Category Archives: Blog

Why It May Be Time to Ask for Marketing Help

Blog

By Freelance Writer, Rhonda Campbell

Niche blog posts, SEO marketing, website landing pages, digital newsletters and taglines are a few “to dos” that help to structure an effective online marketing campaign. To get lasting consumer engagement and sales results, your marketing campaign may also rely on video marketing, postcards, images, infographics, posters and feature articles.

You may have reached your solo limit

All of these marketing actions require content. It can take 30 to 45 minutes to write a single blog posts. Add in the time that it takes to design a landing page, brochure, postcard or website and more than one hour could pass before an upgrade to a section of your business website is finalized.

Keywords have to be researched, taglines need testing and meta tags have to be added to images and videos. You also need to decide which social media sites align with your company, how often you should post new data to these social media sites and on what days and at what time of day you should publish the posts. Hubspot offers tips on social media marketing posts.

Developing marketing content is a full-time job. Developing marketing content requires you to have enough vision, independence and determination to succeed to turn the reigns over to an experienced writer. Check out these signs that the universe might be telling you that it’s time to ask for marketing help.

Signs that it’s time to get marketing help

  • You’ve started to spend more time writing blog posts, SEO articles and social media posts.
  • Shipments on new customer orders are going out later. Content marketing is taking up three to four hours of your time every day, making it hard for you to get to the post office.
  • Thoughts about your business are turning to content marketing more frequently, particularly the new videos, images and written content that you need to develop and publish to keep your business in front of existing and potential customers.
  • Two months have passed since you updated written content at your website.
  • Keywords and phrases on your website and landing pages are outdated.
  • Your business’ search engine rankings have dropped significantly.
  • Posts at your social media accounts are so old that would be customers quickly click away from your social media pages, believing that you’re business is defunct.
  • Strategies that you’re using to market your business no longer work despite how often you use them.

It takes vision, a clear purpose, courage, tenacity, confidence and perseverance to succeed as an entrepreneur. These same virtues could tempt you to do everything yourself, even after it’s become painfully clear that you no longer can handle all of your business deliverables from nuts to bolts all by yourself. Don’t let that happen. Don’t try to do everything yourself and plug up lots of potential sales.

The Internet isn’t going away. Opportunities to grow online revenues are expanding, as was made clear during the 2016 Cyber Monday shopping season. Consider hiring an experienced writer to not only get marketing help but to keep your business viable in the fast paced virtual world.

Marrying Email Contacts and Marketing Content

Blog

By Freelance Writer, Rhonda Campbell

freelance-writer-rhonda-campbell-email-contacts

Don’t be shocked. As an experienced freelance writer knows, email contacts are one of the lifelines of your business. Email marketing produces results. Check this out.

Campaign Monitor shares that, email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom with a 3800% ROI and $38 for every $1 spent.” The key is to send email contacts marketing content that is rich with original pictures and stat-rich infographics. Marketing content crafted by a skilled freelance writer that generates traffic from email contacts is also embedded with links to new, in-depth industry related reports, op-eds and feature interviews.

What to Share with Email Contacts

Schedule event pictures, videos, surveys and articles that you send to email contacts on a quarterly basis, at a minimum. If you’ve ever created an editorial calendar for a website, magazine or newspaper, you’re familiar with content scheduling.

An example of marketing content scheduling created by a freelance writer follows:

  • Company: ABC Grocer
  • Industry/Specialty: Food Industry
  • Content Volume: Send 4 daily Tweets, 6 Pinterest images, 1 Facebook post, 4 Google Plus posts and 5 blog posts; 8 new YouTube and Vimeo videos and 12 emails
  • January/Week 1: Theme: “Newness” – Highlight new products and product benefits. Also, highlight new grocery home delivery service that ABC Grocer is launching March 1, 2017 (Tie in to the new year and global momentum for making a “new start”)
  • Keywords: Tie into each piece of content marketing (Some Keyword Search Tools are: Spyfu.com, Google Adwords, SERPS.com and Wordtracker. WordPress also has free keyword apps that you can download into your WordPress site.)
  • Images/Pictures: New Year community event photos; new product images; new Atlanta, Georgia 111 Main Street store floor layout; new ABC Grocer slogan sign; social media landing pages
  • Videos: CEO 4th quarter results remarks; live steaming of New Year community event; message from store manager at new Atlanta, Georgia grocery store; three video recipes from ABC Grocer team members; two videos that highlight foods at ABC Grocer that help to lower blood pressure
  • Emails: Four weekly two-page newsletters; four direct emails with click-out coupons and discounts and four email contacts spotlighting one ABC Grocer team member and three ABC Grocer customers

Take the Lid Off Your Online Content Marketing

Give email contacts more opportunities to gain more from your business. Look at social media as a single outbound marketing strategy, not your only marketing strategy.

A freelance writer could help you reach thousands of prospects in less than four days using Facebook or Twitter ads. But, it’s going to cost. To get accurate stats on your social media ad results, you may have to run third party metrics, especially considering the fact that Facebook reported miscalculated metrics.

Post your social media icons at the bottom of your emails. Make it easy for email contacts to find you on social media. Send email contacts newsletters, original pictures, videos, reports and surveys on the same day each week. Also, send email contacts value-rich information at the same time.

Measure the results of content marketing. Consider hiring a freelance writer to send one newsletter on a different day and time to determine which days and times gain the best results. Be open to change. If you see that email contacts are not responding to content marketing, change how you present or frame the content. For example, you could shorten editorials or move coupons from the bottom of direct emails to the right side of email pages.

Save time by automating marketing content that you send to email contacts. Constant Contact and Mail Chimp are just two email automation tools. Price email automation tools before you choose which tool you’re going to use.

Need marketing content, press releases, SEO articles, blog posts, social media content, FAQs, corporate newsletters or website content or video descriptions to help grow your business? Freelance writer, Rhonda Campbell offers years of experience, smart rates and consultancy skills that you’ll appreciate.

freelance writer skills

Freelance Writer Skills – Generalist vs. Specialist – Which Do You Need?

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By Freelance Writer, Rhonda Campbell

freelance writer skills
Pic by Rachmat04

Freelance writer skills vary. Just because a freelancer has been writing for five or more years, doesn’t mean that she will be able to fulfill your organization’s content needs. By reviewing a writer’s resume, you could find out the types of clients the writer has worked for, how much industry experience the writer has and how long the writer has been developing content.

What you may not learn is whether the writer is a generalist or a specialist.

All freelance writer skills are not the same

Generalists are good to hire if you are starting a marketing or content development agency and need freelance writers to cover a broad range of topics. It may also be advantageous to hire professionals with generalist freelance writer skills if you need content for a digital newspaper, magazine or a website or blog that focuses on hot topics regardless of the vertical.

Specialists are like experts. They zone in on certain types of markets, industries, themes or topics. Examples of content that professionals with specialist freelance writer skills create include beauty or hair articles, fashion shows, fashion catalogs and fashion advice and feature interviews, legal web content and legal advice blogs and home design articles.

Freelance writers with specialist skills may have worked in the field that they write about. For example, a writer who covers legal topics may have worked as a legal assistant. Similarly, a freelance writer specialist who writes for human resources journals may have worked as a human resources learning and development specialist, a recruiter or as a human resources analyst.

Not only will you be able to tell when you’re dealing with a specialist versus a generalist, so will your website, social media and blog visitors. A specialist can provide firsthand examples. A specialist also has valuable industry contracts who they can reach out to for feature interviews, quotes and strengthen content and testimonials that could be added to your website.

Some professionals with generalist freelance writer skills also have specialist skills. When you interview freelance writers ask them about areas that they have worked or specialized in. It’s also a good idea to ask writers if they have experience working in the industry that your business operates in, even if they haven’t worked for an employer for several years.

Other things to ask writers after you review their freelance writer skills resume include:

• Have you worked with an editor before?
• How many edits will you complete before we have to pay you extra?
• Do you typically receive lots of guidance from clients on article layout, content focus, etc.?
• What do you like most about your job?
• What do you like least about working as a freelance writer?

Focus on the writer’s rates after you determine if the writer is even a fit. Why do I say this? Even if the writer’s rates are outside your range of pay, if the writer has strong skills, he may be able to recommend another writer to you.

content marketing cycle

Content Marketing Freelance Writer Style

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By Rhonda Campbell

content marketing cycle
Pic by Ingridarcher Ingrid Archer – Wikimedia Commons

Content marketing freelance gigs are taking off for good reason. It’s a growing change element that everyone has to adjust to. So, too is the trend of freelances helping more employers meet their content marketing needs.

Outbound content marketing isn’t alone in experiencing this change. If your business is older than 20 years, you may think about sharply designed newspaper ads, colorful, popping magazine product placements, catchy direct mail letters or sticky websites.

Outbound content marketing freelance still works

Those are outbound marketing strategies that you may have hired in-house writers to stay on top of. It worked, attracting consumers and turning those folks into paying customers. Outbound marketing strategies that are developed by in-house writers still work. In fact, you’d be smart to leave it to experienced writers to combine outbound and inbound content marketing strategies into your overall marketing plan.

The payoff could be huge. For example, Outbound Engine reports that the return on every $1 spent on email marketing is $44.25. However, you have less than five seconds to hook readers.

Use print direct mail, another form of outbound marketing, and writers could keep your logos, branding messages and products in front of prospects for days, longer if your target audience tends to hold onto mailed documents. That’s a plus, a definite advantage that direct mail (i.e. catalogs, direct letters, brochures, postcards) has over digital inbound marketing.

Art of inbound content marketing freelance strategies

Another change impacting inbound content marketing freelance methods is the content length. Just four years ago, content marketing freelance pieces generally ran 250 to 400 words. It led to a lot of content mills and marketing firms pushing out content simply to generate links via guest posts, daily blog posts and as embedded email links.

The value of content marketing freelance articles went down, volume and keywords taking precedence over research, unique questions and answers and hard-to-find data. Google slapped a lot of entrepreneurs on the hand, using updated algorithms, and the landscape changed. According to HubSpot, content that gains a top 10 Google ranking is at least 2,000 words long.

Advantages of leaving content marketing to freelance writers

Smart freelance writers complete inbound marketing trainings regularly. They ask questions that help them to discover your organization’s brand, voice and mission or purpose. They’ve worked with many organizations, learning firsthand what works to attract consumers, build relationships (the purpose of inbound content marketing) and turn followers and website visitors into paying customers.

But, what are components of successful inbound content marketing freelance methods?

In addition to building a website that has sections of regularly updated content, to have a far reach, inbound content marketing is layered with:

Blog posts (inbound and outbound links are included in posts)
SEO content (keywords aren’t only search engine attractors, they are top phrases that members of your target audience type into their tablets, smart phones or computers when looking for your products or services)
Social media posts (responding to followers is a key part of social media inbound marketing)
Video channels (regular updates have been shown to generate better results than once a week or once a month postings)
Guest posting (the more guest posts that appear on sites that pull in your target audience, the better)
As with outbound marketing, think value-value-value when creating inbound content marketing. Not value to you – value to the reader. Content must also add value to your brand.

Freelance writers who have agency, corporate freelancing or remote writing experience likely have analytical experience. This means that the freelancer writers have measured the results of their work. They know which titles, meta tags, meta descriptions, targeted keywords and inbound and outbound links get the best results.

You could do the work yourself, but, that could require 15 or more hours a week, time you may or may not have. You could also hire part-time or full-time writers and bring them in-house, but, over time, they wouldn’t have the breadth of experience that a freelance writer developing content for clients operating in 10 or more different industries would.

As happened with the shift from outbound to inbound marketing, employers and employees are shifting from in-house work to telecommuting and freelancing. Both shifts require strong relationship building skills. The rewards of both can be far reaching, especially considering ongoing changes that are taking place in the marketing space and the workforce.

Clear freelance writer guidelines

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By Rhonda Campbell

Develop clear, detailed freelance writer guidelines to avoid unnecessary edits, frustration and content delays. The more freelancers you work with, the more important it is to vet and finalize clear guidelines.

Even if you don’t work with freelancers or independent contractors today, learning how to develop clear guidelines could pay off. Why?

You may need freelance writer guidelines sooner than you think

The freelance writer population is growing. As of 2015, approximately 15.5 million Americans were independent workers, the kind of folks who don’t bother with commutes and sitting for hours in offices. Fast Company also shares that by 2020, more than 60% of Americans will work as freelancers.

That means that the numbers of companies that seek out and depend on the abilities of independent contractors, like the talented freelance writer, are growing and will continue to grow. Sticky blog posts, SEO rich press releases, meta tags, picture meta descriptions, FAQs, technical guidebooks, video scripts, ebooks, marketing brochures, social media posts and website copy are types of projects that a freelance writer works on to attract customers and help close on sales.

Components of winning freelance writer guidelines

The likelihood that you will need the services of a freelance writer are significant. If you’re an entrepreneur seeking to use the skills of an experienced freelance writer to gain online and offline exposure and improve your revenues, you’d be smart to develop clear freelance writer guidelines.

Details to include in freelance writer guidelines are:

  • Tone/voice of the content that you want developed
  • Style guides that freelance writers must adhere to. For example, let freelancers know if you want them to adhere to Associated Press (AP), Chicago Manual, Canadian Style, Guardian Style Guide or the New York Times Manual Style guide.
  • References to be used in content. You may be okay with a freelance writer referencing sources like Huffington Post, Essence magazine or popular websites. You may not approve of freelancers using blogs or YouTube channels as reference sources when researching for facts, trends and stats to incorporate in content that they develop for your firm.
  • Numbers of links you want added to each article, blog posts, etc.
  • Keywords (short and long tail keywords) that you want added to written and audio content
  • The number of words (minimum and maximum) for each piece of content
  • Standard wording to be added to each piece (and where). For example, you may want to add a legal notice to each sales brochure.
  • Links to examples of previously written content that you want writers to stick to
  • Plagiarism policies – A freelance writer worth her salt will not plagiarize. However, to cover all grounds, it’s recommended that you include the policies in your freelance writer guidelines.
  • Whether or not the writer’s byline will be included with his work
  • Rights that you are buying for content that a freelance writer develops for you (i.e. are you using the work for one time only, are you buying all rights to the work)
  • Days and/or hours that you prefer that writers make themselves available to focus on your work (Please note, that since you’re working with independent contractors, you may be smart to avoid setting specific work hours for these talented leaders, as doing so could start to take on an employee relationship. Enter that grey area, and you could be responsible for providing the workers paid time off, health insurance coverage and other benefits that you provide to employees.)
  • Due date to submit new articles and other written content to you by

Send contractors an invoice template when you give them the freelance writer guidelines. Let freelancers know when they should submit their invoices. Do you want the invoices submitted by the end of each week or by the fifth of each month?

Also, provide the name and contact information of the person who freelancers can contact should they have questions. Definitely let a freelance writer know who her editor is and how she can reach her editor. Be open to suggestions from writers and seek out writers who are open (and accustomed) to receiving feedback and recommendations from editors and busy entrepreneurs like you.

Need press releases, SEO articles, blog posts, social media content, FAQs, corporate newsletters or website content or video descriptions to help grow your business? Contact freelance writer Rhonda Campbell. Freelance writer, Rhonda Campbell offers years of experience, smart rates and consultancy skills that you’ll appreciate.