There was a time in the not-too-distant past that blog writing was nothing more than a fun pastime. Everyone either had a blog or was thinking about starting one. Of course, as any sector develops, money enters the picture and competition creates standards and rules to follow if you want to be successful. But even the best amateur bloggers who know all the best tricks of the trade find themselves at a disadvantage as blog writing services are taking over.
Blogs are now a team effort. A single individual, even if they slave away on their blog and do nothing else, just isn’t capable of keeping up with the big blogs that have a team of writers. A blog writing service brings that team to the table, giving your blog an influx of quality content that is sure to attract more visitors and generate leads. Is outsourcing really necessary though?
What Makes a Blog Successful?
To better grasp the value that a professional writing service can add to your blog, it helps to take stock of what makes a blog a success in the first place. While blogs can still be a place for you to showcase your personality and unique view on life, certain best practices have popped up over the years that need to be respected. If not, even the most engaging and interesting content will fail to see the light of day.
Most blog writers hope to earn passive income from their blogs eventually. As your readership grows, ad revenue can lead to a healthy profit. A successful blog also creates avenues for you to sell other services or promote products of your own invention. So, how do you make your blog stand out? How do you build a following that will stand the test of time?
Useful Content
First and foremost, your content has to be useful for people. Although blogs often started out as rants and ramblings, today they’re far more refined. Of course, you can still go on a rant from time to time, but the body of your work needs to have more thought put into it. Personal tirades are great for returning readers who love your personality, but they rarely hook a random reader.
So, how do you know what content will be useful for your audience? Within your niche, try to do some market research. Online tools like Answerthepublic.com can help you see what questions people are asking in your area. With this information, you can plan your upcoming posts and tackle the biggest issues your readers have.
Timing is also important. Check Google Trends to see when a particular topic spikes. Obviously, you wouldn’t write a Christmas post in July. Likewise, many common topics are seasonal or tend to have a surge of searches closer to deadlines. Try to time your content so that it arrives before the surge so it gets caught in the tsunami of searches.
Consistency
Online content relies heavily on consistency. Choose a specific time of day and a particular day of the week to upload content, and stick to that schedule! Determine the frequency of your posts and make sure you deliver on time. While this might appear to suck some of the fun out of blog writing, it does wonders for your website’s visibility and usability.
For one thing, you train your readers. When they know that their favorite blog writer posts on Thursday at 1:30, they’ll make it a point to read your content after their lunch break or right after getting home from work. You become part of others’ routines. This leads to more regular return visits.
But more importantly, you train the algorithm. See, Google’s search algorithm (and let’s be honest, Google’s is the only one that we need to worry about) takes note of when you post and how regularly you do so. Google uses a piece of software called a crawler that goes through all the links on your site and searches for new pages or posts. However, it doesn’t do this 24/7.
Instead, it periodically checks back in with your site based on how often it finds new content and how many people are searching for your site. So if Google recognizes you have posts every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, it might not review your site on the off days to conserve resources. The algorithm is more likely to recommend reliable content creators, so make your blog a source of steady content.
Amplifying These Factors
One of the best ways to get more traffic to your blog is to simply increase the frequency of your posts. Whether that means you go from one post a week to two, or from three to five, you should aim to up your frequency. More content equals more clicks.
But you can’t skimp out on consistency! This presents a challenge to the individual blog writer. You want to increase your frequency, but you’re not sure if you can handle the consistency that it calls for. Frequency changes often double the workload, and it can be a lot to take on by yourself.
That’s where a blog writing service can help you fill in the void. Consider creating a new style of post that will appear on a certain day, and outsource it to a service like SteadyContent. Blogging is a team effort, and with a blog writing service, you have a whole team at your disposal.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is another area where writing services can be very helpful. Most blog writers download a couple of WordPress SEO plugins, take a peek at their score, and assume everything is fine and dandy. However, while these tools can be helpful to give you a ballpark estimate of your SEO status, there’s more to SEO than meets the eye.
As we mentioned, timing is also very important. Good SEO takes this into consideration and looks to time your releases to match search trends. Furthermore, how your content connects to other pieces influences your SEO. You want to link your article out to reputable sites and vice versa, something that a simple SEO tracker struggles to quantify.
What’s more, SEO best practices shift over time. As a writing agency, it’s our job to know what’s best for your blog right now. We stay up to date on the latest SEO trends and make sure we put them to work for you. For example, we know that right now people are hungry for video and are much more likely to stick around on a site that has an embedded video.
Engaging Your Readers
Video’s popular for bloggers right now because it engages the reader! Engagement is currently one of the most important metrics for SEO and for blog success in general. The longer people linger on your site, the better the algorithms view your content. Clearly, if someone spent 5 minutes reading your whole post top to bottom, it must have been a good post!
As a blogger, you already know that you need to write in a way that keeps the reader hooked. Bland copy won’t go very far. So, what will?
Engaging content today takes reader habits into consideration. Most readers want short paragraphs because they’re reading on their phones, which can’t display a wall of text cleanly. Larger fonts on smaller screens mean shorter sentences are preferred.
Engage on Other Platforms
The most successful bloggers use other platforms to promote their content and engage with their readers. As any WordPress user knows, the contents section on most articles is a barren wasteland. While some sites may implement other comment management tools that drum up more activity, nothing beats an established platform like Twitter or Instagram.
If you’re not already using social media to connect with your audience, you need to start. Choose wisely, as some audiences will greatly prefer one platform over another.
How Can a Blog Writing Service Help?
Professional blog writers know how to do everything we just mentioned and more. Best of all, we can get it done faster because it’s our business. Expert writers know how to produce quality copy quickly and are swift researchers, finding just the right link to the perfect detail to complement their work.
That means that they can help you deliver on those deadlines you’ve imposed on yourself. Whether you need a 3,000-word diatribe against a company or tons of 350-word video summaries, a professional can get it done.
Writing services go beyond just writing text and handing it over, though. Here are some of the other ways a writing service can give your blog a boost.
Planning Your Posts
Have you ever found yourself at a complete loss for ideas? Or, conversely, maybe you have hundreds of ideas and can’t decide which one to work on next. These situations emerge for every blog writer at some point or another.
When you can bounce ideas off of a professional team, you’re more likely to settle on the right choice. If you’re lacking ideas, asking others for their input can work wonders. All it takes is a quick review of your blog’s existing content to see where there might be opportunities to exploit new content areas.
We can help you craft a new recurring segment or regular column that you can slot into your weekly schedule. If your blog is brand new and you’re not sure where to start, we can help you draft up a content roadmap that guides you on your journey.
Editing Older Content
Most blog writers publish a post and ignore it completely thereafter. However, sometimes it’s wise to go back and update older posts. Perhaps you wrote a very helpful how-to article that got plenty of views five years ago, but now it’s outdated and obsolete.
A good strategy is to write a short update piece with a link back to the older post, which you’ve since edited and improved. What should you revise? Check out any statistics that may have grown stale, double-check to make sure any other links are still valid and that the services or sites you recommend readers to check out still exist. Don’t forget to check on any cultural references that might not resonate anymore.
Old content that has gotten lots of views is not forgotten by the algorithm. When older content becomes relevant again, the algorithm fires up and puts it back into the spotlight. A good example of this is Bill Gates’ TED talk from 2013 about the possibility of a new global pandemic. It went from obscurity to primetime viewing overnight on YouTube once the algorithm realized it had become more than relevant.
Better Writing in Less Time
If you’re looking for a blog writing service, then obviously you want someone to write something for you. That’s what we do, so you’ve come to the right place. Whether you just want to hand the keys to someone else and sit back to enjoy the passive income generated from your blog, or you’re looking for partners who can write alongside you and help your blog grow, we’re here for you.
Professional writers beat their keyboards to a pulp with how fast they write. If you’re struggling to meet your deadlines, it’s time to call in the cavalry. When writing is your life, you become more in tune with your process and produce better content in less time. We often do 24-hour turnarounds on last-minute requests.
Editing and Optimizing
Professionals can also go over your new copy and edit it for you. Maybe you’re not the world’s best speller or your grammar is so rough that even Grammarly can’t figure out what you want to say. Perhaps English isn’t your first language and you’d like someone to go over your content for you. There’s no shame in any of these scenarios.
All great blogs have editors, just like a newspaper or magazine publication would. If you want your blog to grow and compete with the best, then you should consider hiring a blog writing service to edit your work and help you hone your craft.
Where Can I Get Blog Writing Services?
The whole point of hiring a third party to help you with your blog is to save time. So don’t defeat that purpose by trying to handpick writers off of freelance boards. A lot of people start out thinking they’ll find the perfect writing companion and they’ll steadily build their own team. In reality, these boards are flooded with amateurs posing as professionals.
There are some good writers on these platforms to be sure, but finding them is a challenge. The best ones are often busy and won’t be able to dedicate enough time to your tasks or guarantee they get in regularly.
Allow us to recommend ourselves. SteadyContent is a writing agency that has pooled together dozens of talented writers with experience in every niche. When you work with us, you work with all of us. We’ll sit down with you and help you determine what you need, and then we’ll post your jobs on our platform where those who are most interested in your content will rally to write it fast. Reach out to SteadyContent today to get started.
