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Are you writing content for people or search engines?

5/27/2014

 
Facepalm
A recent article from a site that specializes in search marketing suggested that any and all blog posts must be at least 1,500 words in length, and that poorly written content doesn't affect the end result. No link is forthcoming, because that would only be validating flawed logic.

The crux of the article is that longer articles are taken more seriously, and that people will share badly written content anyway. Which is probably true, even if it’s only being shared by snooty English majors (waves hello!) to mock content writing fail and to lament the death of language as we know it. 

What is your content marketing strategy?
If your only goal is increase your search rankings, then it likely doesn’t matter if your web content is poorly written. You’re just writing for machines, so you could probably get results with a million monkeys and a million typewriters. Great! However, at last check, search engines don’t have a whole lot of purchasing power. Ultimately you’re going to want those high search rankings to lead to actual eyeballs on your site. 

What will those eyes, connected to actual humans looking for competent professionals providing a product or service they’re hoping to purchase, find when they get there?
  • Will they see 1,500 words per corporate blog post that fill the screen a few times over, and yet somehow manage to say nothing at all? 
  • Will they find lots of keywords but no real substance?
  • Will they wonder if your company would be difficult to work with because of what is, apparently, a significant language barrier?

In short, when actual people arrive at your site, will they see content that positions your business as a legitimate, professional company they can feel confident doing business with? If your content marketing strategy is built on writing for search engines rather than people, there’s a good chance they will not. 

Keywords are nothing without captivating content
Of course it’s important to have content that is search engine friendly. After all, even great content is wasted if nobody reads it. It’s also important to make sure there are appropriate keywords in your content writing to make sure people find what they’re looking for when they arrive at your website, or visit your Facebook page, or browse your Twitter timeline. 

But don’t stop there! Make sure a visit to your website is useful, whether or not a visitor ultimately ends up working with your company. Instead of laboriously struggling to have longer and longer posts on your company blog, challenge yourself to make a convincing case in as few words as possible. Don’t just talk about your business, talk about related services and the latest news affecting your industry.

One person visiting a website that clearly demonstrates that you know really know your stuff can turn into an actual customer. One customer is better than a million bots from a faraway land that may never contribute a nickel to your business. 

The next 1,000 words or so will be spent stuffing this post with keywords to make sure it's taken seriously. Oh no wait, that’s just silly. 

Article on Career Meets Life: Redefining Your Career Path

2/28/2014

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Have you ever wondered if your current job is the best you can do? Career Meets Life is a new online community dedicated to exchanging ideas about job sharing, managing the separation between work and home, job fit, career mobility and more.

I am thrilled to take part in this exciting initiative. Check out my first article on career mobility at Career Meets Life: Redefining Your Career Path 

Are you hungry for more information? Register for updates at Career Meets Life. 
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Writer's Workshop - Writing can be a female dog

12/15/2013

 
I'm going to date myself horribly here but the first cultural reference that comes to mind is the old Young MC song, Bust a Move. The troubling line? "Play hard to get, females get jealous." 

Female what, exactly? Oh, he meant WOMEN. Both words have the same number of syllables, so there goes that argument! 

The next time you're planning to use male or female in a written piece, make sure the answer to male WHAT or female WHAT is already answered. Or better still, if it's something like "female teacher" or "male nurse" consider if mentioning the sex of the subject is even relevant at all. 

Check back next Sunday for another tip to tighten up your writing. 

Staying Sane While Working From Home

12/12/2013

 
When a lot of people think of working from home, they envision a life in front of a screen in a bathrobe. That's a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective. The adjustment from working outside the home full time to working at home can be a rough one, but it doesn't have to be! Here are some tips to help make it work for you:
  1. Get dressed. Sick days are made to be spent in your PJs, but you're not sick now, you're working. Getting up, showering and getting dressed changes the scenery enough to give your day an official start. Yes, comfy clothes are fine, even preferable. Skipping the trip to the dry cleaner is a pretty nice benefit, after all. 
  2. Keep a schedule, of sorts. One of the advantages of working from home is NOT keeping a schedule, right? Sure, you're your own boss now, but any clients you're working with are going to have the not unreasonable expectation of contacting you at normal times of day. Best to avail yourself to them fairly regularly.
  3. BACK AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER! Especially when you're getting started, it's tempting to work all the time. You probably started working from home because it allowed you the flexibility to do other things. If you're not doing those other things, what exactly is the point of not leaving the house? It won't be long before anyone who shares your home gets annoyed by your "absence while present" so try to head that annoyance off at the pass by setting appropriate boundaries.
  4. Talk to people whenever possible. It can get pretty isolating holed up at home. Having a quick phone chat rather than an email with a client or taking a break to talk to a friend can help you feel a little more connected with the world. 
  5. Don't forget about self-care. Just because how you look in a suit matters less these days, don't think it doesn't matter at all. You're missing out on the moving around that leaving the house for work naturally includes now. Take regular breaks for feeding, watering and walking. 
Oh, one of my two reasons for working from home is clamouring for lunch. I guess it's time for one of those breaks!

Everyday Writing Workshop - Don't do THAT!

12/8/2013

 
Welcome back to the writing workshop, a weekly series of tips to help everyday writers sharpen their messaging. Today let's talk about the extraneous THAT placements just waiting to take over the world. 

It was a commonly held belief that Dickens' novels were so long because he was paid by the word. It would seem that is not the truth. So apparently Dickens' issue was the need for a better editor? Anyway, nobody is getting paid by the word in today's world of notoriously short attention spans, so make sure you ruthlessly cut any extra words from your writing. 

The word "that" is a good starting point.

Any time you have finished writing a piece, do a quick scan for the word "that" and read the sentence back to yourself without it. For example, if you remove that from "I think THAT Sean Connery is the best Bond of all time," you still have "I think Sean Connery is the best Bond of all time."  

See? Removing the extra word didn't change the meaning of the sentence at all! So stop doing THAT and check back next Sunday for another tip to tighten up your writing. 

Everyday Writing Workshop - Just Use It!

12/1/2013

 
Welcome to the writing workshop, a weekly series of tips to help everyday writers sharpen their messaging. For our first feature, we're going to take aim at a personal pet peeve: Just use it!

There is a common societal misconception that the more syllables the word has, the more articulate it seems. This leads to the rampant misuse of words like UTILIZE in blog posts and publications everywhere. I'm looking at YOU, technical manuals! Utilize is not a fancier version of use, it has its own very specific meaning. 

You are UTILIZING something when it is being used for something other than its intended purpose. When you USE a large kitchen knife to dice vegetables, you're using it. When you UTILIZE the back of that same knife to whack a jar to loosen the lid, you're utilizing it. 

Now go forth and USE the word UTILIZE correctly!

Check back next Sunday for another tip to tighten up your writing. 

    Author

    Julia Warrender is a member of the Canadian Association of Marketing Professionals (CAMP) and a Hubspot Inbound Marketing certified professional.

    ​She is also the owner of PROD Communications. 

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