Content Magician, Freelance web content writers

Archive for March, 2009

At this point in time, when you’ve just started your website, you’re probably thinking about a SEO content development strategy that could help you secure a good position in your favorite search engine (it’s probably Google but I am not going to say just ONE single search engine because of locality). In order to bring in the traffic from search engines, you’ll need to have a strong SEO content development strategy that will work in multiple search engines, not just one and the person or company that hire to do this for you would have to be well-versed with multiple engines.

For example, in your plans, you’ll need to get someone to develop content thaT ATTRACTS not only search engines but is appealing to the readers as well. There is really no point in developing web content that brings in the search engines but not readers because REMEMBER, you’re trying to make money. The SEO content development strategy would be completely different if you were trying to make some money off of advertisements placed on a shell web template. If that is the case, it’s perfectly fine for you to stick to a singular strategy built for a single search engine. If you’re not, then here’s what you’ve got to do.

Your web content has got to be news-worthy. This is a no-brainer but even the best people in the SEO content development strategy industry tend to forget this in their quest to attract the search engines. Very few ever commits to or purchase from a website or business the first time they chances upon it. The trust comes in a couple of visits later. So, keep this in mind when working on your SEO content development strategy….you want it to stick a little the first time round.

Either hire multiple content writers or writers who can diversify. The purpose? It’s simple! Different types of content appeals to different people and considering the fact that you’re aiming at different sectors worked on by different personalities, it’s best if you diversify your SEO content development strategy a little to give yourself a little buffer. You don’t keep selling beef to a vegetarian, do you? So, this works the same way.

Reveal your own personality and get close to your readers. In your SEO content development strategy, make sure you get someone to get close to your readers. A decade back, a website is a faceless entity whereby information is freely dispensed. In today’s cyberspce, if you don’t have a personality or a face, it’s hard to win the war. Your competitors have blogs, facebook accounts, twitter, delicious and what-have-you-nots and you’ve got to be the same way if you want to connect with your readers. There’s really no way to get your customers to buy from you unless you’re amazon.com or a popular name in your industry. So, work your SEO content development strategy around that thought.

SEO content development strategy for regular publication of articles. You don’t do it one time and then hope for a huge amount of traffic. You do it consistently and persistently over time, regularly updating and pulling in the people and buying their trust. This is how an SEO content development strategy works now. Gone are the days whereby you write a basic web page content and let it do its work because they don’t work beyond being piled on by the multitude of page content in cyberspace. If you know how to hire an SEO content development strategy team, so do they and in order to get ahead of them, you’ve got to be persistent and patient.

There are no two ways about this, sadly.

The economy is in a slump and people are turning to the internet to make some money. As a professional freelance writer, I sincerely feel that while it’s great that the internet is providing many people a rope to cling on during this troubling time, businesses trying to find professional freelance writers for their web content or online marketing methods should be cautious about it.

The internet has become a breeding ground for all sorts of aspiring professional freelance writer. I am not being jealous because I am, frankly, thankful that there is a whole pool of new talents out there for me to tap into. I love that part of the bargain. But based on my experience as a professional freelance writer, there are problems that we need to face. There are so many of them out there right now, how do we know who is a good professional freelance writer and who isn’t?

The line has been blurred once again. The only time I remember this happening was when blogs become popular. Everyone became a journalist! As fun as it was to read into the lives of all those people who write blogs, it’s hard to find one that really rocks.

I hire one or two professional freelance writers to help me out with my work sometimes when I am bogged down with work or when there’s an emergency. I value the availability of my professional freelance writer…but I’ve had my fair share of bad experiences in the past. Hiring a professional freelance writer who does not write well and writes for SEO purposes ONLY gives me a blinding headache! Thankfully, over the years, I’ve found some professional freelance writer who are, indeed, very professional about their work, puts their heart into every single word that they write.

SEO writing is fabulous, I know, but it’s hard to find someone who can write SEO stuff without compromising on the quality of the articles. The professional freelance writer has to be experienced in balancing out the SEO part of the writing process and also the connectivity of the article. There’s really no point in writing SEO articles without trying to make SOME sense.

So, before you hire a professional freelance writer, check into the writer’s background and ask for some samples. Don’t make the mistake of hiring the first SEO writer that promises you a low price because you may regret it, at the end of the day.

It’s been a long but enjoyable day. But before I pull the plug on this tremendously relaxing Saturday, I would to share something with you and it’s got to do with how people are going about this whole online marketing thing wrong.

It’s my personal opinion that there’s one way to turn people off online. The only surefire way to lose the fight in this very tiny battlefield is to stick to a formula that you know works. The old method used to work well, I know, but with the economy down in the gutter, everyone’s using the same formula. PLUS, the same formula is costing us too much money.

So, the traditional way of marketing is to knock down every single door you see and shove your products and services into their faces and refuse to leave until they succumb to your harassment. You could advertise in the newspaper but it’s getting expensive. You could hire a new marketing guy but it takes time to train someone new and you can’t exactly afford to hire anyone new at this point in time. You could revamp your brand but every single idea you’re going to have involves spending money.

The logical thing to do is to jump into the internet marketing bandwagon, right?

That’s the right thing to do, I am not saying you’re wrong, but don’t do it blindly and don’t just hand THE FIRST PERSON you know to do the job. You can’t because whatever they do online (and they can do this without waiting for a memo to be passed during a Board of Directors’ meeting) will affect your image! Hire the wrong person and you’re screwed.

In online social media, or the Web 2.0 as some people prefer to call it, it’s imperative that you sell yourself correctly. But you’re not selling your products and services, you’re selling a brand. You’re promoting loyalty. You’re encouraging people to get to know you better. You want to create a personality….a sort of stickiness on the internet that helps people remember you and come back for more.

With more and more people with the same social media marketing modus operandi, you can only create awareness by selling YOURSELF as a brand. You connect with people. You make yourself heard. You make friends and help people understand what kind of person YOU ARE before you get them to understand what you do for a living.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a business or a freelancer! You’ve got to make that CONNECTION with others in order to get online social media marketing to work for you. Shall I say it again for good measure? OK. CONNECTION!

For a business, you can hire someone (or use someone who is currently on your payroll) to create an online persona for your business. And this personality is to connect with people, share his or her experience (on a personal or professional level) with people he or she knows.

It’s plain and simple.

The old method of PUSHING no longer works. Writing notes or blog posts about how WONDERFUL YOU ARE and how amazing your products and services are, shoving your potential clients’ faces into the brochures, flyers, profiles….they don’t work anymore. Blow your own trumpet and watch flocks of potential customers run off in the opposite direction!

It’s now time for some PULLING instead. And friends….the only way to pull is to attract. The only way to attract is to get personal.

Lately I have been running into a lot people here on Facebook that are being lead astray from the truth. Possibly because they haven’t been on the internet very long. I thought maybe I would share a few of my thoughts on this being from the school of hard knocks.

The first thing you need to understand about the internet is that you are going to run into more exaggerated crap than you can shake a stick at. You can go ahead and sign up for everything if you want to and lose a lot of money like I did. I invite you however, to learn from my wounds instead.

I’m going to need you to go ahead and stop being enticed by companies that promise HUGE overnight success and you won’t have to do a thing. “Just sit back” they say “it’s all automated”. Although most companies have some kind of autoresponders for you to fool around with this is not the issue.

I can’t tell you how many opportunities I joined on impulse because I believed the testimonies or was told I wouldn’t have to do anything. That the magic spillover ferry would stop by and visit me . “Every one is joining this so don’t be left out” they warned. “Just get in on the ground level” I was advised.

The truth is that when you attract people that don’t want to do anything guess what happens to your magic spillover and your perfect world scenario. It disappears because your upline was told they didn’t have to do anything either. Not real hard to figure this one out but I went for it over and over. The fact is most companies don’t teach people how to mentor at all. I shouldn’t say all as there may be a few exceptions.

The question then becomes whether or not you can afford to stay in their program long enough to be in profit.

Most of my experience has been that the magic spillover ferry will be flying off into the sunset with your wallet looking back and winking at you with a smirk on his evil little face.

People need to stop thinking that they have to generate leads and be recruiters. You need to be a sponsor and a mentor. Is the system you are considering something easy to duplicate? In other words can you see your self doing it. Can you afford it? If the guy bringing you on board is full of greed and ego why is that a good thing? Chances are that’s all he can show you how to be also.

If you want a name, an email, and a phone number of somebody who filled out a business opportunity capture page then join one of the free lead opportunities I have on my blog. You can have 1250 a week for nothing if you want. You can call them or email them with your business opportunity if this sounds like fun.

If you can stand cold calling and all that face to face rejection.
Not saying it doesn’t work but most people I know would rather die than do this(my wife especially).

Load them into your autoresponder and see how many simply delete your email and block you from ever communicating with them again. You may have some success but probably it will be dismal. How do I know this? Because I did it for years. It is very ineffective and time consuming to say the least.

Eventually you will come to the conclusion “This ain’t working” or as doctor Phil would say ” how’s that working out for you”. The truth is people want to join people they know, like, and trust. They can’t know you very well if all you do is email them can they now?

Very rarely will anyone sign up to your business just because they stumbled on your link in an email or clicked on your ad in Google AdWords or a free classified ad. Ask yourself if you would do it? You probably deleted quite a few business opportunities emails today alone didn’t you? Come on now..fess up!

If however you collect their name and email and then contact them in the hope of mentoring I guess I can understand that.

I don’t know why you don’t just go to Facebook from the start where 235,000,000 leads are and start there for FREE? This has just been my experience to date and why I steer away from anything telling me I have to be positioned to get lots of clicks to my website. It is not the clicks that count but the follow up I do or rather the people skills I possess. Isn’t it? Unless of course you just want to sign up a bunch of people take the money and run. Then maybe leading with your business is good.

The more I discover about social networking the more I understand that network marketing is not a sales game but a teaching and mentoring calling. If you don’t get excited about someone else’s success because of what you taught them then you are wrong for network marketing. Maybe you should move on to something else.

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AUTHOR
Lance D.R. Brown - Home business success tips or if you need a great home business go to http://ezmakedollars.blogspot.com

Boredom…..a disease that strikes just about anyone who does repetitive work for prolonged periods of time. Boredom can strike anyone and writers are no exception. Well, in short….yes, I get bored with writing too. My fingers uncharacteristically ache whenever a thought or reminder dawns on me that the time has come for me to….well, tap out, yet, another article on a subject matter that is of no concern to me as a person or individual.

But tell that to a website designer and the designer can tell you the same thing. Yeah, it gets boring.

Here’s where a writer’s sense of responsibility and capability comes in. As much as I, sometimes, feel the dislike of having to delve into a topic that is off my tangent, I remind myself that this is my job and I have the heavy responsibility of delivering whether I like it or not. My preference is of no concern to the client. They are depending on me to come up with articles or web content that makes sense…but most importantly, makes them money.

So, I counter the attack of the boredom with creative writing. A sentence at the top of my head can actually spur a lot or ignite a fire that dimmed when I am trying to fight off the feeling of jadedness.

Reading and writing outside of the scope of work is an extremely important aspect of keeping the fire of passion (for writing) alive in us. Creative work is often that demanding. The same goes for people who act, do voice-overs, perform on stage, give powerful speeches or dance.

As a writer, I sweep my boredom aside, my own personal longings into a closet or under a carpet so that I can focus. But not before I delve very fleetingly into something that I love doing. Like blogging, like now.

I write a lot of fiction as well….short stories, long stories, an inspirational paragraph or an outline of a story. For more or less twenty to thirty minutes every day, I open these up and add to them whenever I feel boredom strike.

Then after that, I close the ‘drawer’ in my mind and reconnect with my work. Let’s face it, if I were to let boredom dictate my work as a writer, I would be delivering crap to all my clients from time to time and honestly speaking, I can’t afford to do that.

No, let me rephrase that….I refuse to do that. I value my work and the integrity that I stand for more than anyone can ever imagine. I fought way too hard to establish myself to let all of that slip away. It takes but only one simple mistake to lose the trust that I have developed and earned from my clients.

So now that I’ve dealt with the issue of boredom, it’s time for me to get back to work.

Boredom, I’ll see you again tomorrow. For now, cheerios!

Your goal to achieving maximum writing results cannot be obtained if your readers’ interest fades. In fact, the majority of writing fails to be read because of what the author wrote in the headline, and sub-headline(s). As shown here it takes the additional power of descriptive word lists to achieve reader inspiration.

Think of which of these titles sound more appealing to you. “A list of ten things your dentist did not telling you about brushing your teeth.” Alternatively, choose this title. “Don’t stick that toothbrush on your germ infested teeth.” I am sure you made the same choice as I did. Keywords in the second example were toothbrush and teeth. The motivational, descriptive words are stick, and germ infested. Combined they produce a desire by the reader to continue reading. What good is your interesting story, article, sales piece, or book if it never is read?

For maximum writing results, there are two critical areas where your writing must shine above the stars. These are eyeball grabbing headlines, and earth shattering sub-headlines. In the case of book writing, that would encompass chapter titles. You might have a natural born knack for writing that easily flows unto your document. It is all meaning less, unless you knock the socks off your reader. The problem is that the time frame to accomplish this key feat, only lasts from three to five seconds. You have to grab the reader by their receding hair to awaken their feelings to read on. The time proven method is using motivational words, and thought provoking descriptive word phrases.

Like most writers, you probably do not currently have a killer library of these. Therefore, I am going to provide you with 50 beneficial words and phrases to start your two descriptive word lists. Your other list should be of motivational, inspirational, and action power words. Referring to these descriptive word combinations will not only enhance the desire to read on, but also spice up the intensity level of interest in what you are writing.

Here is the first of the two descriptive word lists - words

This sample consists of the words accelerate, action-packed, adventurous, affordable, aggressive, allstar, amazing, amplify, anxious, artistic, aspiring, assertive, astonish, attract, awakening, awarded, awesome, backbone, beastly, bewildered, beefy, bargain, blasting, bliss, blazing, blockbuster, and boiling.

Here is the second of the two descriptive word lists - word phrases

This sampling is composed of the word phrases: a child could do it, 2 products in 1, a date with destiny, the masterpiece collection, a very elite opportunity, as recent surveys show, achieve the impossible, act now for this bonus, activate the fuse, all bets are off, the obstacles are eliminated, alleviate the pain, always a knockout, ambush the competition, ask yourself this question, at your fingertips, attack with conviction, avoid feeling insecure, award winning features, awaken to a new era, bag a trophy, be the first to call, begin tomorrow today, behind door #4, best kept secret, better than striking gold, look behind the scenes, beyond normal boundaries, big hitters only, blistering speed, bone chilling, brilliant deduction, and bullet proof system.

Build a burning desire to bypass your competition by building a strong foundation for writing effectively.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Well published author, Don Yerke likes to concentrate on what you don’t know or what no one else dares to print. Tell it like it is.

Watch for his new paperback book debuting on Amazon early this summer. It is loaded with great insurance marketing and recruiting information.

Come and get your FREE “Think and Grow Rich” Ebook by Napoleon Hill instantly. The website address is http://www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com