To be more accurate though, the term isn’t so much a job title as it is a lifestyle choice that refers specifically to the way in which someone works. A digital nomad can in fact do any job as long as it’s online and as long as it’s ‘remote’. A digital nomad is someone who doesn’t need an office then and who is ‘untethered’ from any one physical location. As long as they have a laptop and an internet connection, they can work from pretty much anywhere in the world.

These then are people who upload photos to Facebook of themselves sitting on a deckchair with a beer alongside the caption “another busy day in the office!”. In other words, they’re the people who everyone else loathes… and definitely envies.

Why Become a Digital Nomad?

These days, an increasing number of jobs don’t require any physical presence. If you work mostly on a computer, then chances are that you can do your job just as well from the Maldives as you can from your office. These jobs include writers, accountants, consultants, lawyers, proofreaders, editors – even managers in some circumstances. Being self-employed makes this even easier but you don’t have to be self-employed by any means as long as the organization you work for is forward thinking and happy to have a ‘decentralized’ approach. WordPress is a famous example of a company with an entirely decentralized employment, with team members in almost every country.

Often, becoming a digital nomad will require you to make a few changes to your routine and your workflow. Once you’ve done that though, it’s surprisingly easy to adapt and the rewards are huge.

The most obvious reward of course is the simple fact that you don’t have to work in an office. This means no suit/uniform, no boss breathing over your shoulder, no grey cubicles and no commute. Commuting to work can sometimes take up 1-2 hours of your day. Hours where you’re certainly not relaxing or having fun but you’re not being paid either! The same goes for your lunch break.

Simply by working from home you would save yourself 2-3 hours a day which you could use to pursue hobbies, go to the gym and generally be happier and freer. But the fact that you can be anywhere you want to while you’re working means that you can be much more ambitious than that. You can work when you want and where you want, so why not work in the New York bar in Tokyo while watching the locals come and go? Why not sit on a beach in Croatia and watch the turtles pass you by? Then, in the evening, you can go and sample amazing food, explore the surroundings and generally live a life of adventure.

Being a digital nomad is essentially a lifestyle choice that brings you as close as possible to being completely free. This then lets you see the world and meet amazing people and generally means an escape from the rat race.

The Challenges

That isn’t to say that being a digital nomad is easy however. And neither is it for everyone – not by a long shot. In fact, being a digital nomad can be incredibly hard at times and you will definitely get out of it what you put in.

To help prepare you for the potential rigors of this lifestyle, let’s take a look at some of the challenges that come from being a digital nomad. We’ll split these into ‘work challenges’ and ‘lifestyle challenges’.

Work Challenges

One of the biggest challenges for digital nomads is the struggle of balancing their work life and their free time. If you’re travelling then you will have high outgoings, so to afford that you need to make sure you’re generating a big profit.

In some cases, this can result in a situation where you’re sitting in a café at 12am still typing while the night life is thriving all around you. Being in a foreign country is only an amazing experience if you can actually spend some time looking around. The other scenario is that you spend too much time exploring and struggle to make enough profit. This can result in being stuck in a foreign country sans funding. As you can imagine, this is also less than ideal. If you are going to succeed as a digital nomad then, you need to make sure you have a working business model first that is reliably generating income without taking up all of your free time. Passive income is preferable, though not necessarily required.

Another reason that passive income is preferable when possible, is the time difference. This is another challenge you’ll face as a digital nomad and especially if you are working for an employer. Time differences when travelling abroad mean that you can struggle to arrange online meetings with your clients and business partners and they can mean you end up working late hours. If part of your job is taking calls, then you can have your work number forwarded to your mobile phone but this can still mean answering business calls at 3am.

Of course one of the biggest challenges with working online while travelling though is the quest for WiFi. And not just WiFi but power sockets as well. It’s not unusual as a digital nomad to find yourself desperately searching around for a place to plug in your laptop or for a café that offers free WiFi. Some areas are great for this but others are less so. And sometimes it’s the places without the WiFi that you would really rather be…

Lifestyle Challenges

The other kinds of challenges you’ll face as a digital nomad are the lifestyle challenges. These are all the things you would normally face when on holiday only much worse because you’ll be out there for months or even years. These include things like loneliness – which is a real problem when travelling all on your own – missing your creature comforts, fitting your whole life into a single bag, trying to find places to wash your clothes, being unable to save any money and being trapped in a foreign country unable to speak the language when you get ill or have your bag stolen.

This isn’t to put you off of the idea of being a digital nomad – rather it’s just to make sure that you are completely aware of the challenges going in. Bloggers will often post pictures of them typing on their computers with huge waterfalls behind them. Rarely do they post pictures of themselves lugging huge backpacks around rough neighborhoods in the middle of the night trying to find a coffee and some WiFi…

Is it For You?

So is being a digital nomad for you? That all depends on your general disposition. If you’re someone who is happy spending time on their own, who wants to see the world and who is okay being away from their creature comforts, then this is one of the most rewarding experiences you can possibly have. And now is the only time in the history of mankind that it’s possible. That’s pretty amazing.

What also helps is to already have a successful online business model and to generally be a disciplined ‘self-starter’ who can work without a rigid structure to guide them.

You might also choose to be a digital nomad if you consider yourself someone who is ‘psychologically unemployable’. In other words, if the idea of coming to the same office every single day for the rest of your life is enough to drive you completely mad, then you should definitely think about breaking free and travelling the world.

Remember though: if you do try being a digital nomad and you find that it’s too much of a challenge, then you can always just come home. That’s the great thing about this, you’re free to do whatever you want!

How to Become a Digital Nomad

If you’ve made it this far and you’re still excited at the prospect of working online while travelling the world, then it sounds like you’ve got what it takes. The next question is: how do you become a digital nomad?

The first step is to decide how you’re going to keep earning. You can ask your current boss whether it’s possible for you to work entirely remotely if you like where you’re working currently and if that doesn’t work then you can always try applying to more flexible jobs. If you find that your employers are resistant at first, then you can try gradually warming them up to the idea by taking longer and longer breaks and working while you’re away.

More often though, being a digital nomad means working for yourself and ‘unjobbing’. This means having money without having a job. Sounds good doesn’t it?

So what are your unjobbing options? Here are some ways you can earn money entirely online that are suitable for remote working:

• Being a copywriter for websites and online businesses
• Being a digital marketer
• Being an affiliate marketer
• Running a monetized blog
• Monetizing a YouTube account
• Selling a digital product such as an eBook or an app
• Offering consultation
• Day trading
• Professional online gambling
• Web design
• Graphic design
• Photography

There are many more besides these but of course you don’t have to limit yourself to just one. Often it’s possible to combine multiple revenue streams and thus to become far more resilient to losing clients etc.

The best forms of income for the digital nomad are passive forms. These are the kinds that generate money while you’re asleep – such as selling digital products or running a website. While you still need to put time in, these are great because they don’t involve ‘trading’ your time for money. You can find plenty of information on all these topics by just browsing the web. Decide which business model appeals to you most and then start reading up.

If you’re currently employed and you want to gain your financial independence, then you can start out by earning money in the evenings or at the weekends. You only need to leave your job once you start making enough money to support yourself. By using this process to wean yourself off, you remove the risk and fear of simply handing in your notice and praying you figure out a way to earn money.

What You’ll Need

If you do decide to embrace the digital nomad lifestyle and you successfully ditch your day job, there are a few things that can help to make your transition that much easier. Here are just a few:

• A microfiber towel – These are towels that fold flat and dry almost instantly. They’re perfect for travelling and are an absolute must.
• A small laptop – Great options include Windows 8.1 tablets (with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) or perhaps a MacBook Air or ChromeBook.
• A dongle – Various dongles can help you to get online from any remote location. Often they’re free but with the caveat that you have to watch ads etc.
• The 4 Hour Workweek – This is the book that practically invented lifestyle design and it’s an absolute must-read if you’re at all interested in this subject. You should also read Vagabonding.
• Skype – And Vonage for making international calls.
• Google Docs – The cloud becomes a serious asset for remote workers and Google Docs is one of the best implementations of that.
• Google Drive/OneDrive/DropBox – Likewise, some kind of cloud storage is also a must.
• iTranslate – Rarely will a translation app ever be so vital to your lifestyle.
• Eyemask and earbuds – Just trust me on this one!

The Third Way

If you don’t feel ready to commit to the digital nomad lifestyle but still want your freedom, if you love hot baths too much but can’t stand another day in the office, then there is a third option.

Being a digital nomad is only one example of ‘lifestyle design’. Lifestyle design simply means using modern tools and resources in order to create the lifestyle you want. For some people that means a life of travel and adventure – for others it means staying in bed and eating pop-tarts. The point is that it’s up to you. You are not beholden to anyone and life was meant to be lived.

If you don’t feel like spending weeks abroad then why not work from a local coffee shop instead? Or why not work from different scenic spots in your home town? You could meet your friends on their lunch breaks and when you felt like it you could visit other countries for a few days or a few weeks without having to ask anyone for permission. Or maybe you’d just choose to stay at home with your kids a little more? You could wear what you want, work out as much as you need and generally live whatever kind of life you want.

Being a digital nomad is certainly not for everyone. But lifestyle design truly is and when you discover it, everything changes.

The post Becoming a Digital Nomad – What to Expect and How to Make the Leap appeared first on TextBoss.

Would you like a job with practically limitless earning potential? And that will allow you to run your own business and get a real sense of pride seeing your work being enjoyed by millions of readers?

Then you should consider being a freelance writer.

Being a freelance writer provides you with all those amazing benefits and more. And there has never been a better time to become a freelance writer thanks to the number of businesses that are migrating to the web. Digital marketers say that ‘content is king’ and that means that writers are king.

To become a freelance writer, all you need is a computer and the ability to write good English. Anyone can do it and there is ample work available. The only problem is that a lot of people have no idea where to start. Here then we will take an in-depth look at what it takes to become a freelance writer. This will be a comprehensive guide that will provide you with all the tools, tips, advice and more that you could possibly need to be highly successful.

If you’re at all interested in being a freelance writer, then read on. This will act as your comprehensive crash course that will prepare you for the big wide world.

Skills and Traits You Will Need to Succeed

Before we jump into specific tools and tips, it’s a good idea to start with the basic skills you’ll need to thrive as a freelance writer. What service are you providing and what skills will you need in order to offer that service to a good quality?

Writing

Of course the most important skill for any freelance writer is to have good writing skills. In other words, you need to be able to write well in strong English (or whatever language you’re working in). At the same time, you also need to be able to write in a number of different styles from persuasive writing to entertaining and ‘colloquial’ blog posts etc.

The most important thing you need to be a good writer is to have the ‘voice’ that readers and publishers are looking for. Having ‘the voice’ means that your writing should read as though you were talking to someone. They should thus be able to easily follow what you’re writing and to pick up on the correct tone and meaning from everything you say. The voice is also largely what makes your writing engaging.

This is something you can improve with practice but to a large extent it’s innate; you either have it or you don’t. Ask a friend to read over some of your writing and to honestly appraise it. If you don’t have the voice then you may want to think about different careers.

What’s also important in terms of writing ability is that you have good grammar and good punctuation. This means knowing where to put your commas and how to use parentheses correctly. This is something that you can learn, so it’s worth swatting up on proper editing and grammar before you start putting yourself out there. Note though that some issues, such as the ‘Oxford comma’, are contentious and don’t have a right or wrong answer. This is where your discretion comes in.

Speed

If you become a great freelance writer then you might be able to land big clients with huge websites or even magazines with large circulation. However, there’s a good chance you’re not going to be working for those big clients to start with and that means you’re going to have to offer your services cheaply. This is especially true if you are looking at finding clients on the web who run websites or if you will work through an intermediary such as a writing agency.

This means you might have to work for anything from $1 per 100 words to $2 per 100 words. That might not sound like very much but that’s where speed comes in. If you can write 10,000 words a day, then you can earn $200 potentially which is no small amount of money. Some writers will manage 20,000 or more a day! What’s more, there’s nothing to stop you doing a little extra work at the weekends if you have an expensive week coming up.

Just make sure that when you go this fast, you aren’t compromising quality. Of course mistakes are inevitable when you’re writing at this speed and for that rate – and good clients will recognize this and may even hire an editor. Still though, you need to make sure that even at high quantities, your work is still largely error free and this means you need to be focused on what you’re doing. A good keyboard helps a lot here, which we will look at later.

Quality

While working fast, you still need to stay committed to the quality of the work and that means focusing on what it is the client wants to achieve with their content. If they’re selling a product then you need to make writing that is highly persuasive. If they want to inform their audience on a subject, then your content needs to be informative and better than the competition.

You need to have the right attitude in order to succeed as a writer and that means caring about your clients. If you don’t, then they won’t come back to you for future work. Every time you send a piece of writing to a client, you should feel a little sad that you aren’t going to be keeping it for your own website. That’s when you know you’re really delivering quality.

SEO Knowledge

SEO is ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and this means the creation of websites and marketing strategies designed specifically to perform well on Google and to get to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Usually this involves the subtle use of keywords as well as the creation of content that is highly sharable and clickable.

There is some overlap between SEO and writing services seeing as ‘content marketing’ is a big part of promoting a website online. While you don’t necessarily need to be an SEO expert, it certainly helps to have a grasp of this subject. Thankfully, there is plenty of information available online and even on this very blog.

Research

Being a good writer also means being a good researcher. Sometimes you will be asked to write on topics you know nothing about. Actually, this is one of the fun things about being a freelance writer as you’ll find you end up with all kinds of knowledge on a wealth of subjects. To cope though, you will need to be able to quickly understand the crux of a new subject and then bring that to your content in a way that makes you sound like an expert.

Self-Starter

Being a self-employed writer means that you’ll have no boss and no one looking over your shoulder. It’s down to you to meet the deadlines you’re set, to exceed expectations daily and to keep looking for more clients when you don’t have enough work. This takes immense mental discipline. If you’re the kind of person who starts a new training program every year and doesn’t see it through, then you might not have the kind of drive necessary to be a freelance writer.

What You Will Need

Now you know the skills you’ll need, you should have a basic idea of whether or not you can realistically cut it as a freelance writer and you may or may not still be interested in going ahead with this career choice.

If you have decided that freelance writing is for you, then the next step is to look into some of the tools of your trade in terms of software and hardware that can be very useful. Here we will look at some things that every freelance writer needs to succeed:

A Small Laptop

Having some kind of portable laptop or computer is a very important tool for a writer. One of the very best benefits of being a freelance writer is that you will be able to work remotely and to travel as you do. If you invest in a small laptop that can slip into a bag, then you can work while on the beach or while sitting in your garden. Look for something with a long battery life, a light profile and a good keyboard.

A Great Keyboard

Speaking of which, you may want to invest in an additional keyboard that will be comfortable and that will provide you with the best accuracy even at high speeds. A great choice here is to get a ‘mechanical keyboard’. If you get a Windows tablet then you can use a bluetooth keyboard like this without sacrificing portability.

Word Processor

Your word processor is the software you will use to write with. The most famous example of this is Microsoft Word, which comes as part of Office360. Getting a subscription to Office360 is pretty much a no-brainer for writers and will mean you’re able to take advantage of a lot of fancy features. If you write ebooks for clients for instance, Word will let you instantly add a table of contents. If you are asked to proofread work by another writer meanwhile, you’ll be able to use Word’s comments feature. This is a must-have tool then for any serious freelance writer.

If you can’t afford Word to begin with though, you can choose free options such as TextEdit for Mac, OpenOffice or Google Docs. Google Docs saves to the cloud so is especially useful if you find yourself moving from computer to computer a lot. It does require an internet connection though.

While Word is required for more advanced projects, you can easily ‘make do’ with Google Docs and then get Office360 once you start profiting.

A Website

Having your own website will give you a great place to promote your services and to make yourself look good. The best thing about a website is that you can promote it with other means (such as PPC advertising) and you won’t be competing with anyone else on there. Having a website makes you look more professional and this in turn means you can charge a little more for your services.

Skype

When you start working with many new clients, they will often request to have a Skype meeting first. This way they can ensure that you understand the project they are going to give you and they can see that you care about their project and that you are cognizant and capable.

Samples

When you first hear from a new client, often the first thing they will ask for is some samples that they can see. Likewise, if you want to promote yourself on your own website, then having samples online will help you to stand out and to inspire trust in potential customers. Spend some time then creating examples of your very best work and be ready to show those to people who ask for proof of your writing prowess. Note too that these samples should cover a broad range of types of articles, styles and topics. This way you can always show a sample that is relevant to the kind of work that a client wants you to do for them.

PayPal

PayPal is the main payment method that you will use as an online freelance writer. While PayPal does charge a fee, it’s also fast, convenient and secure. If you develop a long-term relationship with a client then you might be able to organize wire transfer. Otherwise though, PayPal will be your best bet and with the amount you’re going to be transferring you will need a premium or business account linked to a real bank account.

Copyscape

Copyscape is another paid tool, this time for checking that content is ‘original’ and hasn’t been directly lifted from another source online. This is important for your clients as they need original content in order to ‘rank’ highly in the SERPs (Google doesn’t like duplicate writing) and because there are copyright issues when you lift work (you also cannot sell the same work to multiple clients). ‘Copyscape passed content’ has become a synonym for ‘100% unique content’ which ensures your clients that it’s not stolen.

That said, you don’t actually need Copyscape as long as you know you are writing in your own voice and using sources only for research – not for copying. It can be useful for checking sometimes though and some clients may specifically request that you test your writing with it.

VAS

A ‘VAS’ is a ‘Virtual Assistant Service’. In no way is this a necessity but it can certainly help in some cases. Basically a VAS is an individual or team who provide a wide range of services that can be carried out online, normally at a very low price. As a writer, you can use them to research topics for you, to gather useful links or even to help you find work!

Finding Clients

Before you can begin writing you need something to write and that means you need clients!

So how do you find writing clients online? Usually the answer is through a site for freelance work, through a content mill, or through a forum for webmasters/digital marketers.

Some of your best options include: Elance, PeoplePerHour and oDesk (for all kinds of jobs), Freelancer.com (for writing specifically), Fiverr (for work starting at $5), WarriorForum (a forum for digital marketers) or DigitalPointForums (a forum for webmasters).

In my personal experience, sites like Elance and oDesk involve a little too much competition, ultimately driving your price lower than you would probably want to go. WarriorForum, PeoplePerHour and DigitalPoint all however are great for finding steady, ongoing work in a slightly less saturated market – you do have to pay to place an ad on WarriorForum though.

Of course there are many other places you can find work too if you’re willing to explore. One strategy is to simply find blogs that look like they might accept freelance work (or advertise that they do) and to contact them. Another option is to try contacting print magazines to write for, or to read a magazine that lists markets for writers. I actually used to work for a magazine called ‘Writers’ News’ which would list other magazines, websites, competitions and more that were all looking for people who could write!

How it Works

Now you have the tools and the skills and you’ve found your first clients. What does working as a freelance writer actually entail?

When someone contacts you, they may be ready to give you an order right away, or they might want a quick chat on Skype first. Either way, you’ll eventually get set some work which will normally involve a word count and potentially a due date (otherwise your turn around time should be no more than 48 hours for medium-sized projects). Generally an order can be anywhere in the rage of 500 to 10,000 words though sometimes you’ll get huge week-long projects.

If you have multiple long-term clients then you need to be able to juggle the work you do for them so that they are all consistently getting prompt delivery. Turning down work when you’ve got too much will often mean going some days with nothing – so it’s worth cramming in an extra few hours to keep your clients sweet.

Make sure to pay careful attention to the description for the work and to include any keywords they ask, to follow the recommended tone and style and to help them meet their goals with what you ultimately produce. If you need more clarification, just ask.

Once you’re finished, you can then send the work as an e-mail attachment and request payment. Alternatively, you may wish to ask for payment upfront. What you do is up to you but a general advice to follow is to ask for payment in arears for small projects (500-10,000 words) but ask for 50% or 100% up-front if it will take more than a day.

Hopefully you’ll get some regular clients who want repeat work and you’ll learn quickly who you can trust and who you can’t. If you find anyone has a habit of paying late (or not at all) then inform them that you can only work with them if they are willing to pay up-front in future.

If someone completely fails to pay, then you can sell the work elsewhere (as long as they haven’t published it) or make money from it in other ways – such as putting it into an ebook.

Final Tips

Those are the basics of being a freelance writer. Ultimately it comes down to getting a computer and word processing software, placing an ad offering to write for $1 to $2 per 100 words and then delivering the work promptly with a PayPal invoice. It’s a beautifully simple business model and while it isn’t infinitely scalable, it’s certainly versatile to suit your specific requirements.

While it’s a simple system though, that doesn’t always mean easy. Follow these tips if you want to survive and thrive!

Commit to Quality – We touched on this briefly but once again: make sure you are delivering high quality work at all times. The best thing you can do as a writer is to get repeat and ongoing work from a satisfied client and for there to be any chance of that happening, you need to provide reliably high quality content every time.

Don’t Work From Home – Working from home doesn’t have to be taken literally. If you work from your house all the time you’ll find it’s easy to get distracted and that you go stir crazy from not leaving your four walls. Buy a couple of cappuccinos and work in a coffee shop instead.

Limit Communication Overhead – Unfortunately, you will find that some clients are more effort than they’re worth. In the nicest possible way, if someone is sending you 20 e-mails a day and only paying for a few articles a month then they are costing you more than they’re earning you. Keep e-mails brief, avoid Skype meetings if possible and drop clients who keep pestering.

But Don’t be Afraid to ‘Kiss-Ass’ – That said, a rude client or confused client who pays for regular work is worth keeping. Sometimes you will have to say ‘sorry’ even when it’s not your fault. While it can be a little frustrating, it’s not worth arguing with someone which wastes time, loses you business and may result in a bad review. Be the bigger man or woman and swallow your pride from time to time. I once had a prospective client contact me who was a little blunt and I almost told them to jog on. 7 years later I’m still working for them and wouldn’t have gotten to where I am now without them – I’m very glad I didn’t send that angry e-mail!

Have Limits – When you’re a self-employed writer you can always be earning more money. As long as the work is there, you can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. My advice? Don’t. There comes a point where you are living to work rather than working to live and in order to provide a good service and to enjoy your job you need that ‘me’ time to recharge. Set clear limits as to when you work and when you don’t and stick to them. The book ‘The Four Hour Workweek‘ is a great read that provides lots of tips of that nature.

Run a Blog – Writing for others is fun and rewarding to a point but if you never get to see your name on anything you write it can eventually get a little disheartening. Run your own blog then and that way you can still enjoy writing for the love of writing sometimes!

So there you have it, everything you need to know to start killing it as a writer on the web. There’s much more of course and you will always be learning until the day you put down the keyboard. The rest though, you’ll learn on the job. Good luck!

The post How to Become a Freelance Writer appeared first on TextBoss.

The problem though, is that a surprising number of webmasters and even “writers” don’t really know how to develop original content. It’s not just that they don’t know how to create high quality content – it’s that they don’t know how to create original posts… at all.

Here then, we’ll go over everything you need to know about creating original content so that you can start populating your site with the kind of writing that you need as a webmaster; or writing that type of content as a freelancer.

What is Original Content? And Why Copyscape Has Nothing to do With It

The extent of the problem is evident when you realize that a lot of writers actually don’t even realize what original content actually is. Take a look on Warrior Forum or even oDesk or Elance and you’ll often see writers proudly proclaiming that their content is ‘100% Copyscape Passed’.

For the uninitiated, Copyscape is an online tool that allows you to check whether duplicates of any content exist online. In other words, if you order a passage of text from a writer, you can use this to make sure that your writers aren’t just copying and pasting that content from another site. Alternatively, it can also be used to ensure that content isn’t derivative to the point of being ‘essentially’ stolen.

But there’s a subtext here. When a writer says that they have tested their content against Copyscape and that it has passed 100%, what they are essentially saying is that ‘yes, it is derivative but I’ve checked it so it’s okay’.

The point here being: truly unique content doesn’t need testing against Copyscape.  Just because you have reworded an article to the point where an algorithm can no longer tell it’s plagiarized, that doesn’t mean that it’s ‘original’. When you actually write original content, you aren’t just searching for the top result on Google – you’re actually constructing something entirely new.

Isn’t All Content Derivative?

If you’re a writer and you’re asked to write about ‘heat mass flow meters’ then of course you’re going to have to do some research – unless you happen to have written on this topic previously. That doesn’t mean though that you’re going to simply look for the top results on Google and then rephrase them. That isn’t original writing, it’s actually ‘human spinning’.

Spinning is the process of rewriting an article so that it says the exact same thing – with the same structure and same points – but with different vocabulary. This can be performed by a piece of software called an ‘article spinner’ but it can also be done ‘by hand’ as it were, which is referred to as ‘human spinning’. This is not original content.

What if you were to take two articles and to reword them? Would that still be human spinning rather than original writing? The line becomes a bit blurrier here but really you shouldn’t be using any type of ‘reference’ at all while you’re writing. 

Instead, you should read up on the subject by examining multiple different articles and posts on the subject and then you should write something completely fresh, simply using the information that you’ve learned to fuel your own narrative.

And the most important part of this is that your article should be making original points, in an original way. You should write with your own (natural) writing style to lend consistency to your blog/work and you should write about the topic while offering something new and different. If you’re writing about a Heat Mass Flow Pump then don’t just write ‘What is a Heat Mass Flow Pump’, instead find a way to bring something new to the subject. That might be ‘What is a Heat Mass Flow Pump for Dummies’ or it might be ‘Seven Everyday Appliances That Use Heat Mass Flow Pumps’. This way you’ve read other articles for your inspiration but what you’ve produced is in no way a ‘version’ of any of them. And the only reason you should be opening them is to double check your facts.

Why You Need Original Content

At this point, you might now be asking yourself ‘why does it matter’? As long as you’re getting new content and it’s not breaching copyright law, who cares how similar it is to other existing writing? (Apart from the fact that you may in fact be in breach of copyright if you’re just human spinning…)

Well, for starters derivative content is boring and no-one wants to read it. If you’re hoping for your content to stand any chance of going viral then it needs to offer something completely new to the subject. Even if that’s just covering a common topic but in a different tone of voice. It doesn’t matter but it needs to be original. Would you read the same article you’ve seen a hundred times before?

Moreover, Google can tell the difference. Google doesn’t just want you to create lots of content, it wants you to add content that is interesting, relevant, new, deep and accurate. Why? Because that’s what Google’s users want and as long as Google gives its users what they want, then it will remain number one. In the past, it was possible to ‘trick’ Google with a few metrics but today the algorithms are getting increasingly smart and it’s pretty difficult to pull the wool over the bots’ eyes. And with time, Google will only get smarter, so you need to create great content just in order to be future-proof.

Content that is clearly copied or scraped will actually hurt your rankings. This is why duplicate content has no value on the web – once Google has indexed it it’s of no use to future sites. Likewise, Google doesn’t like content that is clearly spun or scraped because it’s generally just a low quality attempt to ‘dupe’ the search engine at the expense of delivering quality entertainment/information.

Why Great Quality Content Will Only Matter More in Future

According to this article, Google is starting to use a ‘knowledge-based trust score’. In other words, it’s reading the facts in your content and if they’re inaccurate then that’s going to hurt your ranking. Other programs already do this: for instance there’s a browser plugin called ‘LazyTruth’ that can identify hoax emails.

The ‘Ranking Factors Study 2014’ report from SearchMetrics listed the following as crucial factors in helping content to rank:

• Semantically comprehensive content
• Long form content
• Media enriched content
• Easy to read content

Length is a very important factor here, with posts that are longer almost always appearing higher than shorter ones. In fact, longer content even tends to get more external links and of course it has a higher potential for increasing the time viewers spend on the page. Here are some more images and charts.

We already know that Google likes it when you link out to quality sources and there’s been a lot of buzz about an increasing use of semantics and context. No longer is it sufficient to just fill your content with the same few keywords, instead you need to write knowledgeably around the subject. It’s becoming much harder to ‘fake it’. You can read more at BuzzSumo here.

And if Copyscape is capable of telling whether an article is based heavily on another piece, don’t you think Google is going to have very similar capabilities built in? And probably more advanced ones at that? Seeing as it’s actually capable of fact checking and other advanced operations, telling whether you’re just rewording someone else’s work will be child’s-play.

In other words, your content needs to be in-depth, it needs to deliver the facts and it needs to be completely original. Our own site at www.bugeriegar.com meets all these criteria and that’s why it ranks at number 2 for budgeriegar.

Using truly high quality and original content, you can actually perform very well on Google even without doing a ton of extra marketing. It really is the difference between a high performing site and a less successful one.

What to do With This Information?

So what do you do with this information? As a freelance writer, you need to take this all on board when you’re writing your original content. It really isn’t okay to just do a search for the top ranking piece and then rewrite it. Instead, you need to read around the subject, learn it and then produce something entirely new that sheds a new light on the topic.

• Each piece of content you produce should:
• Be completely unique to the point where you don’t even need Copyscape
• Be factually accurate and heavily researched
• Be long, in-depth and comprehensive
• Include external links, LSI keywords and easy-to-read pros

As for those webmasters and bloggers hiring freelancers, this is what you need to be looking for when you hire someone to write for you. Ask yourself whether this is genuinely top-tier content. Ask whether you would read it if you saw it on someone else’s site and make sure to check the facts and to make sure that the copy isn’t derivative of what’s already out there.

The post How to Create Amazing, Original Content for a Blog or Site appeared first on TextBoss.

Of course they still need to be interesting to the audience as well. In fact, that’s even more important if you want to rank seeing as Google’s job is to help its users find content that will be interesting, relevant and high value. As such, the rules of writing SEO articles will generally overlap with the rules of writing more broadly. To write a good SEO article, you must first be able to write a good article (we wrote a post on this very subject recently). The difference though is that you then need to do a few things on top of that in order to make your content more SEO friendly. Here we will look at some steps to take to ensure your content will be loved by Google. Read these and you should be adept in providing your clients or your own blog with effective ‘SEO’ content.

1. Understanding Keywords

Perhaps the most talked-about factor when it comes to writing SEO articles, is the use of keywords. Keywords are essentially the terms that a company wants their articles to rank for, so that when someone searches for a particular service, product or piece of information, their site will show up at the top.

Keywords need to be researched first however to ensure that they a) are being searched for and b) don’t have too much competition. Once a company finds a ‘sweet spot’ they will identify the keywords and pass them on to you as the writer.

This then means you have to insert the keywords into your article in a subtle way – repeating the term that your clients have selected or that your research has identified but without making it seem awkward or forced.

Your keywords should be used throughout your content but they also need to appear in the headings and titles and at the start and end of paragraphs. These spots are considered more important as far as Google is concerned, so consider it ‘bonus points’ if you get them in there.

2. Correct Keyword Density

While doing this you need to maintain the correct ‘keyword density’, which is about 1-2%. In other words, your content should consist of 1-2% keywords with the rest being natural content as you would normally write. If you include your keywords more frequently than that 1-2% then you will find that Google actually penalizes the content because it will look as though you’re trying to ‘play the system’.

Unfortunately, some clients who have done just a minimal amount of reading on the subject will think that 1-2% isn’t enough and will urge you to repeat the keywords more frequently. As they say, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

So what do you do? Well, if you’re providing a writing service then you should normally go along with your clients’ requests. They know best and as long as you perform the job you’re given, you should be fine. If you’re providing SEO services though, then your value is going to be judged by the results you get so argue your case strongly.

Lastly, if it’s for your own site, make sure that you are writing for your users first and for Google second. Monitoring precisely 1-2% density is actually missing the point – instead just write naturally on your subject and let the keywords arrive naturally.

3. Dealing With Awkward Keywords

Sometimes you will come across articles online that have attempted to ‘stuff’ awkward and specific keywords and this is what results in awkward phrasing like this:

“Have you ever wondered ‘where can I buy hats online’? Now you know the answer to ‘where can I buy hats online’!”

Hardly Shakespeare is it?

More awkward still are ‘local keywords’ which include place names. Some clients will find that people search for terms like ‘buy hats Minneapolis’ and this then results in phrasing like:

“And that’s why you should always shop around before you buy hats Minneapolis!”

Urgh.

The best thing to do here from a purely ‘results’ standpoint is to ignore the requests of the client and to remove ‘Minneapolis’ from their keyword. Instead, the local aspect can come from the keyword being used elsewhere on the site – even in the URL or header.

Again though, you’ll find that some clients don’t take kindly to this. If you’re providing copywriting services then your job isn’t to second guess the client. You can always express your concern prior to writing but otherwise just carry out your instructions.

4. LSI Optimization

LSI optimization is a relatively new term that stands for ‘latent semantic indexing’. While it sounds very fancy though, it’s essentially just jargon for what you should always have been doing in the first place.

Point is, Google is getting smarter. These days, Google can actually understand the content on your page and thus is able to look for synonyms and related words. It can likewise do the same with the search strings that users are looking for to second guess what they actually mean versus what they say.

For instance, when you search for ‘LSI Optimization’ you’ll find that ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’ is also highlighted in the search results because Google knows that they are one and the same thing. Likewise, they’ll be looking for words like ‘SEO’ and ‘Google’ in your content to make sure that they don’t bring up articles on: ‘Lemon Sifting Index’. That’s not a thing… but you get the point.

So to ensure that your content is actually relevant to the topic and to ensure that you are a good writer, Google will look for synonyms and related terms. You should write around the subject for this reason and make sure that these terms come up whenever possible.

This is really just a matter of writing naturally but brushing up on your vocabulary won’t hurt either.

It’s also another reason why the smarter clients won’t try and force the issue with their specific search terms.

5. Content Length

The length of your content should be ‘as long as it needs to be’ as again you should be serving the reader and not Google (ironically, in order to impress Google).

That said, research tells us that Google prefers longer content. Longer content inherently provides more value and it has also been shown to generate more backlinks from other users (the more people link to your content, the higher it will rank as well).

Delivering quality and value is your first port of call and writing long-form content is a means to this end. At the same time, longer content is more likely to include more repetitions of your keyphrase (while maintaining ~1-2% density) and it is likely to include more natural LSI optimization. It’s also more likely to include ‘long tail keywords’ which are the random phrases like ‘how do I dye my blue hat red?’ that can provide a lot of benefit when you have enough of them. You also give yourself a chance of being featured as an ‘in-depth article’ on the SERPs this way.

When you do write long-form content, make sure you include lots of headers and paragraphs to break up the text and to ensure the visitors can skim read your content if they want to.

The only problem is that most clients pay by the word. This then means that you will be given a word count to stick to in the majority of cases. If you’re writing for yourself, go long. If you’re writing for a client… do what you’re told. Some clients though will have the good sense to let you write as much or as little as is needed.

6. Accuracy and Links

The other main way to provide value in an article is with accurate and useful information. Google is reportedly beginning to fact-check content against a ‘knowledge vault’ in order to ensure it’s returning correct answers. Make sure then that you are doing your research!

Linking out to other resources can also be useful for improving the apparent value of your content. This helps Google to more accurately identify the subject you’re writing on, it provides the users with more information and turns your article into an even better resource in itself.

7. Other Forms of Marketing

SEO is one form of digital marketing with social media marketing being another of the most popular ones. Most clients and bloggers are going to want to combine SEO with social marketing and other techniques in order to get the best results.

Thus an SEO article should also be a social article. This means that your content needs to easy to read, engaging and original. It also means that you should use titles and images that will be conducive to sharing. Think BuzzFeed but without the trashiness.

This is also directly beneficial from an SEO standpoint as it means more people are more likely to link to your content for you. This is called ‘link bait’ and it results in a natural and organic links profile.

So there you have it: the basics of writing SEO articles. There is a little more to it than that and it’s also important to remember that Google’s algorithms are constantly learning and evolving. The main take-home message though is use keywords in a subtle manner and to focus primarily on long, well-researched content that delivers real value to the readers.

The post How to Write an Original SEO Article: 7 Key Steps to Keep in Mind appeared first on TextBoss.

On the other hand though, if you’re not so good at it then it’s not quite such a good deal. If you struggle to write well or write quickly then you can find this a very demanding job and if you don’t have the ‘voice’ then you’ll struggle to find work.

The key then is to make yourself indispensable. You need to be as good as you can be with the best qualifications, skills and expertise possible to ensure that the work keeps coming and your rates keep going up. But what does that take? Read on for the ultimate guide to becoming an ideal hire for any copywriting agency.

Types of Copywriter

The first thing to realize is precisely what being a copywriter entails. Just to clarify a moment, a copywriter is someone who writes copy for websites, businesses and marketing campaigns. This is different from being a journalist as you won’t be writing editorials and interviews – though with the internet the lines are a little more blurred. Basically, the role of a copywriter is to provide text in pretty much any format for businesses to help them communicate with their clients and staff, to describe their products and services and to fill their websites and marketing materials.

Thus the job of a copywriter is a very varied one and the best copywriters will be flexible or they will be highly specialized and work within a specific niche. Often when copywriting is being discussed, it will be general copywriting that’s getting talked about. This includes freelance copywriting and agency copywriting.

If you’re a freelancer, you’ll basically be looking for all kinds of clients and offering a ‘broad but shallow’ service. Your jobs will vary from day to day and one moment you might be writing something highly technical and the next you might be writing buzzfeed-style articles. This type of writing provides you with the most freedom in terms of your lifestyle but is also very competitive and doesn’t provide the same stable income as working for an organization. A lot of this kind of work these days will be online, so having a good understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can help.

As an agency copywriter on the other hand, you’ll be working for an agency that will have numerous clients and you’ll then be given out work by that agency. How varied your work is will depend on the nature of the agency and it’s also possible to work for agencies on a freelance style basis. You may be able to work remotely, or find yourself in a busy and exciting office environment.

Ad copywriters meanwhile write for advertising agencies. The role here involves coming up with slogans and catchphrases and requires a lot of creativity. You won’t be paid by the word as you will as a freelancer so instead progress is all about coming up with memorable campaigns and working with big clients.

In-house copywriters finally will be copywriters that are employed by a specific company in pretty much any industry to handle their copywriting needs. In these scenarios, you’ll need to be a great writer but just as important is having a deep knowledge of that industry. Almost every type of company has need of some kind of copywriting from law firms to IT companies. It’s only generally the bigger organizations though that can afford to have their own in-house teams.

What Qualifications do You Need to be a Copywriter?

The reason it was important to go over the various types of copywriter first is that the best qualifications vary greatly depending on the type of copywriter you want to be.

As a general rule, any degree in English literature or journalism is going to be a good start as it demonstrates you should have a good grasp of writing generally. It’s actually possible to do degrees and even masters degrees in copywriting specifically – though in most cases that won’t give you much of an advantage over someone who has a degree in journalism from a well-respected institution.

Really in fact, any degree that involves a good amount of writing and comprehension will still help you to find copywriting jobs. Psychology degrees for instance are great because they involve writing essays, thinking critically and also understanding people (which copywriting incorporates a lot of). Similarly, degrees in history or even something like business could give you an edge.

If you want to be an in-house copywriter and work within a specific industry, then of course it’s a good idea to become well-versed in that subject. A degree in law for instance will be very useful for a copywriter who wants to stay mainly in that field. An ideal scenario would be to do a degree in law and follow that up with a masters in copywriting or journalism for instance. Of course if you want to be an advertising copywriter then you’ll want to get a degree in advertising specifically.

The good thing about copywriting though is that you can do fairly well without qualifications. Becoming a freelance writer – particularly on the web – is all about selling yourself and building a portfolio of clients. As long as you can show examples of your writing and you’re willing to work yourself from the bottom up, you can gain experience without needing a degree to begin with.

Of course if you can’t write though, then you’ll probably want to do some kind of course at least to help you polish up your skills. Before you start out, you should have a solid grasp of grammar, as well as how to structure a sentence and arrange an article. Online courses can help in this but generally courses you can attend in person are better as you’ll have someone present to check over your work.

And what if you want to work for a copywriting/advertising agency and you don’t have a degree? Unfortunately, many such positions will require a degree in order for you to send an application. In that case the best thing you can do is to try and work for the company a little lower on the ladder and then to rise through the ranks by putting in extra time and taking on any advancement opportunities as they come up.

Experience and Additional Skills

More important than your degree really is the experience you can get. If you can add some well-known clients/internships to your CV then this will actually take you much further when you’re looking for a job.

In terms of the type of experience you gain, the closer the roles you take on are to the job you eventually want the better they will be. Often the best way to gain experience as a copywriter is to work for free, so try volunteering at copywriting agencies, at advertising companies or even at magazines.

As mentioned, it’s also useful to demonstrate SEO knowledge if you want to be a digital copywriter predominantly. Even if you want to work in an offices, copywriting is revolving more and more around the web every day. A good understanding of technology, of SEO, of social media marketing and even of HTML, web design and WordPress can help you to go much further. If you understand a little about HTML and web design then you’ll be able to offer to write copy for a company and then upload it for them, while SEO knowledge will mean you can optimize that content for them. This will give you a huge advantage over someone who only knows about writing.

As with any job, the secret to success is about understanding what it is that your employers want from you. They want you to write yes but why? What is it that they want to accomplish by hiring you? And what skills, qualifications and experience can you gather to help them do that?

What Does it Take to be a Great Copywriter?

Now you know what type of copywriter you want to be and you should have an idea of how to go about getting there. But what does it take to really succeed and to be great at your job?

While courses, degrees and experience can help you to land a good job, how do you make sure you excel at what you do? To an extent, some of being a great writer is natural – some people have a ‘knack’ for writing and a great voice that makes their content easy to read and that’s very hard to learn. Assuming you’re already starting out as a good writer though, here’s what else you should do:

Read

One thing you can do to get better at writing is to read regularly. The more you read, the more you’ll get the hang of how words should flow from one another. You’ll pick-up good grammar habits and improve your vocabulary too almost through osmosis.

Research

And don’t just read comics – read around the subjects that you’re writing regularly and the topics that affect your industry. That means reading about law/health/engineering when the situation calls for it, as well as staying up-to-date with the latest news about Google’s algorithm updates and social media sites.

Take Pride in All Your Work

Sometimes as a copywriter you’ll be given a job you love – perhaps writing about a subject you find fascinating. Other times though, you’ll be asked to do things you’re not so keen on like selling a product that you think is sub-par. The key here is to remain professional and to give every project your best shot. Even if the topic is incredibly bland you can still be creative and you can still make your writing pop. Remember too that varied work is good for your CV and for improving your range of skills.

Work Fast

This is particularly important if you are going to be a freelancer – a lot of clients will need their work fast and if you can provide a good TAT (Turn Around Time) then you’ll have an edge over the competition. Working fast also means you can increase your turnover thus earning more profit without having to price yourself less competitively.

Listen to Feedback

It’s easy to be defensive of your work as a writer but this is ultimately going to put you at a disadvantage. When you get feedback from a client listen to it and take it on-board. See every criticism as a chance to improve your craft so that you make a better impression on your next job.

Practice…

The more you practice the better you’ll get. Over time writers get faster and more efficient so don’t worry if you’re not amazing to start with. Just keep practicing, give it time and have the will to put in the groundwork.

The post So You Want to be a Copywriter? How to Make Yourself Indispensable appeared first on TextBoss.

At the same time though, it also means communicating with clients and knowing how to keep them happy. This is where many writers will often fall down as they let ‘creative differences’ get in the way. When you provide any service, you sometimes need to swallow your ego. This is not the time of place to be a diva.

In fact, sometimes, being a copywriter means selling just a little bit of your soul…

Remember: the client is always right. If you’ve been hired to do a job, you need to execute it in a way that they will be happy with and that will get them the results they want (though these two are not always the same thing as we’ll see!). This sometimes means sacrificing your ‘integrity’ or your creativity in order to do what the client instructs. And that’s normal. This can be frustrating at times – but hey, we’re all in it together.

To help demonstrate what we mean and to help prepare you for some particularly… interesting… types of client you might encounter, we’ve listed here some of the most common stereotypes you’ll likely encounter and how best you should deal with each. Good luck out there!

The Client With Overly Specific Instructions

When you get hired for any given writing job, you will normally be given a set of guidelines or instructions on what to do. This is kind of important, seeing as you need to know what you’re writing about. Sometimes though, these instructions will be specific to the point of taking over for you. You will encounter writers who literally write the whole thing for you and then say ‘kind of like that’.

I have encountered clients who will ask for 500 words on a subject and give me a 700 word description. This begs the question: why bother hiring a writer? Likewise, they might refer you to ‘examples’ of the content they want you to reproduce – which won’t always necessarily be good.

This can be a little painful for you, as it means you’re essentially just proof-reading. Make sure you stick exactly to their guidelines though, as they are clearly of the somewhat anal personality type and will ask for revisions if you omit anything they want you to include.

The Client With Overly Vague Instructions

At the other end of the spectrum is the client with overly vague instructions. For instance, you might get the following instructions:

“Write a welcome page for my business and an about page detailing our history working in design engineering and why our services are better than the competition.“

Great. Thanks.

Things these instructions miss out:

• Word count
• Anything about the nature of the business
• Anything about the specific services the company provides
• Why they are ‘better than the competition’

In some cases you’ll get these vague instructions because the client doesn’t care. It may well be that they don’t even run a design engineering business but they are instead creating a site they hope to sell to another company in the future. Either that, or they’ve just started their new company and don’t have any ‘real’ history just yet. They may know very little about digital marketing, writing or design engineering and thus be happy for you to use your expertise and intuition as a writer.

This is fine, as you can then write vague content:

“[COMPANY NAME] has been in the design engineering industry for many years and in that time has established itself as a leading brand with a sterling reputation.”

This type of content is general enough to apply to any business, while still sounding professional.

But before you go ahead and write content like that, it is generally easier to ask questions first. Ask them if they have any preference regarding word count, or if they have a previous ‘About Page’ you can refer to. Some clients just expect you to be mind-readers and if you send back something generic that isn’t the length they were expecting they’ll be unhappy. By asking these questions then, you can cover yourself against their potential dissatisfaction and avoid having to make any rewrites. There’s a good chance they’ll say ‘at your discretion’ in which case you can go ahead with the vagueness (oh the pride in writing 1,000 words and saying nothing…).

The Stingy Client

Description: “Write me an introduction to the subject of quantum physics. Mention all of the key figures in its history and discuss the potential philosophical implications.“

Word Count: “100 words“

100 words! The client here is clearly hoping you’re going to ‘accidentally’ go over the word count and write them 200 words or 300 words. Either that, or they’re just completely ignorant to how much can be said in 100 words.

Give this client a little more than they ask for. It won’t kill you to write an extra 30 words so that you can include just some of what they’ve asked for. At the same time though, don’t be overly generous or you might find they come to expect it and they keep ordering.

Another type of stingy client is the one who doesn’t pay – or who takes months on end to pay. I once had a client owe me several thousand dollars for over four months. That was a painful time…

The best defense against these sorts of clients is to ask for an up-front payment, though you’ll find that this can sometimes be off-putting for potential clients.

A better option is to ask for up-front payments of very large orders only – this isn’t unreasonable and your clients should understand the reasoning. For small orders by new clients, take payment in arears but if you find they develop a habit of paying late, tell them you’ll need to take payment in advance from then on.

Or better yet, work for a writing agency like TextBoss. That way all the financial side of things is taken care of for you!

The Pidgin

Some clients will very clearly speak English as a second language when they hire you. This is actually commendable; at least they haven’t tried to write their own content! At the same time though, it can create some potential problems.

For instance, it creates problems when the instructions they give you sound like this:

“We run brand new 50 year company providing SEO design in automobile industry and great outstanding beneficial feature – extra salience. Our specialty is to WordPress design. Not just WordPress, also the network maintain, update, writing etc. First free website for all automobile industry! Can also set up free wheels, windshield, windpipe. Special offer only lasting 7 days.

500 words.”

Riiiight.

Plus, when you ask them to elaborate, you’ll get an equally difficult-to-decipher message the second time. It’s not their fault of course but it does make things difficult. Your only recourse really here is to try your very best after getting as much information as you can. If you can ask them to give you an example though, then this is always a good strategy.

Oh and the one time this is annoying is when they then ‘correct’ your work for you. Yep, this happens more often than you think. I once had a foreign client ‘correct’ everything that was underlined red in Word – they didn’t realize that it was underlined red because they were brand names or it was jargon/terminology that Word didn’t recognize.

Again, the client is always right. The best thing to do is just to smile, nod and make any changes they request.

The SEO ‘Expert’

Some business owners will want SEO articles written to gain traction in the SERPs. This is understandable and fine. The problems though come when those clients have very particular ideas regarding how this should be done and think of themselves as SEO experts despite having read only a few articles on the subject.

These clients will insist that you use keywords every other word, that you force awkward phrases like ‘buys dogs Los Angeles’ into your content and that you use their company name often too.

You are probably well aware that SEO has moved on a lot since those days. But unfortunately, your job is not to advise on your clients’ marketing approach. Your job is to write the content they’ve asked for. So as much as it pains you, do as you’re asked and whine about it to your significant other.

Note: If you’re starting not to like the sounds of having to write content you wouldn’t normally, it can often help to have your own outlet. Create a blog or start writing a novel and there you can let your creative urges loose!

The Impossible to Please Client

Some clients will be impossible to please. These clients will nit-pick your phrasing (‘this sentence is overly long!’) or will expert you to bring expert-level knowledge to subjects that you can’t be expected to learn in-depth. It’s not uncommon to receive your work back but with annotations written in word. Kind of drives you mad.

If you don’t have a thick skin, this can actually get you down and lead to you questioning the quality of your work or whether you’re in the right industry. Alternatively, you might just find yourself constantly working overly hard to try and perfect content that is always going to get thrown back into your face.

To start with, it is ultimately worth your time to make the changes requested. If they end up as a long-term client then a little extra time making ‘corrections’ is worthwhile.

On the other hand though, if you find you are stressed out because of these clients or you are starting to deliver work for your other clients late, then it’s not worth it. At a certain point a client can become more trouble than they’re worth. Don’t be rude but don’t be afraid to tell a client you’re having to streamline your service. You can even refer them to a competitor…

The Excellent Client

Of course it’s not all bad. In fact, the majority of clients you work with will be great to deal with and will give you clear instructions and pay promptly. These are the types of clients you want to hang onto and when you find them, you should make sure that you always prioritize their work. If you can find a few clients that pay promptly, order large amounts of writing and make the process easy and straightforward then you’ll find they can actually form the backbone of your entire business.

The post The Most Common Types of Writing Clients You Will Encounter and How to Deal With Them appeared first on TextBoss.

When someone orders an article from you or some web page content, you need to treat this as an opportunity to form a new business relationship. This isn’t just one isolated order – this is your chance to impress. You need to make your writing work for them to meet their goals because that way they’ll be much more inclined to order from you again next time.

This means constantly keeping a few things in mind as you’re writing. Here are some of the most important examples…

Engagement

No matter what your client’s goals are, the first step to achieving them as a writer is to engage the audience. That means you need to grab attention and keep it and you need to think about how your article is achieving that.

A good place to start is with the opening paragraph. You need to grab attention right away here and that means getting to the point or opening with an interesting statement. Then you need to keep that reader hooked by delivering value (unique ideas and actionable points) and getting them emotionally invested (mainly by thinking about how your product will benefit the reader).

Flow

Another way to ensure that your readers keep reading is to maintain flow throughout your content. This means that your writing should feel natural to read, almost as though it were spoken. You can also ensure you’re maintaining flow by reading through your own work – are there any break points where your attention might start to wander?

Results

We touched on this in the introduction but it bears further emphasis. When a client orders your writing, they are interested in what your writing can do for them. So if it’s a sales letter you’ve been hired to write, then that letter needs to be persuasive and it needs to sell. If it’s an e-book on a given subject, then that book needs to provide the $30 of value that your clients are probably charging for it. If it’s a blog post, then that post needs to be sharable and it needs to help the owner to build authority in their niche.

Ask yourself at every step as you write: is what you’re writing going to help the client get the results they want?

Value

At the same time, you also need to think about what the readers want. Imagine it’s you reading your own article – would you come away feeling that you had gained some kind of unique insight? Something that you couldn’t have found anywhere else?

If you’re writing a review then you need to make sure you answer all the questions that a prospective buyer might have. If you’re writing a homepage, then you need to ensure you tell the reader everything they need to know about the business/website they’ve come across. And if your article is meant to be funny, make sure it would actually make someone laugh.

Originality

A lot of this is about being original. As with any product, an exemplary article should either be ‘the best’ (as in, the most comprehensive) or ‘unique’ in order to stand out. It’s much easier to write content that’s unique than it is to write content that’s the most comprehensive – especially with a fixed word count.

I’m not talking about content that passes Copyscape here – that should be a given. Rather, I’m talking about content that presents a new viewpoint on a subject or a new angle. Again, ask yourself: would you read this?

You’ll do research sure, but if you’re just rewriting the first few results on Google then you’re not providing value.

Tone

Depending on the client, your tone and your voice will need to change. You should always have a ‘writer’s voice’ but whether that’s written in a colloquial, formal or humorous tone will depend on the blog or website it’s going to go on. Again, think about the goals and the audience of your client and let this dictate the tone.

This is important because even content that is technically sufficient won’t cut the mustard if it doesn’t fit the style and tone of the rest of the blog or website and it won’t serve the purpose for which it is intended either. Robotic writing or overly familiar writing is not good writing.

How to Make the Transition

That all sounds great on paper and in theory but how do you go about actually making it happen? How do you keep the energy and the enthusiasm high when you have countless clients ordering content that you have no interest in?

The answer is to find what makes it interesting to you and then to write about it. This is how you put yourself into your content and it’s how you make it unique, personal and passionate. When you’re writing something that you find interesting and that you are proud of, suddenly you’ll find that the content flows and the quality goes way up. And if you know nothing about the subject? Then try to get excited about the opportunity to learn.

This is also how you beat ‘writers’ block’ by the way. Any screenwriter will tell you that writers’ block happens when the scene you’re writing isn’t that interesting and you’re putting off writing it. What’s the solution? Change the scene! If you’re finding it boring to write, then do you really think people are going to find it interesting to read? Set that same scene at a football game and suddenly you have something more exciting that serves the same purpose.

How do you do this when you’re writing about vacuum pumps? That’s up to you – but the science of air pressure is actually fairly interesting and vacuum pumps are crucial components in all kinds of machinery… You’ll think of something!

The post The Most Important Things to Remember as a Digital Writer appeared first on TextBoss.

In reality, copywriting agencies have very little to do with Mad Men most of the time (and that’s regardless of the period setting) and especially for digital agencies. Here we will look in a little bit more detail at what a digital copywriting agency does, how they vary and why their role is so crucial for countless businesses.

How Mad Men is Different

If you thought Mad Men was about copywriting, then you weren’t wrong. However, what’s key to point out here is that there are lots of different types of copywriting. Man Men is actually a show about a traditional advertising agency which hires copywriters to write slogans and headings and to help sell products and services. That job still exists today, though it’s not half as glamorous (or dramatic) as that show would make it seem.

‘Copywriting’ in this instance simple refers to the fact that the characters are writing copy – or in other words, content that isn’t so much ‘creative’ as much as ‘functional’. Journalism means writing editorials, news and interviews for magazines, literature means writing creatively as a novelist or non-fiction book writer and copywriting is everything else.

Copywriting has always been important for businesses because every industry needs writing. Whether it’s writing internal letters, writing e-mails to clients or writing instruction manuals for products – even the least ‘creative’ organization will need writing in some form or other.

The Role of Digital Copywriting Agencies

Only today, that has completely exploded and companies now need more writing than ever before. Why? Because the internet, that’s why.

Not only do companies need all the content they need before but now they need digital press releases, blog content, social media posts, reviews, copy for their home page, copy for their mailing list… and more. ‘Content is king’ is a phrase often used to describe the importance of writing on the internet and it really is true.

Companies then have the option to hire an in-house copywriting team, or to outsource their writing to a third party. And that’s where digital copywriting agencies come in.

How These Organizations Work

So your typical digital copywriting agency will be a large organization with a number of writers on the payroll. These might be in-house employees for that agency or they might be freelancers. This then means you have two scenarios: either a big busy office filled with lots of people typing away, or a decentralized organization made up of people working out of coffee shops or from beaches as ‘digital nomads’. So it is actually quite dramatic and glamorous, just in a different way…

These companies will then receive orders from companies asking them to write content for their new websites, their blogs or the backs of their DVD cases. Some agencies will specialize, while others will cover all kinds of subjects and industries.

Also worth noting is that sometimes digital marketing agencies and digital copywriting agencies are interchangeable. Digital marketing agencies are companies that handle SEO, social media marketing and press releases for companies to help them promote themselves online. With Google working mainly through content and ‘content marketing’ being a big deal in itself, the lines are somewhat blurred in many cases between digital marketing and digital copywriting.

The Types of Jobs That Digital Copywriting Agencies Will Handle

Digital copywriting agencies vary as companies in any industry do. As a general guide though, you can expect most of these organizations to handle the following jobs:

• Website content
• Press releases
• Headlines
• Slogans
• Ad copy for PPC campaigns, banners and solo ads
• E-mail marketing copy
• Letters to clients
• Proofreading
• Blog posts
• Guest posts for blogs
• Social media posts and updates
• Profiles for social media
• Instructions
• How-tos
• SEO articles
• Scripts for videos and audio
• Meta descriptions
• And a lot more besides…

Finding a Copywriting Agency

There are plenty of big copywriting agencies out there but not all of them are made equal. Some work to very high standards and have a long list of big-name clients, others though are just out to make a fast buck and produce poor quality work. How do you find the right ones?

To start with, bear in mind that you get what you pay for. If you’re looking at a copywriting agency that charges $1 for 100 words then chances are they are outsourcing your copy abroad – that means it might well be written in Pidgin English. Bigger companies hire local professionals and of course this costs more as a result.

Another tip is to always ask to see a sample of the company’s work. Most digital copywriting agencies will have samples of their work right on their site but if they don’t – ask to see them. You can also ask who they have worked for previously and look for testimonials from well-known companies. Ask too where they find their writers and how they ensure they are of a high standard. The best companies will have all the content they send to you proofed after it has been written by a second member of the team. Even for professional writers, proofing your own work is very difficult and having a fresh pair of eyes look over it makes a big difference.

Finally, always start with a small order to begin with and be sure to keep checking the work. Even if you’ve been working with a company for years, it’s smart to check the work you’re receiving constantly to ensure that the standards aren’t slipping. Once you find a great copywriting agency though, stick with them as they can make all the difference to your business!

The post An Introduction to Digital Copywriting Agencies, Nothing Like Mad Men! appeared first on TextBoss.

But wait a minute! Before you hit that ‘publish’ button, have you thought about the typography you’re going to use? Have you thought about it for your website in general? Because even the best content in the world can live or die based on your choice of typeface. This is a highly detailed subject that can have a huge impact on the look and feel of your web design as well as the flow and impact of your posts and articles. Unfortunately, it’s also a subject that a lot of webmasters and bloggers simply overlook – and it costs them dearly.

When it comes to web design the devil is very much in the detail. While you might not find yourself thinking much about typeface as you brose the web, the fact of the matter is that it has an unconscious impact on readers that speaks to the tone of the article and the quality of the business. The right typeface can make you stay longer on a page or it can encourage you to click on another link. And when you get it perfect, it will bring together the whole design of the site and the message of the content into a cohesive whole.

To help you get better acquainted with this subject then, let’s go over the basics of typography. By the end you should be a veritable typophile…

What is a Typeface?

This seems like a pretty good place to start: what even is a typeface? A typeface is of course style of text you choose to write in but did you know there’s a difference between a font and a typeface? Specifically, the term ‘font’ refers to a precise choice of style – such as Arial Bold or Arial Narrow, whereas a typeface refers to the broader category – i.e. Arial.

That said, the terms ‘font’ and ‘typeface’ are often used interchangeably, as they will be for the rest of this article.

In either case, the objective of a typeface or font choice is to make your text look clear and easy to read while at the same time being consistent and reflecting the tone and subject of the text or publication (website in your case).

Typefaces were originally invented when analog printing first came to be. Originally, printing involved laying out letters that acted like stamps onto frames, rolling them in ink and then pressing them onto paper. This is where the term ‘printing press’ comes from. The typeface would dictate the shapes of these letters.

Today, typefaces serve pretty much the same role. Your aim in picking the right font is to make sure that your readers can easily see what’s on your page without undermining the message of your brand. What looks good on a screen though is somewhat different from what looked good using a printing press and so typography has had to evolve with the times. When the web was first introduced, resolution was an issue that needed to be considered when designing a typeface. Today that’s not such an issue but responsive web design is. In Google’s latest ‘mobile friendliness’ update, they mandated that sites must use text that is easy to read on a mobile device or suffer potential penalizations in mobile search results.

Aspects of Typeface

Size isn’t everything when it comes to typeface though. What’s just as important is making sure that your font is easy to read and that it’s fitting for the type of content you’re posting. If you run an online news site then you’ll probably want a serif font for instance. Let’s take a look at some of the different factors influencing the feel of a font.

Serif

One of the biggest distinctions that can be made between typefaces is whether or not they are ‘serif’ or ‘sans serif’. A serif font is basically any font that has feet and legs – like Times New Roman. These types of fonts were used very commonly in the creation of newspapers and look particularly good when printed on paper. The idea of the feet is to help draw attention to various strokes and thus make it easier to differentiate between letters. An ‘l’ (L) and an ‘I’ (i) look different for instance when you use a serif font.

For digital media however, serif fonts can actually end up having the opposite effect and make a page look a little unnecessarily cluttered. This is particularly true on mobiles with small screens. Recent design trends have moved very much in the direction of minimalism too and so sans serif typefaces tend to evoke more of a feeling of modernity and of the digital age.

If you run a news blog, then choosing a serif font might lend you prestige through association with print publications. If you run a hip design blog, then a sans serif font shows you know what you’re doing and you’re ‘current’.

Stroke Width and Weight

The stroke of a font refers to individual lines. In many modern fonts these remain a consistent width all the way through, whereas in some gothic styles and script styles (see below) the width can vary at different points.

The weight meanwhile refers to how thick the letters are overall. When you make a font bold you are increasing the overall weight. When you make a font with variable stroke widths bold though, all the different areas of the letter will increase proportionately.

Kerning

Kerning refers to the space between individual letters. A well designed font will consider this carefully, as well as the ‘border’ around the font which prevents the tail of the ‘g’ from overlapping the line underneath it for instance.

Kerning is a little more complicated than it might sound because the ideal space between different letters varies depending on the weight of that letter on each side etc. The objective of kerning is to make a page of text appear to be a roughly even distribution of black and white rather than having obvious patches of heavy text and areas of ‘light’ text.

One of the reasons that the Comic Sans typeface gets so much flack is that it lacks proper kerning. Or at least it is believed to – in fact the font was designed for lower resolution displays where the kerning made a lot more sense the way it is.

Kerning is just one example of why it’s so difficult to create your own unique font – and why it pays to get a professional in.

Slope

The slope of any given text refers to how slanted it is. While you can make most fonts italic, others are italic by nature.

Originally italics was invented as a way to fit more text onto a page without making it harder to read! Today it is used more often for emphasis.

Width

The width of typeface of course refers to its relative width compared to its height. This is important in graphic design because wider fonts often look better when used as long headers etc. Narrow fonts make more sense in side bars on websites.

Era and Style

Fonts vary in their style and can be grouped together in rough categories, often dictated by their era. Gothic fonts for instance are old-style fonts that wouldn’t look out of place in a horror film, whereas script fonts are fonts that look hand written (and often have a sharp slope). Modern fonts are those newspaper-style fonts with straight lines and serifs, decorative fonts are ‘over the top’ fonts that look like blood or fur and monotype fonts are fonts with uniform kerning (used for programmers).

When choosing your font you need to ensure that the era and style reflect your business. As mentioned earlier, sans serif fonts look the most modern and so are a good pick for online businesses. Meanwhile, script fonts are great for greeting cards and monospace fonts can unconsciously communicate that your site is about programming (if it is). Other font styles include old styles and transitional styles. Sometimes these categories are described as ‘flavors’.

How to Get Your Font Choice Right

So far you know that your font needs to be legible on all devices and that it needs to match the style and tone of your business. Remember the design maxim ‘communicate, don’t decorate’. In other words, a good font choice should say something about your business. At the same time, you shouldn’t sacrifice function for form.

For an appealing design you want to use more than one font but you shouldn’t use more than three. This might mean having one font for your text, one for your header and one for your subheader. The fonts you choose to combine need to work with one another. That means that they should be from a similar era and style. For example then you don’t want to choose a script font for your headers and then use a monotype for your text… it will just look bizarre.

That said though, you also need to avoid combining fonts that are too similar. You need to make sure that it’s clear you’ve purposefully chosen to use two different fonts otherwise it can look a little jarring.

Once you’ve made your decision on which fonts to use, you next need to carefully consider your size and color. These factors will have a big impact on the overall legibility and how readable and enjoyable your font is for your visitors.

To start finding fonts to use, check out ‘FontSquirrel.com’. That’s a great repository with a ton of free fonts you can use. Once you start playing with them, you’ll quickly see the difference it makes and you won’t look back!

The post A Comprehensive Introduction to the World of Typography – The Devil is in the Details appeared first on TextBoss.

Without any further ado, here are 20 tips for creating content that engages readers, helps you get your marketing message across and, most importantly, helps your website rank:

1. Know Your Audience – You can’t effectively market anything without knowing your audience. This principle applies to creating stellar SEO content too. To create content that captivates and excites, you have to know what captivates and excites your intended audience. If your target demographic is approaching retirement age, for instance, don’t focus on things like child-rearing and career advice. It will leave your audience cold and doom your efforts to failure.
2. Create Great Headlines – After crafting a great piece of content, you may be tempted to give it a simple, generic title and be done with it. Guess what? Even if the piece is truly first-rate, it’s less likely to gain traction without a compelling headline. Be sure to include relevant keywords too.
3. Make Your Content Scannable – When presented with long, uninterrupted blocks of text, even the most studious among us are likely to click our way elsewhere. This is especially true with online reading, where people expect content to be broken up into easily digestible pieces. Facilitate this by creating short, concise paragraphs and by breaking them up with keyword-rich subheadings.
4. Use Approachable Language – Unless you’re writing technical copy for a very specific niche audience, always use an approachable style. Put simply, try to write similarly to how you speak. How would you explain this topic to someone in person? For your first draft, pretend that’s what you’re doing. You could even use a speech-to-text app to facilitate this step. On the next draft, you can polish it up to be more appropriate for consumption on the Internet.
5. Keep it Factual – Nothing can detract from the quality of your content like fluff–pointless, generic words that amount to little more than filler. When it comes to quality content, every sentence counts. Fill yours with as many facts as possible. Every sentence should convey something of consequence. This will establish you as an authority in your niche, making people gravitate to each new piece you post.
6. Stop Worrying About Keyword Density – In the early days of SEO, conventional knowledge dictated that highly ranking content adhered to specific keyword densities. If you’re still in this mindset, it’s time to switch gears. Overloading your content with the same small handful of keywords makes it clunky, cumbersome and awkward. Who wants to read that? More importantly, the search engines are onto this kind of thing and often penalize sites for engaging in keyword stuffing.
7. Try LSI Instead – Don’t take the previous point to mean that keywords no longer matter; they do! These days, though, search engines use latent semantic indexing, or LSI, to make sense of the content on any given page. Search engine algorithms use LSI to form connections between various words. For instance, if words like “toddler,” “tantrums” and “advice”–along with similar words–are detected, the algorithm uses its knowledgebase to infer that the content provides tips to parents about coping with the terrible twos. What does this mean for you? Instead of selecting a strict list of keywords and forcing them into your content, use a core base of keywords as inspiration for synonymous, relevant terms that the algorithms can use to properly identify the meaning of your message.
8. Use Long-Tail Keywords – Think about how people search for things online. They usually try to be as detailed as possible to get the most relevant results. Long-tail keywords, or key phrases, coincide with such search strategies. Incorporate them in your content to make it more relevant and meaningful and to help your page soar in the rankings.
9. Cite Your Sources – People are understandably skeptical of virtually anything they read online. Unless the information you’re providing comes from your own personal experience, always cite your sources. Make sure they are authoritative too; merely posting a link to a Wikipedia entry won’t suffice.
10. Proofread, Proofread, Proofread – Even if you’re an experienced and accomplished writer, typos happen to the best of us, and they can seriously detract from even the most useful, engaging content. Don’t stop with running it through a spell-checker; have another pair of eyes look it over too.
11. Fresh, New, Constantly Updated Content is King – This has long been the case, but the search engines love fresh, new content. Readers do too. With that being said, however, don’t let quantity push quality by the wayside. Posting a couple well-written, thoughtful, engaging pieces per week is far better than churning out dozens of mindless, typo-ridden posts during the same period.
12. Make it Unique – This ought to go without saying, but we’ll reiterate it for good measure: Online content must be unique. Avoid even inadvertent plagiarism at all costs. To be extra safe, use a service like CopyScape to ensure that your piece doesn’t match too closely with anything out there. Google and other major search engines penalize sites for duplicate content, so this is a biggie.
13. Craft Your Piece Around Questions People are Asking – Use Google’s online tools to find out what people are searching for regarding specific keywords and key phrases. Oftentimes, such queries are posed as questions. By seeing what kinds of questions people are posing to the search engines, you’ll gain inspiration for new pieces while providing useful, relevant, meaningful information to your readers.
14. Wrap Up with Calls to Action – Calls to action don’t have to urge people to buy something. They can simply ask people to share their opinions, or they can ask readers a question. Either way, try to wrap up your pieces with calls to action to engage your audience more effectively.
15. Stick with the Active Voice – When writing with the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action. Effective online content always uses the active voice. “The boy kicked the ball” is an example of this; the subject (the boy) performed an action (kicked the ball). The passive voice makes for cumbersome sentences that annoy readers. “The ball was kicked by the boy” just doesn’t have the same spark.
16. Craft Compelling Content – Even if you’re not going to share your content on social media, write it as if you are. This is a great way to ensure that it’s compelling and engaging.
17. Write Long Articles Too – While effective content should be easy to scan and read, it doesn’t have to be constrained to a couple hundred words. In fact, studies have shown that longer articles often pack more punch. Of course, that’s only true if the subject warrants that kind of length. Put simply, don’t feel like you need to wrap up an informative, interesting post just because the word count is approaching 1,000 or more.
18. See What’s Working with Analytics – As the old adage goes, don’t work harder–work smarter. Do this with your content by paying attention to how it resonates with readers. Analytics can help you make sense of the situation. Which posts seem to draw traffic? Which seem to flop? By using analytics, you can constantly hone your content creation strategy.
19. Include Outbound Links – Link building may not be the be-all, end-all of SEO like it used to be, but the search engines still look to links for clues regarding a page’s authority and relevance. When it makes sense, include outbound links to authoritative, high-ranking sources. This is a great way to seamlessly cite your sources too.
20. Heed Google’s Algorithms – Google constantly updates its algorithms, and it pays to keep up with those changes. Pleading ignorance won’t do you any good. Learn about what flies with Google and what doesn’t, and always heed those rules.

What do all these points have in common? They all dictate taking your time to craft content that resonates with human readers while adhering to SEO best practices for the benefit of the search engines. The bottom line: With great SEO content writing, slow and steady always wins the race.

The post What Makes Great SEO Content Writing appeared first on TextBoss.