on the importance of social media engagement for fashion businesses. Your readers get to learn multiple useful lessons that they can apply to their own marketing strategy, all because they followed a link to your blog post.

Blogging Consistently is Important

As you can see, blogging is as important as ever in 2018. But it’s important to keep in mind that while just having a blog at all is a great start, it also needs to be updated consistently.

It’s tempting to craft each post with the precision of a literary masterpiece. After all, you want your blog to be a reflection of your company’s values. If you have time to do that—great! But beware: are you spending so much time perfecting your posts that you don’t publish as frequently and as consistently as you should?

The bottom line is that while the quality of your content matters, how frequently you post and update that content is vitally important, too. Balancing the relationship between quality and frequency is so, so critical.

Here’s why you should be making a concerted effort to keep up with a consistent publishing schedule to maintain fresh content:

1. Rack up SEO & page rankings

The more frequently you update your site with fresh content, the more opportunities you have to strengthen your SEO and be indexed higher by search engines.

Here’s how it works: search engines like Google use algorithm-based web crawlers to index the one-billion websites that exist online today. These crawlers rank the sites based on a variety of factors like inbound links, user time on site, mobile friendliness, and much more.

Search engines regularly crawl your site looking for new content. Even if you don’t post new content, search engines will still crawl that page. But if you are posting new, quality information frequently, you increase your chances to rank even better the next time your site is crawled.

Other factors influencing your SEO & page ranks include building a network of inbound links from outside sources. Getting other reputable sites to link to your site is a very powerful signal to search engines that the information on your site or page is a credible source. The best way to do this is to publish the kind of content other sites want to link to, and to do so often!

Never underestimate the power of new, updated, and regular blogging as a factor in search engine optimization and page rank.

2. Curate your keyword profile

The SEO benefits of regular blogging for business go beyond the results from indexing and crawling. The importance of blog writing consistently also comes from increased opportunities to increase the amount and range of keywords for which you rank.

For example: If you are a veterinarian looking to help and attract local pet owners to your website, chances are that potential clients will search for keywords ranging wildly, from “dog dental care” to “bird feather diseases”.

If you update your blog frequently, you can devote individual posts to a wide range of keywords related to your business and increase the chances that potential customers using very specific keywords will find you using Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

Frequent updates also allow you to home in on specific audiences with specialized keywords—like a local audience—while still maintaining a breadth of keywords for which you’d like to rank.

3. Beef up social media content

Unless you’re in the minority among small- and medium-sized businesses, your website is likely not the only avenue that you use to promote your services in the digital realm. You hopefully also have a social media account or two, on which frequent content is just as important as it is on your blog.

Why are frequent social updates important? In an article for Moz, Larry Kim explored what the nature of the relationship is between search rankings and social shares is. He says, “If you’ve done any SEO at all, you’ve probably noticed that the stories that rank well tend to have high social share counts”.

Kim notes that posts with high engagement rates and lots of shares come from the same content that gets higher click-through rates in search results. Ultimately, Kim posits:

Facebook Ads, Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm, Google AdWords, and increasingly Google organic search are all systems governed by machine learning systems that reward remarkable engagement with greater visibility.

What’s the takeaway? The more frequently you post stellar content on social media, the more opportunities you’ll have for engagement. Here again, we see the relationship between quality and frequency. The more engagement, the better. This is an art that content writers have learned to master through various tactics.

Of course, coming up with high-quality content is not always easy. Following Kim’s theory on social media and organic search, you should share your content that already performs well in organic searches and vice versa. Blogging and social media play well together in this way: your blog is where the high-quality, valuable content lives, and your social profiles are where you share your blog posts with the widest possible audience.

With the importance of blogging consistently and frequently established, the next question to answer is: exactly how frequently should you blog? The simple answer is: without compromising on quality. Balancing the relationship between quality and frequency is key to successfully growing your online presence and gaining customers.

Okay, but how do you accomplish this?

How To Blog Consistently

Blogging on a consistent, frequent basis may sound like an impossible task when you’re already short on time. The truth is that blogging is like any other good-for-you habit: once you make it a priority and fit it into your weekly schedule, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

Here’s how to make that “impossible” task possible.

1. Use an editorial calendar!

The first step to blogging consistently is to create and follow an editorial calendar. This allows you to get on a regular blogging schedule in a low-stress way. Simply set aside some time to brainstorm a month or a quarter’s worth of blog topics that will be fun to write but also help you build out your marketing strategy.

Schedule a manageable number of blogs per week (start low and scale up as you can). Set calendar alerts or use workflow programs like Trello or Asana for yourself and your team to stay accountable to one another. From there, the calendar will do a lot of the logistical work for you.

At Verblio, we believe so strongly in the importance of a good editorial calendar that we created one anyone can download for free!

2. Know when to outsource blog writing

If you’re spending hours each week staring at your laptop screen and willing a blank document to magically become a compelling blog post, it’s probably time to outsource your blogging. Every business owner and startup founder knows the danger of trying to do everything yourself. You quickly become burned out, your work becomes mediocre, and you start to question why you ever became your own boss in the first place.

Luckily, blogging is up there with doing your own accounting on the list of things that simply make the most sense to outsource to the experts. Whether you’re short on time, writing isn’t your main talent in life, or you get major writer’s block every time you even think about blogging, outsourcing is the way to take this task off your plate and make sure it actually gets done and gets done well.

Blogging Isn’t Going Anywhere

We really can’t over-emphasize the importance of blogging as a key element of your marketing strategy. Blogging isn’t antiquated—in fact, it’s an agile, modern, and adaptable way to hit several marketing goals at once. Anytime you wonder why blogging is important, just take the time to look at your metrics pre- and post-blogging, including customer engagement, keyword ranking, and time spent on your website per visit.

And if all of this sounds great but you simply don’t have the time or know-how to make blogging profitable yet for your business, brand, or organization, get in touch with Verblio about our content creation services. We’re always thrilled to show off our platform and answer questions for anyone who’s curious via a guided tour or phone consultation.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2015. While blogging is just as important as ever, we saw the opportunity to include even more helpful updates on the importance of blogging, and how’s it’s critical to success in your overall marketing strategy.

The post The Importance of Blogging appeared first on Verblio.

There is no denying the importance of high-quality content and what it can do for a brand. In fact, a small business with a consistently updated blog will see an average of 126% more leads than a small business without a blog. Website landing pages, email marketing, e-books, and newsletters also boost your brand reach and promote customer trust.

So, who’s going to write all of this attention-getting, trust-building, lead-generating content for you and your clients? A talented content writer, of course. Or better yet, a cohesive, seamlesscontent writing team to ensure you never experience a resource gap between the content you need and your ability to generate it. An unshakable writing team means you have go-to freelancers who are thrilled to be the voice of your agency and clients because you have a productive, mutually respectful relationship.

Before we look at how exactly to put together a rockstar writing team, let’s look briefly at what not to do:

Be Wary of the Status Quo

The hiring process for content writers is often approached in a haphazard or rushed manner, or as an emergency stopgap when in-house writers are unavailable. You need a last-minute press release and no one in the office quite remembers how to write one. Or you know your blog hasn’t been updated in months, meaning it’s doing exactly zilch to support your internal marketing strategy. So, you hire a random freelancer to write a few posts and then forget to follow-up once the posts go live and their invoice is paid.

This approach doesn’t lend itself to building strong relationships with your writers. And it doesn’t do much for your brand, either. Without setting clear expectations and building solid connections with your writers, you will deal with all sorts of headaches, including constant turnover as the freelancers you’ve worked with move on to other clients who provide steadier work or clearer instructions, forging a better, more consistent working relationship.

You may end up settling for less experienced or skilled writers just because they are available last-minute. This can create a mismatch between the voice you were hoping for and what you actually get, and lead to unproductive rounds of editing that could have been avoided. Outsourcing your content writing is supposed to be a time-saver, but it sure doesn’t feel like it when you’re completely overhauling a blog post from a new freelancer at 10 PM on a Friday night.

Even agencies can fall into common pitfalls when assembling a team of freelance content writers. Failing to provide a straightforward style guide, forgetting to give clear feedback on submitted pieces, hurrying or not asking the right questions during the onboarding process, or setting misleading expectations when it comes to research time are all preventable problems that can cause friction with your writers.

A more mindful approach allows you to create a situation where a few reliable writers happily capture your brand’s voice. Best of all, they will do so in a consistent, engaging way that leads to a reliable ROI. Let’s be honest: this requires a bit of upfront work. It requires creating somewhat of an onboarding process just like you implement for in-house employees. It requires clear, two-way, effective communication channels. But this upfront effort pays off in countless ways, and it pays off quickly.

Here are a few of the most effective ways to create a strong, cohesive, consistent writing team for yourself as an agency and your clients right out of the gate:

Tip 1: Set clear expectations.

Spending a bit more time upfront via onboarding to clarify exactly what you’re hoping to receive from your writers does so many great things for your content strategy. When you set clear expectations from the get-go, you:

• Get your writers up to speed more quickly
• Eliminate misunderstandings
• Ensure the correct style and tone by client
• Weed out the wrong writers efficiently so you can move on to better writers
• Save untold time on dreaded (by both parties!) edits and revisions

Remember, writers only know what you expect from you or your clients’ content if you explicitly tell them. Your writer needs to know the voice you are going for, your target audience, and your strategic goals. An introductory phone call with new writers is always a good idea, but be sure to follow up by email so they can refer back to your guidelines in writing until they know them by heart.

A good freelance writer will want to spend time perusing your client’s website, reading over any customer personas you’ve sketched out, and checking out links to other blogs that you love to get a better idea of the voice you’re interested in capturing.

One of the most efficient ways to capture these details for your writer is to create an internal style guide. While some agencies have their own complex, proprietary style guides, a simple checklist or outline can be just as helpful.

This outline created by our own writer and Verblio (formerly BlogMutt) Complete Account Manager Katy Palmer has proved very helpful for clients and writers alike:

• Blog goals
  • What’s in it for the customer?
  • What’s in it for you?
• About your company
  • What do you do?
  • Who do you do it for?
  • Why do you do it?
• Preferred writing style
  • 1st person? 3rd person?
  • Thoughts on your preferred style
• Formatting requirements
  • Date/time formatting preference
  • Acronym/location abbreviations or not?
  • Location/language preferences (If your customer base is outside the U.S.)
  • Other formatting requirements
• Personas
  • Writer persona (Who will the writer be writing as?)
  • Customer persona (Who will the writer be writing for?)
    • Demographics
    • 3 Adjectives to describe your blog’s tone
• Favorite pieces of writing
  • Link to favorite piece 1
  • Link to favorite piece 2
  • Link to favorite piece 3
• Other notes

Be sure these expectations are communicated clearly and concisely. Freelancers don’t typically get paid extra for time spent re-reading your buyer personas because they were written in a hurry and don’t quite make sense. Respect their time by being clear and straightforward, and you will be rewarded with unique content that feels like it was tailor-made just for you . . . because it was!

Tip 2: Give your writers the tools they need to succeed.

Your relationship with your writing team should be one of collaboration and mutual respect. This means avoiding misunderstandings and conflict whenever possible, and the best way to do that is to set your writers up with the tools for success right from the jump. Here are a few examples:

• Set reasonable deadlines whenever possible. Remember, your writers are most likely juggling multiple assignments from multiple clients on any given week. Give them enough of a head’s up that they can effortlessly work your article or blog post into their schedule with minimal stress.
• Pay them quickly and predictably. Obviously, if you use a content service like Verblio we handle that part for you. If your expectations for research and other time-intensive aspects of writing grow over time, be sure to adjust the writers’ pay accordingly!
• Create a brief or outline for each assignment. This should contain all relevant information, including suggested title, estimated word count, internal and external links you’d like included, keywords to target, and any specific subheadings you have in mind. It shouldn’t be too long-winded or dense with detail, however, or your writer may feel overwhelmed and like they don’t have the freedom to craft the piece in the way that organically works best.

Tip 3: Keep communication flowing in your writing team.

This may be the most important tip of all. Just imagine what your relationships with your coworkers, significant other, or kids would be like if you didn’t make an effort to communicate regularly. Productive and satisfying? Or more like rife with misunderstandings and frustration?

Your freelance writers probably don’t need as much communication as your full-time staff (and certainly not as much as your spouse), but you can’t just “set it and forget it” either. Communicating often means knowing you are on the same page. It gives you a chance to show your appreciation for your hard-working writers, which in turn makes them more likely to keep writing for you. Freelancing can be a bit isolating, and sometimes the simple act of a client checking in to touch base goes a long way toward building a stronger feeling of connection.

So, take the time to leave a glowing comment on a blog post you loved. Let your freelancers know if you’re going to be taking a break from blogging for a few weeks while you revamp your content strategy, so they know to focus on other clients and can manage their schedules more easily.

Make sure your writing team has easy ways to communicate back and forth with you, whether it’s email, monthly phone check-ins, project management software like Asana or Trello, or a Slack channel (or any of the helpful tools we mention in this post on communicating remotely). Strive to foster an environment where they can be honest about touchy subjects like pay. If something in their writing style isn’t quite working, tell them (diplomatically!) so they have a chance to fix it. Encourage them to ask questions as they write if anything is unclear. When in doubt, taking a moment to send even a brief note is usually better than letting communication fall to the wayside.

There you have it: a few of the best, most effective ways to create the writing team of your dreams. And of course, if all of this sounds like more up-front time and effort than you can spare, you can always count on Verblio to do the hard stuff for you, providing an agile, customizable content solution that hooks you up with reliable writers from a diverse range of industry backgrounds. Just check out this recent case study from our client and industry expert SocialSEO to get an idea of the massive time savings potential.

Looking to diversify your writing team, train up and vet multiple writers at once, and scale your content offering? Check out your writer options with by downloading this ebook.

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You probably know that in order for your blog posts to start ranking highly on Google, you need to incorporate the right search keywords. But, how do you figure out which keywords to focus on? This is where an intuitive, well-designed, robust, and FREE tool could really come in handy, right?

Thankfully, the Moz Keyword Explorer tool is here to save the day. Moz is probably the most respected thought leader in the world of SEO, so when they designed a tool to make keyword research as easy as possible, it’s no surprise that they thought of everything. The keyword explorer lets you analyze any keyword you are interested in ranking for, using specific metrics that were chosen for their usefulness.

If you have a free Moz account (which is easy-peasy to set up if you don’t already have one), you are limited to 20 queries per month, so keep this in mind before you begin exploring. We’ll give you a few tips for making the most of these free searches later in this blog post.

If you upgrade to a Moz Pro account, that number jumps all the way to either 300 or 5,000 queries per month depending on your subscription, and your account comes with access to several other valuable SEO tools as well. When you’re first starting out, the free account will probably work great, and you can always upgrade when you’re ready to get more serious about investing in SEO.

Moz Keyword Explorer Metrics: The Basics

The main metrics Moz’s tool focuses on are Volume, Difficulty, Opportunity, and Priority. Throughout this article, I am going to be using an imaginary client–a small interior design business–as an example of how to use the tool.

To start off, let’s enter a broad keyword, in this case, “modern interior design.”

As you can see, you are then presented with clean, easy-to-understand numeric and visual representations of each major metric.

Now, let’s look at each of these metrics, figure out what they mean, and most of all, why they matter so much.

Volume, Difficulty, Opportunity, & Priority: Your New Best SEO Friends

Volume:

In the first example, the keyword “modern interior design” yielded a volume of 851-1.7K. This is how many times the keyword is searched for in the average month. As you can see from the bar graph, this is a modest but respectable amount of searches–there is definitely interest in this keyword, though it may not get a ton of traffic. Just think, though–if we managed to rank for this keyword that would approximately come to 1,000 new people searching for something that’s relevant to our business and potentially clicking through to our blog each month. Not too shabby!

When we make the keyword even broader–just “interior design”–the volume jumps to between 30,000 and 70,000 searches per month.

When we home in on a more narrow keyword–let’s try “Scandinavian modern interior design”–the volume shrinks to 51-100. Not a lot of people are searching for this particular keyword, but there are still some very qualified, valuable, specific searches every month.

Difficulty:

This metric measures how challenging it will be to rank for a given keyword on a scale of 1-100, 1 being the easiest, 100 being holy-heck-impossible-to-rank. Sticking with our examples, you can see in the second screenshot that if we try to rank for something as broad as “interior design” we face a difficulty rating of 74. Yikes! Probably not going to make it very far in our SEO strategy if we choose this keyword to focus on. The Difficulty score for “modern interior design” is a still-challenging-but-perhaps-doable 53.

Easiest of all is the more targeted keyword of “Scandinavian modern interior design,” with a Difficulty score of 39. Since my imaginary interior design business client just happens to specialize in modern Scandinavian-inspired interiors, this seems to be a very effective keyword to focus on for SEO purposes in a much lower-stakes competitive environment for keywords.

Opportunity:

The Opportunity score is a little more complex. This score identifies how much opportunity for click-through traffic you have for any given keyword. This score takes into account all other results an internet user sees on the Google page when they search for a specific keyword.

Will you be competing against all sorts of distracting results, including paid ads and featured snippets? Then your Opportunity score will be lower. This score is on a scale of 1-100, and the higher the number, the better your chance to rank highly.

I tested it out with the keyword “Persian rugs in interior design” and received an Opportunity score of 60, which was pretty average for the various keywords I played around with. If my interior design client managed to rank on the first page of Google with this keyword, they would definitely have some competition for clicks, but not a hopeless amount as with wider-ranging keyword search terms.

Priority:

This one is probably the most important metric of all. The Priority score takes into account an aggregate of the other scores. This score is also on a scale of 1-100, with anything over 80 being really ideal and search terms you should prioritize more highly, and anything in the 50-80 range still being quite promising, but less like low-hanging fruit.

Since this score aggregates the other scores, it takes the guesswork out of determining which score is the most important. Is a keyword searched for often but difficult to rank for? Is a keyword easy to rank for but difficult to get click-through traffic for? The algorithm that calculates the Priority score takes all of this into consideration, saving you from any really agonizing decisions when deciding which keywords to tackle first.

In the first keyword exploration we tried, for “modern interior design,” the Priority score is 59. This tells me this particular keyword is promising overall and worth exploring.

A Few Key Takeaways

After experimenting with Moz’s free Keyword Explorer tool, here is what we’ve discovered:

1. It’s Our Current Favorite

By designing this SEO tool, Moz combined the best features of other keyword exploration tools on the market (think SEMRush, UberSuggest, etc), and designed something much more accurate and useful.

In addition to the main four metrics, the free keyword explorer also offers relevant keyword suggestions and SERP (search engine results page) analysis, to help take your keyword strategy even further with minimal pickup.

The Moz Keyword Explorer tool is simply the most robust, accurate, and user-friendly way to home in on the best keywords out there today–and it comes from THE trusted SEO authority, so we feel good–really good–about recommending it to our customers. It helps that it’s free, though those 20 queries go by pretty quickly so we can definitely see many upgrading or at least taking advantage of the free 30-day trial for long-term keyword planning.

2. Focus On the Priority Score

While all of the metrics are useful, a great strategy is to focus on the Priority score, since this is a reliable, quick way to determine which keywords are going to be the most successful.

This score should be a driving factor behind how you create your content. If you build your blog strategy around keywords with high Priority scores, you can feel confident about your ROI because you know these are keywords that your target audience is searching for and that you have a great chance of ranking for. Gotta rack up those win-wins.

3. Complete Your Keyword Research First

Some Verblio clients tend to come up with blog topics without having a specific keyword in mind, and then after they receive a post they attempt to optimize for a keyword after the fact. This is a lot of extra work and often results in cramming a keyword into a post in a way that reads as unnatural and obvious. Avoid this!

If your writer knows the keyword upfront, they will write a post that naturally focuses around and incorporates the keyword. Your SEO strategy will be more seamless and your content will be of higher quality. Within the Verblio platform, we recently added a few SEO fields to our topic descriptions to make it even easier to get on the same page as your writer.

Completing your keyword research first is a sound, smart SEO strategy. This approach means knowing what your prospective clients are searching for and then focusing your SEO in that direction.

Something that really works for our keyword strategy here at Verblio is sitting down with Keyword Explorer (yes, we absolutely use it!) and tackling all of our keyword research for the following month in one sitting. Taking an hour or two to get this out of the way streamlines our SEO strategy and makes it much easier to come up with plenty of useful blog topics.

4. The Keyword Explorer Lets You Do Deeper Research

As you become more comfortable with SEO and keyword research, you may find yourself wanting to look at and analyze more data. While Moz’s Keyword Explorer is easy enough for total beginners, it also offers more robust data for users with a bit more SEO experience.

For example, the “SERP Analysis” feature allows you to explore live search engine page results, including all of the competing results, ads, and images searchers will be confronted with in the current state of affairs. This effectively mimics the experience of your prospects and tells you what competition you’re up against if you manage to rank for a target keyword.

A Few Tips for Making the Most of Your 20 Free Queries

If you’re like us and revel in things that are free, here are a few ways to really maximize the value of your 20 free queries per month:

• Resist the temptation to enter every keyword that pops into your head. The Keyword Explorer tool is really fun to use, but those 20 queries will be used up more quickly than you may think, so use them wisely.
• You may want to start your keyword research by simply Googling keywords you are interested in, and then using the results to determine if a keyword is viable or targeted enough to research further using the Explorer.
• Take advantage of the Keyword Suggestions. You can actually click on “See All Suggestions” and then “Export CSV” to export all of the suggested keywords into a sortable spreadsheet on just one search. This means you get hundreds of viable keywords for each keyword you enter into the tool, which definitely adds a great deal of value to this free resource.

We hope you enjoy getting to know this useful keyword research tool as much as we have. If we’ve sparked an interest in taking your SEO game to the next level, be sure to check out these supplemental posts, which are chock-full of tips:

• This post on the best small business SEO tips
• Or how about this post on the difference between external and internal links, and how they affect your blog strategy.
• Want to do keyword strategy and find blog ideas at the same time? This post helps you kill two birds with one stone.
• Finally, if you haven’t already downloaded our SEO checklist, it’s friendly for SEO beginners and full of resources.

The post Jump In On Blog SEO Keyword Research With Moz’s Free Tool appeared first on Verblio.

How Getting Fresh Blog Posts From BlogMutt Is Like Bringing Your Own Lunch

(Image above courtesy of one of the greatest Tumblr sites out there: http://saddesklunch.com)

“All of the articles were becoming repetitive” was the reason we lost a recent customer. Frankly, it always sucks to see a customer leave, especially when the problem is something so fixable.

Which begs the question: Do you bring your lunch from home? Stick with me here.

At BlogMutt, most of us bring our lunches from home. And, as it turns out, these homemade lunches are actually the perfect analogy to the “repetitive post” problem.

Want Fresh Blog Posts? Change Up the Recipe

I once ate a salami sandwich every day for lunch for pretty much a month straight at BlogMutt. And it worked out okay in that it met my minimum lunchtime requirements. I had all the supplies I needed, thanks to a perhaps questionable decision to buy lunch meat and bread in bulk at Costco. My daily salami sandwich was enough to satiate my midday hunger. At first, it even tasted pretty great. Best of all, it was quick and easy.

But before too long, I got sick of eating and looking at the same lunch every day. Soon, I went from loving salami sandwiches to hoping I wouldn’t encounter one again for a very long time.

So, here were my options:

1. Force myself to keep eating the same lunch even though I was tired of it and it was no longer appealing,
2. Give up on lunch altogether (crazy talk!), or
3. Switch things up and begin bringing new, fresh, and slightly more inventive lunches to work.

Obviously, I went with option #3.

Here’s the thing: Updating a blog for your business is really no different than making your own lunch. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and keep requesting slight variations of the same topic over and over. The problem is, soon your blog feels stale and boring. It no longer brings your readers and prospective customers real value. They get sick of it, and so do you.

The solution to this dilemma isn’t to give up on blogging altogether. That would be as misguided as skipping lunch every day. After all, blogging consistently is one of the most effective ways to grow your brand and engage/foster prospective customers.

Instead, why not switch up your blog post ingredients? At BlogMutt, the recipe for fresh blog posts calls for fresh topics.

The beauty of BlogMutt is you don’t have to change your topics every day. But, taking the time to brainstorm new topics once a month or so goes a long way in keeping your content fresh. Doing this once a week? Even fresher. Like a salad made from local farmer’s market veggies fresh. Look at it as similar to meal planning for the week or month. It takes a little more time upfront, but the end results are much more satisfying.

The more you change your topics, the fresher and more enticing the posts. You wouldn’t serve your customers the exact same sandwich every day if you owned a cafe, and you shouldn’t repeat the same tired blog material week after week to keep delivering on your marketing goals, either.

When you mix things up and bring fresh new ingredients to your topics, your blog writers will feel more creative. You will get excited about your blog again, and better yet, so will your readers.

11 Ideas for New Topic Recipes

To cure my lunchtime boredeom, I tried new recipes. These didn’t have to be complicated or gourmet. They just needed to involve a bit of variety. Instead of the same old salami sandwich, I switched it up and brought turkey, avocado, and tomato. Sometimes I skipped the sandwich altogether and brought couscous with roasted veggies and chicken. Dinner leftovers made for tasty salad and sandwich ingredients.

The novelty of consistently new, fresh lunches made my lunch breaks much more enjoyable. Instead of something I dreaded, lunch became fun again.

The same thing will happen to your blog when you try a few tasty new recipes in the form of new topic ideas:

• Consider using a one-time topic to highlight a recent news item, event, or just a unique topic idea that you only want covered one time. With one-time topics, the topic goes away after you purchase the post, upping the fresh quotient.
  • Don’t be afraid of getting a little opinionated, like we did on this post about changes at Medium.
• Beef up your topic descriptions to ensure you and your pack of writers are on the same page. Spending just a couple minutes providing context around a topic helps our writers understand the angle you want to take. When the writer understands your intent, you will avoid getting an overly general and boring post. It’s also helpful for writers to know who your target audience is so they can speak directly to them and their pain points.
  • Prepping outlines is another great way to get just the posts you want.
• Make use of our new SEO advanced options in your topic descriptions (note: you need to have +Optimize add-on to unlock this feature). Targeting a blog topic toward a specific, new keyword can give the writers a new angle and focus.
• Put a spin on an existing topic. For example, localize it. If your topic is “marketing agency” change it to “Milwaukee marketing agency.” Mention the value of using a local agency in the “description” field for context, so the writers will know to focus on this, perhaps in a dedicated subheading.
• Don’t neglect the classics. Much like a tried-and-true soup and sandwich combo, you really can’t go wrong when you make sure you have at least one blog post covering each of these 10 must-have small business blog topics. Most of these can actually be covered again and again in new ways, to stave off that “I don’t know what to blog about” feeling.
• But, don’t be afraid to get creative, either. Sometimes the best lunches come from experimenting with new ingredient combinations, and the best blog posts can come from brand new topics.
  • If you have no idea where to start, check out this list of interesting places to look for fresh blog topics, or this epic list of 50 ready-to-go blog ideas.
• Plug a product or write a review of services you’ve tried, that you know your customers are curious about as well. We make use of this topic recipe fairly often at BlogMutt, like when we promoted our new and improved post buttons or gave our honest review of three different social media services.
• Use keyword research tools like Keywordtool.io, Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, or SEMRush to expand your options.
• Let the BlogMutt writers pitch you topics and become your own personal topic generating machines. Do you have a few writers you especially enjoy working with?
  • Mark them as preferred writers! This means they can propose new topic ideas for you, and all you have to do is click “accept.”
• Try shopping at different stores. Sometimes simply switching your weekly grocery run from Safeway to Sprouts is enough to inspire a creative new lunch idea.
  • Similarly, looking for blog ideas in unexpected places, like Reddit or your own travels, can really liven things up.
• Focus on your marketing goals. Remembering why you are blogging really reinvigorates your content ideas.

If you want even more on mastering topics, check out our post that tackles ways to make each topic work harder for you.

Quality Blog Posts Call For Quality Ingredients

If you want to enjoy an amazing steak for dinner, you don’t buy the meat from 7-11. You spend a little extra time and money going to your favorite butcher and getting the freshest cuts of meat available.

If your topics are generic and don’t include much context in the “description” section, there’s a good chance your posts will be generic, too. Even the best cooks can only do so much with Spam, a hot plate, & a can o’beans.

Try giving our writers fresh topics, seasoned with a little context and detail, and the final dish will be something new and exciting instead of the same boring salami sandwich you had for lunch yesterday.

The post Keeping Your Blog Posts Fresh appeared first on Verblio.

Blogging lets you connect with both prospects and existing customers in a creative, authentic way, and it doesn’t require a huge amount of technical knowledge or a large financial investment to get started.

For all these reasons, it’s really no wonder that blogging is a part of the overall marketing strategy for 80% of B2B marketers, and 75% of B2C marketers in North America.

Blogging is an indispensable part of any savvy content marketing strategy, and yet for many businesses as illustrated by the chart above, it hasn’t proven itself especially effective. That’s not because blogging itself is a flawed marketing strategy. It’s because way too many companies slap together a few blog posts per month without any real consistency or strategic planning, and then never see anything approaching real ROI.

They make common business blog mistakes and then completely give up, which is tragic since most business blogging mistakes are completely fixable.

If you are going to dedicate time and money to blogging (which you should!), you want to ensure that your investment pays off in the form of better search engine traffic, increased website visits and engagement, and more leads. This is absolutely within your reach (see our post on how to measure your blog’s ROI to figure out exactly how you’re doing), as long as your blogging strategy is smart, intentional, and incorporates sound inbound strategy.

One excellent way to pull all that off is to know which top blogging mistakes to avoid…and then actively do so.

Here are our current top 4 blogging mistakes to steer clear of, so you can start seizing on ROI.

1. Your blogging style is self-absorbed.

Listen, we love when business bloggers tell an authentic, personal story as a more interesting way to frame a business topic. When used judiciously, talking about your story and your business directly, even in a promotional way, can be effective. The problem is when that’s all you blog about. If you go on and on about your company’s mission and services, eventually your readership will grow bored, dwindle, and then vanish.

Why? Because you’re focusing on yourself and your business instead of your customers and what they need.

For every post about how your company is expanding or offering a new product, there should be several posts that demonstrate you understand your customers and care about their pain points and FAQs. Blog posts focused on tips, templates, how-tos, and the like provide immediate use value to your readers, which will keep them coming back for more.

Here’s a great example: Avalara is a sales tax software product designed to help e-commerce business owners streamline the tangled, complex process of collecting sales tax. While their blog could focus on how great their product is, it instead provides helpful tips and advice, like this post on how Amazon sellers can maximize their profits on Amazon Prime Day.

This approach does great things for your brand: it demonstrates expertise, which makes your business more trustworthy, and it creates a sense of loyalty since you are actively helping your readers for free. In return, many prospects who read your blog will become loyal readers…and eventually return as paying customers.

(via avalara.com/blog)

2. Your blogging is inconsistent.

We all have diminishing attention spans these days, with way too many websites fighting for our attention and time. In order to maintain interest and avoid frustrating readers who enjoy your posts, you need to provide consistency. Publishing your blog on a regularly scheduled, predictable basis helps you build a loyal audience, but it also does wonders for your SEO.

Publishing fresh new useful content each week (or ideally, more often) gives you more opportunities to rank for specific keywords. Google’s algorithms are constantly crawling the web looking for useful content that answers the questions and queries internet users search for. This means that if you blog consistently and your posts are high-quality, you will see ROI in the form of better SEO.

So, how do you start blogging consistently? An editorial calendar for organization is key, and so is dedicating time each month or quarter to brainstorm a master list of new blog topics so you always have something to write about. If you simply don’t have the staff or bandwidth to blog regularly, this is the perfect marketing task to outsource to business blogging experts.

For a rather aspirational example of blogging very consistently, check out HubSpot’s blog which is updated frequently and as reliably as clockwork. While most businesses don’t have the blogging resources to post quite that often, posting fresh, useful, well-written content once or twice a week is within reach.

3. Your content isn’t unique enough (or engaging).

This one can be tough. With so many blogs out there, it may feel like you have nothing new to say. The mistake is to give up and just post the same old drivel everyone else is already posting (or even worse, have your intern churn out some generic content each week). Yawn.

A better approach is to follow these tips:

• Aim high—come up with 10x content—blog posts that are 10 times better than anything your competitors are putting out there. All it takes is a little extra SERP research to determine how to seize on this opportunity.
• Carve out your own unique niches in an over-saturated space. Instead of writing generic posts about how a home security system keeps you safe, become an expert (and demonstrate it!) in how smart-home technology and home security work together.
• Start each blog with a sharp, focused, crystal-clear purpose. Solve a specific problem, answer a question, provide a solution to a defined audience. The more clear your focus, the more unique and engaging your blog will be—and the more fun it will be to write.
• Home in on your unique style and voice. You don’t write just like the other guys because you’re not the other guys!

Example worth emulating: REI’s blog is hardly the only blog in the outdoor adventure space, but their posts have a unique energy, tone, and vibe that is distinctly REI.

4. Your content has a short shelf life.

Achieving great ROI on a blog post doesn’t happen immediately. Evergreen posts that remain helpful over time tend to continuously get shared and linked to, helping your content strategy long after you hit “publish.”

But some posts are simply not great at going the distance. Blog posts focused on industry news and events, for example, are only going to be of interest for so long.

While these posts with short-term benefits can be part of your overall blogging strategy, the truth is that most of your posts should be able to provide a return on investment for many months or even years after they are published.

Here’s how to make sure this happens:

• Promote the heck out of your posts. Your blogging job isn’t done when you finish writing the post—a lot of the most important work happens in your promotional strategy. We’ve got you covered with a two-part guide (here and here) that will help you build a kick-ass promotional strategy from the ground up.
• Revamp & republish old posts. Update links and statistics, add more detail, and keep ever-changing SEO best practices in mind. It’s less work than posting a brand-new blog, and lets your old posts continue to build your reach in exciting new ways.
• Enlist the help of a nifty service like MeetEdgar to keep republishing your posts on an automated schedule on social media, which can provide a healthy, thriving afterlife for posts.
• Encourage a company culture of sharing each other’s links to blog posts on social media channels.
• Get more eyes on your posts through paid ads on social media.
• Rework your posts slightly for reposting on Medium or LinkedIn.

As you can see, an effective content marketing strategy takes work, time, and a whole lot of strategy. Avoiding these top blogging mistakes is an excellent place to start, and which will help you significantly improve marketing ROI by employing these very doable, holistic changes.

The post Steer Clear Of These 4 Top Blogging Mistakes & Seize On ROI appeared first on Verblio.

Blogging is a seriously underutilized marketing tool in the senior care industry. The truth is that seniors are increasingly web-savvy, and in many cases, it is their even-more-web-inclined adult children who search for information on senior living facilities. By creating an elder care blog and keeping it updated with useful and entertaining posts, you will boost your senior care facility’s search engine results rankings, attract new prospective customers, and build brand awareness.

Blogging can be a powerful tool for marketing a senior care business, as long as you regularly provide useful and engaging content that attracts prospective customers and proves your site’s legitimacy to Google. While some of your posts can be focused specifically on your senior care services, other posts should explore topics or solve problems that prospective customers and their families are interested in. This approach ensures that you attract attention from prospects at all stages of the commitment cycle, including those who don’t yet know if they are interested in a senior living facility.

Best of all, blogs continue to work for you and help you reach your marketing goals long after they’re posted. While you are busy running a thriving senior care business, your blog is working hard to attract new clients and help create a warm, engaging, and credible image for your brand.

Where Do I Get Blog Topic Ideas?

Coming up with topics for your elder care blog doesn’t have to be super difficult or time-consuming. Elsewhere on the Verblio (formerly BlogMutt) blog, we’ve put together tons of resources for coming up with business blog topics, from lists of blog topic idea generators to our own master list of 50 ready-to-go blog topic ideas.

When it comes to senior care-specific blog ideas, though, a great place to start is by checking out the best senior living blogs, identifying what works and resonates with their audience, and determining what’s actionable and applicable for your marketing strategy from there. Yes, that’s right—we’re suggesting you get inspired by seeing what other similar blogs are doing well—and then aim to appropriate for your audiences.

Your blog topics don’t always have to be completely original, as long as you put a fresh spin on the content and the topic is still relevant and timely to your perspective (or current) customers.

Here are a couple of great examples to emulate.

A Place for Mom

The A Place for Mom blog publishes new content frequently and does a great job of mixing things up, covering everything from senior living trends and inspirational senior tales to possible problems seniors may encounter.

Their frequent posting schedule and attention to keyword searches has helped them rank very highly on Google for many popular senior living topics.

• This post about how the aging population is embracing technology is written in an upbeat, approachable way, while incorporating specific stats and concrete examples.
• “Inspirational Women Over 60” shows senior readers that the golden years can be full of excitement and achievement, instead of being something to fear.

Our Parents Senior Living Blog

This blog really focuses on the topics and keywords seniors and their adult children are searching for most, and then addresses them in an accessible, reassuring manner.

• “Caring for an Aging Parent When You’re an Only Child” gives practical tips and is written in a warm, empathetic manner that makes adult only children of seniors feel understood.
• Many adult children of seniors are faced with the painful situation of their parents refusing to eat. By homing in on such a specific topic, this blog post gives actionable advice while also being very comforting. Both great qualities of a senior living facility, wouldn’t you say?

9 Best Blog Topic Sources For Your Senior Care Business

Now that you have a better idea of what to aim for with your senior living blog, here is a handy list of examples and blog topic sources you can refer to anytime you are stuck or need extra inspiration:

1. Caring.com is focused on caregivers and adult children, addressing their unique needs. Popular topics include how to identify when your aging parent needs assisted living, and blogs about recognizing the signs of dementia in your loved ones.
2. Minding Our Elders is another blog specifically written for caregivers, with posts full of useful information as well as frequent encouragement to caregivers who sometimes need reminders to take care of themselves instead of only focusing on their aging parents.
3. For something different and fun, check out the Roaming Boomers, a travel blog specifically for baby boomers and seniors. For prospective customers who are still active and healthy enough to travel and enjoy their retirement in adventurous ways, this blog offers a great combination of inspiration and practical travel tips.
4. The AARP’s blog has an entire dating and relationship section devoted to giving tips to seniors who are re-entering the world of dating and sex. Mixing a few of these topics into your senior living blog will help it stand out from the more traditional elder care blogs.
5. The New Old Age blog from The New York Times is unfortunately no longer publishing new posts, but their archive offers a wealth of inspiration with long-form pieces focused on the unique challenges of the U.S.’s ever-growing aging population.
6. The Sunrise Senior Living blog keeps their content fresh with a great mix of practical tips, lifestyle, health, and wellness advice, and other blog posts focused more specifically on assisted living.
7. We already discussed A Place for Mom, but this blog gets so many things right we’d be remiss not to include it on this list.
8. Graceful Aging is actually a senior-oriented video series, but most of the topics covered in their videos would also make excellent blog posts and prove quite shareable on social media accounts.
9. SeniorCare.Net should provide you with plenty of topic ideas, especially focused on health, wellness, and finances for seniors.

We hope these topic sources have you all fired up and ready to harness the power of blogging for your senior care business. If you need help getting a blogging strategy organized, try downloading our free editorial calendar template by filling out the form below, or contact Verblio if you’d like to get blogging off your plate.

The post 9 Best Blog Topic Sources for Marketing a Senior Care Business appeared first on Verblio.

An effective content strategy should provide value to your customers, but it should also provide value to your business by serving as a continuous stream of kick-ass marketing. Once you create your content marketing strategy with this goal in mind, it becomes easier to come up with sustainable blog topics—not just topics for this week or month, but effective content month after month, year after year.

To delve into just how the right blog topics can help you to actually accomplish your marketing goals, we were inspired by this recent blog post and Whiteboard Friday video over on the Moz blog.

In this post we’ll be making direct connections between many of the points in that post and the needs and goals of our BlogMutt customers, as well as other small business owners.

What is the value of a single blog post?

When you feel overwhelmed by the task of creating an overall business blogging strategy, it sometimes helps to narrow your focus a bit on each individual blog post. An individual blog post is unlikely to accomplish all of your marketing goals, but if it can tackle one or two, that’s great. Cumulatively, your individual posts begin to chip away at your marketing goals in a powerful way.

Over on the Moz post, they suggest that each individual post should do at least one of these things:

1. Help your blog readers accomplish a goal.

For example, if a reader searches for ways to win a real estate bidding war and finds a post on your real estate company’s blog giving them actionable tips for doing just that, they will leave the post feeling empowered and ready to place a winning bid.

2. Provide your reader with something interesting or entertaining to think about.

They may not even know they were interested in the topic (except in a peripheral way) and this individual post probably won’t help them achieve a goal. What it will do is be super engaging and likely to be shared on Facebook or another social media outlet, while making your brand more memorable and sticky.

This list of the most shareable blog posts of 2016 is full of great examples.

3. Improve your thought leadership authority on a topic and lead to an increased linkage.

By discovering problems your readers are searching about and providing solutions in the form of helpful, approachable, shareable content, you improve your traffic and your reputation through future linking potential at the same time.

4. Create a positive brand association.

Personal stories about why you started your business, the passion, drive, and mission behind your brand, or even more vulnerable tales of times you or your business missed the mark—when well-crafted—can make your brand feel more unique, personable, and likeable.

While some of these are focused on how your blog posts help your reader, hitting these markers also helps your business reach its marketing goals. When your blog readers are engaged, entertained, and given interesting or actionable things to think about, they are more likely to come back for more, grow attached to your brand, and share your posts on social media.

Homing In On Your Marketing Goals

In order to create an effective content marketing strategy, you must first home in on just what your marketing goals are for your blog. It will be much easier to choose the right blog topics and measure your blog’s success if you start out with clearly defined goals.

Using the Moz post as a starting point, here are a few possible marketing goals for your blog:

• Attract a specific audience. Maybe you want to attract homeowners in their 30s with plenty of disposable income, or urban moms with young toddlers. Spend some time thinking about, defining your ideal audience(s), and then that will assist in how to best attract them.
• Grab the attention of influencers. This often means a combination of high-quality, attention-grabbing content, and reaching out to influencers directly in a memorable way.
• Improve your SEO so the right customers and readers can find you easily.
• Build brand recognition and likeability. Your blog is the voice of your brand, and how it makes your readers feel will have a huge impact on its marketing success.
• Inspire readers to take action. These actions may include signing up for an email newsletter, buying a product or service, subscribing to your blog, sharing a post, or leaving a comment in order to encourage an engaged community.

When you come up with blog topics, keep these marketing goals in mind. One approach is to break your goals down into bite-size portions by only focusing on a couple of goals at a time for a set period of time, like a quarter, or designating one day per week for a particular goal-oriented blog post. Whichever approach you choose, be sure to regularly measure your blog’s success to stay on track.

6 Ways To Make Your Business Blog Topics Work For You

Now that you have a clearer idea of your marketing goals, it’s time to make your business blog topics work for you and start generating topics that help your business reach those goals.

Here are six topic generating approaches that—as master Rand points out on the Moz Whiteboard Friday video—lead to a near-infinite number of blog topics:

1. What else do my readers care about?

One very freeing approach to business blogging is to look for overlap between the topics directly related to your business and other interesting topics that relate indirectly.

If you own a roofing business, you can certainly post plenty of roofing-related content, but chances are your readers will also be interested in other aspects of home ownership, from ways to save energy around the house to tips for throwing a killer summer barbecue that maybe are only peripherally related.

2. What are some hot topics in my field?

Piggybacking off of trending blogs and news commentary is a great way to gain traction for your business blog.

Let’s say you’re a mortgage broker and everyone on your Twitter feed seems to be worked up because mortgage rates are going up. What a great opportunity to write a post explaining why buyers shouldn’t worry, despite conventional wisdom.

3. What are the major questions your prospective customers have?

Listing out every question you get asked on a regular basis, or notice people asking your colleagues online, should generate tons of blog topics.

If you are a marketing manager for a law firm, what do that firm’s potential clients need to know? You could write individual posts about how to prepare for their initial consultation with their lawyer, how to keep legal costs under control, how to maximize their chances of winning a civil suit…and that’s barely scratching the surface.

4. What information do you have that no one else has?

This may be in the form of specific experiences, niche expertise, or data that you’ve gathered. The idea is to position yourself as an expert in possession of rare and useful information.

5. What personal stories can you tell?

Did you start a pet food company because you loved your dog and were wary of the ingredients in commercial pet food? Did you become a grief counselor after experiencing your own loss and realizing you wanted to help others navigate their grief in healthy ways?

Telling stories that are real, personal, and vulnerable enhances your brand and makes it easier for prospective customers to feel a real connection.

6. What keywords are people searching for related to your business?

Basing blog ideas around popular keywords not only helps your SEO, but it also ensures you’re providing content of real value. To get started, try a keyword tool like Google AdWords or Ubersuggest.

When you approach business blogging in these six ways, the ideas should start flowing and never stop. And if you need more inspiration for one-off topics, we have you covered here and here, oh and here, too.

Takeaway

Once you begin treating your business blog as a tool to achieve your marketing goals, you will hopefully find that it’s much easier to sustain an ongoing and effective content marketing strategy.

If you’re ever stuck, you can always tap into the creativity of our 10,000+ BlogMutt writers by trying out our cool Topic Ideas feature. Once you have your never-ending list of business blog topics, get organized with our 12-Month Checklist and How To Start A Blog Challenge Series.

The post How To Come Up With Business Blog Topics To Actually Accomplish Marketing Goals appeared first on Verblio.

When you write the way you speak, it is called informal or conversational writing. While it has its place (we’ll get to that), it’s generally not the clearest or most effective way to convey your thoughts.

Need quick tips and have no time to read through this post? Here’s a teaser video we created for this content piece using Verblio’s new Engagement video service. It’s designed for social media to drive more eyeballs to written content on a website.

Clear Communication Is Important

Whether spoken or written, the purpose of language is to clearly communicate thoughts and feelings. Most young children learn to speak easily and without formal training. They simply absorb and repeat the language they hear around them; this process is almost automatic. After all, doing so allows them to communicate their needs and desires to those who can help fulfill them.

Anyone who’s ever spent time with a toddler frustrated by their inability to say exactly what they want to say can see that the need to learn to speak is fundamental and instinctive. As we gain language skills, life becomes much easier and more satisfying.

Learning to write is a skill which is not so quickly and easily acquired—it must be taught and requires a lot of practice. It also doesn’t tend to come as easily and naturally as speaking does. Perhaps that’s why schools devote so much time and attention to teaching writing to their students. Children (and, let’s admit it—sometimes us adults) can have a difficult time mastering the seemingly arbitrary rules of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. While difficult to learn, writing clearly and persuasively is an important life skill that is vital to master.

What are the Differences Between Speaking and Writing?

The reasons it’s not really recommended to write the way you speak become more obvious when you examine the differences between speaking and writing. Nearly everyone can communicate their thoughts in some non-written way. However, not everyone is capable of translating those same thoughts into writing.

When we speak, we’re less likely to use correct grammar and often include partial sentences. Speech is generally more spontaneous than writing and more likely to stray from the subject under discussion.

While verbal speech tends to be full of unstructured phrases and even random thoughts, the written word is generally more structured and focused. After all, unless we are writing dialogue, it’s generally frowned upon to include “um,” “like,” and similar filler words in our writing. It’s also usually best to avoid slang and expletives.

Idioms are also more common in speech than in writing. “Kicking the bucket” and “looking at the radishes from below” both mean the same thing to their respective American and German listeners. However, either one is apt to just confuse a reader who is neither American nor German.

From Speech into Written Words

Organization, structure, and grammar are all important components of the written word. Vocabulary is also an important component. Our speech generally includes a lot of repetition. Our writing, however, should rely on vocabulary to get our point across, rather than repetition. As writers, we also use structure and punctuation for emphasis, and to keep our writing and thoughts orderly. If you write the way you speak, the results tend to be disorganized and confusing.

When we write, we can’t complement our words with facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice as we do when expressing ourselves verbally. That is why we must make those words express our thoughts clearly. We need to expand on our points until they are clear, easy to understand, and the subject is thoroughly explained.

When speaking directly to people, we are constantly adjusting our manner, tone, and vocabulary to the nonverbal feedback we receive, even when we don’t realize we’re doing so. When we write, we have to imagine the readers’ feedback and adjust our style accordingly. We need to make sure our writing is clear, concise, and gets our points across in a way that is easy to digest.

When you write the way you speak, on the other hand, tends to involve rambling that quickly loses your reader’s attention.

Expressing Ourselves Well Through the Written Word

To sum up, keep these best practices in mind to cater to written audiences, spanning varying levels of formality:

• In writing, commas and other punctuation marks represent the pauses and emphasis of our spoken language. Like exclamation marks and question marks, they symbolize our thoughts, feelings, and intent. They replace the vocal emphasis or body language that we use when speaking.
• Sentences, paragraphs, and the correct use of grammar allow us to organize our thoughts in a way that makes sense and is easy to follow and laser-focused.
• We tend to use more complex sentence structure when writing than when speaking. We’re also more likely to use connecting words such as “additionally” and “although” rather than “and” and “but,” which we use so much more in speech.
• Depending on our intended tone and audience, we may use contractions in order to make our writing sound more approachable, since they emulate our normal manner of speaking. Avoiding contractions makes writing much more formal than is usually necessary.
• We tend to use a more formal vocabulary when writing. We might say that we’re making a run to the store where we would write that we’re going shopping.
• We tend to avoid slang words and phrases.
• We support our points with details and explanations so the reader can clearly follow our reasoning and thought processes.
• Once we are done writing, we go back and polish our work. We correct misspellings and grammatical errors, and then we check for clarity. It is this ability to go back and rewrite and revise our work before submitting it to others’ scrutiny that is most responsible for the more formal feel of writing compared to verbal communication. Consider:
  • Do the ideas flow between sentences and paragraphs?
  • Are we happy with our word choices and sentence structure?

The Permanency of Written Words

New words generally enter our language through people using them in conversation. Once those same words begin appearing in print, they become more widespread and gain greater acceptance. The permanency of writing also influences how people speak, with new words constantly entering our vocabulary. Unfortunately, oral traditions rich in region-specific words and phrases tend to disappear unless written down.

With the advent of the internet, even greater changes are taking place. The more casual manner of writing common in email, texting, and social media has blurred the line between speaking and writing. On the other hand, the internet is forever. This means it’s important to keep quality and your intended brand in mind when writing for the web. There will always be a market for communication that is clear, succinct, and well written.

Is it Ever Okay to Write the Way You Speak?

While writing how you speak is generally frowned upon, injecting a bit of the casual and friendly tone of verbal conversation into your writing is a good thing. As long as your posts are well-structured and easy to understand, being more conversational in your blogging can make clients feel more engaged and help make your brand more approachable. If your writing tends to be a bit too cold and formal, or you rely too much on jargon (please stop doing that), you can probably stand to write a bit more like you talk.

Other forms of written communication, like emails, social media updates, and personal blogging, can come even closer to how you write the way you speak. Adding slang and simplifying your vocabulary—when done deliberately and thoughtfully—can make your writing more engaging and fun to read.

Always keep your audience in mind—an academic journal article is obviously going to be written much more formally and less conversationally than a funny blog you’re putting together for friends and family.

The Takeaway

While writing is generally more carefully crafted and formal than verbal communication, the most important thing is to know your audience and aim for writing that is clear, engaging, and concise. It’s never a great idea to write the way you speak, but a touch of conversational communication can be a good thing.

And, if you’d like a team of talented freelance writers for hire who can craft your content strategy to be the best of both worlds—engaging and friendly, without being unprofessional—Verblio has your back.

Editor’s note: this post first appeared in January of 2016. We figured it was time for an update. We’ve included new tips and details to make sure your blogging and writing strategy is as effective as it can be in 2018. Learn more about why you should not write the way you speak.

The post Do You Write the Way You Speak? Here’s Why Most Good Writers Don’t appeared first on Verblio.

Before we get started, we start out with a teaser video we created for this content piece using Verblio’s new Engagement video service. It’s designed for social media to drive more eyeballs to written content on a website.

But one rule many people don’t know (or just don’t understand) is that—like keywords, meta descriptions, and alt text—the readability of your content matters. In fact, most online content is written at a reading level appropriate for thirteen to fifteen-year-olds. While there are certainly some industries where it’s a good idea to go above that level, publishing website content that’s easy to read is a critical part of keeping readers interested and engaged. And keeping readers interested in your content can have a serious impact on your SEO ranking.

How do you know how readable your content is? Understanding how to calculate Flesch Reading Ease (sometimes referred to as Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease) is a great place to start.

What Is the Flesch Reading Ease Score?

The Flesch Reading Ease score is a tool for calculating the approximate reading level of English-language content, relying on the structure of the English language to provide an accurate result. Sentence length and the length of the words within the sentence are both taken into consideration when calculating the Flesch readability score.

Short sentences and small words receive a higher score, while long sentences with longer words receive lower scores. Typically, a score of 100 or more means that the content is very simple and easy to read. A score of 60-70 means that your content is perfect for intermediate readers at or above an 8th or 9th-grade reading level, and a score of 0-30 is more suited for university work than for the internet. This paragraph, for example, scores around a 62 on the Flesch Readability Scale, which means that it falls right in the average range for online content.

In case you want to get serious about your content’s readability, the actual formula for calculating your reading ease score is as follows:

Flesch Reading Ease = 206.835 – (1.015 x Average Sentence Length) – (84.6 x Average Syllables Per Word)

Average sentence length can be calculated by dividing the number of words by the number of sentences.

The average number of syllables per word can be calculated by dividing the number of syllables by the number of words.

However, if you’re like most people and don’t have the time or patience to count all of the words, sentences, and syllables in a blog post, fear not! There are tools to help.

Tools for Testing Flesch Readability

There are several tools that will enable you to check your Flesch scores.

Microsoft Office offers an in-program tool that provides a readability score. You can also use web-based calculators like Readability-Score or The Writer. If you’re a WordPress user, the plugin Yoast SEO includes a feature that automatically tests for Flesch Reading Ease.

While your score may vary slightly depending on the specific program that you use, the results should be fairly consistent, as long as the program uses the Flesch algorithm to calculate readability.

Flesch Reading Ease SEO: Why Does It Matter?

The algorithms that determine SEO ranking change constantly, are not always transparent, and not all of those factors are easily defined. No one knows for sure whether or not Google calculates Flesch readability, but the readability of your article does impact your search engine ranking. In general, if a piece of content is too difficult to read, people won’t remain on the page for long.

You may have as little as eight seconds to capture the average reader’s attention and convince them to stay on the page long enough to finish the article. If the content isn’t engaging enough to catch their attention or simple enough to keep them reading, they’ll click away, leading to the dreaded high bounce rate. Too many instances of quick clicks that result in visitors leaving your page can swiftly drop your search engine ranking.

It’s also important to note that most internet searchers aren’t looking for complex, complicated explanations about their topic. While long-form blog posts often have a higher search engine ranking than shorter ones and many readers do appreciate more in-depth blog posts, keeping them simple, scannable, and easy to read helps increase the odds that readers will remain on the page. Generally, even complex topics should be presented in a clear, easily digestible format.

How to Increase Readability Score

Your target readability score will depend on your intended audience and on the content that you’re delivering. For example, if you’re providing information geared toward elementary school children, you’ll want to keep your content at a lower reading level. On the other hand, if you’re writing a university-level piece that involves complicated research and a deep understanding of a particular content area, you can allow your readability score to decrease substantially.

In general, you’ll want to keep web content at a score of between 60-70 to ensure that you’ll be able to reach and engage the biggest possible audience. Scoring above that number may indicate that your content is too simple, which will put readers off. If you’re consistently scoring below a 60, read on for several tricks you can employ to bring your score back up and make your content easier to read.

Keep Your Paragraphs Short

The average paragraph should contain around five sentences, but there are exceptions to that rule. Highly technical or specific content will have longer paragraphs, while simpler content may be broken up into smaller paragraphs that are easier to follow. While they may not have a substantial impact on your Flesch score, headings and subheadings will also contribute to breaking up walls of text, making it easier for readers to skim.

Choose Your Words Carefully

Action words are critical. Keep your reader engaged by avoiding passive language, while designing your words with a specific impact in mind will help produce the effect you’re looking for. Pack as much meaning as possible into as few words as possible.

You’ll be surprised by how much more readable an article becomes when you remove unnecessary words.

Shorten Your Sentences

You can babble on endlessly, cramming as much information as possible into a sentence like this one that seems to go on forever and ever, but that’s a perfect way to scare off your readers. (See how painful that was?)

Sticking to a 20-25-word maximum per sentence is a better rule of thumb. Short sentences give readers room to form their own opinions and actually absorb the information you’re presenting.

Keep it Simple

Too many writers fall into the trap of becoming overly impressed by their own vocabularies. While mixing up your words is great, you don’t have to use a complicated word when a simple one serves the same purpose. Try using small instead of minuscule, or idea instead of concept. Small changes to your writing vocabulary can help keep your reader’s attention—not to mention help you avoid sounding pretentious.

Break it Up

You’re always looking for new blog ideas, and they certainly don’t come out of thin air. Instead of cramming several concepts into a single post, try breaking them up into multiple posts. You can always publish more frequently, or better yet, create a series that spans several posts and keeps your readers coming back for more. Limiting your posts to one simple topic will keep your readers more engaged in what you’re offering, while also providing you with lots of content ideas: win-win!

Write for Your Audience, Not for Your Score

Here’s the thing about all the rules: they’re never absolute. You aren’t writing for SEO. You’re writing for real people who are going to read the things you’ve written. When you write meaningful content that adds value to your industry, people are going to read it. Keep your audience in mind with every piece you write.

If that means breaking the rules—using longer paragraphs, including more complicated words, and writing longer sentences—then go for it! Ultimately, your readers should determine the direction of your content strategy, not an algorithm. Look at the Flesch Reading Ease Score as a useful tool, rather than an oppressive rule.

When you write with your readability score in mind, you’ll discover that you produce much more crisp content that is naturally more interesting to your readers. The average internet browser reads and comprehends best at approximately a seventh-grade level. Most readers can understand more complicated content, but they just prefer to read something a bit more simple. When you deliver that content, you enhance the experience of your readers and bring them back to see what else you have to offer. Many online content writers have mastered this art.

Editor’s Note: this post first appeared in March of 2016. But the world of SEO and content marketing changes fast, so we figured it was time for an update. We’ve included new tips and details to make sure your Flesch Reading Ease strategy is on the mark in 2018.

The post Flesch Reading Ease: Understanding It, Calculating It, Improving It appeared first on Verblio.