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  Crisp as a waffle and layered like lasagna, here’s the top happenings in the world of digital – Here’s to finishing your serving before the coffee break!   1. Google rolls out job search and email alerts   Once again, it is time to ring out the old and ring in the new. The Father Christmas of the web world is testing out a new service that directly pulls job search platforms under one search. This means that you’ll now be able to google the latest job opportunities. (Does this mean ‘job post optimization will be a new SEO spin-off?) You’ll also be able to set email alerts for the keywords you choose. What will this mean to recruiters. Will more visibility translate to more and more resumes in the stack for recruiters and a longer recruiting process? Only time will tell once the test moves past America.   2. Linkedin updates its search options   On the heels of the previous news came the update about Linkedin also updating its search for better discovery of new jobs. The new feature allows users to see how many have people have found them through the platform, their company profiles and job titles. Another feature it rolled out recently was re-targeting for advertisers. This isn’t ‘new’ per say as all the others including Facebook and Google have been doing it. But it comes as a better targeting option now for Linkedin advertisers too.   3. Have we reached the end of the app economy   Did you just start building an app? You better stop to read this slightly scary but true article. With limited space in smartphones and an almost unlimited supply of apps, getting people to hit ‘Download’ is getting tougher by the day. Even if people cross that threshold, only 36% are retained after one month and 11% after a year. This means almost 80% apps are zombies. Think of it in the perspective of webpages. Does it matter if you are ranking on the 34th position among 3,40,000 search results on Google? The only difference being that it takes a lot more money to build and maintain an app than a website. Are you still planning to make yours?   4. Reply to Instagram stories with photos and videos   Have an opinion on an Instagram story? Now you’ll get to express exactly how you feel. You can now reply to a post using creative tools like camera, filters, rewind and stickers. While the sticker feature has been around on other social sites, Instagram is looking to enhance its stickiness and engagement with this new feature.   5. Facebook is letting Groups create online learning courses       eLearning has changed over the years. Online learning MOOC courses and even peer-to-peer learning has worked for some over the years and not for others. The thing to note here is that Facebook is allowing everyone to create courses! What can possibly go wrong? Now that’ll be a fun answer, won’t it. A certification from the University of Facebook!   6. Google Posts are now Live for all My Business users   If you have a GMB account, you should now be able to access ‘Posts’ within the account by navigating to the menu on the left. These posts allow businesses to share events, current updates and promotions or even showcase new arrivals. Posts can show up high on both search and maps results when you google using the business’s name. The catch here is that all posts will be removed after 7 days to ensure the info remains current with exceptions where the posts are based on future events.   7. Will visual search be the new way to search?       The statistics between images and text overwhelmingly shows that people are much more receptive to visuals. This one has been a tough nut to crack in a while with Microsoft recently launching Bing’s visual search feature. Similarly, Google too recently launched ‘Lens’ where you can take a picture of any object and Google will help you understand it better… if it is a salon, for example, Google will show its name, its reviews and show if any of your friends have visited it before. Soon eCommerce sites will directly allow people to buy from their visual search.   Food for thought Companies should become a content creation engines via GIPHY Jeffery Dachis, co-founder of Razorfish says that the owned content you create will be at your marketing core. Between advertorials and copied content, customers will constantly seek a ‘trusted voice’. If you need that voice, you’ll have to own your content creation strategy right now.   Should we give Artificial Intelligence human rights via GIPHY This question seems to jump straight out of a sci-fi movie. Except that this is a reality we’ll have to face soon. AI is one of the fastest growing spheres of Future Technologies and we are looking at Machine Learning to automate several things in the near future. With the combination of various aspects of Data Science, the reality of AI will be here before you know. So, if AI is set to replace human intervention, should it also get human rights?   Have you been facing content marketing challenges? Contact us today for a free consult.

We marketers are constantly in the search of inspiration. We want to know what’s happening in the world out there – applaud success stories, learn from other’s failures and more importantly try and remember the right examples that can be quoted to clients during the pitch meeting! But with sooooo much content out there (and we are all guilty as charged on bombarding the world with 2M blogs a day!) how do you pick and filter the best from the noise? Well that is a very difficult task given that we keep pushing away even our “favourite” marketers and bloggers in read-later folders, which we often forget to even open for months. To sum it up, you probably need to be fed with a good curation of all the best blogs that are worth a read. Well, the good news is that is what we have decide to do every month – put together the best reads on content, marketing, and business in general. Here’s what we do at Justwords. We have each of our writers nominate their list of best reads from the month and put together a final list for you. (We do get into some serious debate when someone’s choice doesn’t make it to the list, but hey, in the interest of maintaining balance in the universe, we choose on the best that get voted in majority) So here are the best reads that you might have missed in the month of July. 1. A quick ad writing refresher course we all need As a digital marketer we execute SEM campaigns for our clients on a daily basis. There are tons of insights gained from our collective work, which we fervently and automatically implement during the execution phase. Some like ‘Sell benefits and not features’ is what we use as a baseline, while complete focus on analytics and A/B testing is what we like to keep trying out. This 30-point playback blog from Neil Patel works as a good refresher course for seasoned marketers and a checklist for the new ones. 2. The updated content creation tools checklist Gone are the days when writers were alone with their typewriter and thoughts. From idea generation to grammar checks to hustler writing, if there is a writing aid you are looking for, someone probably has created it already. This is our favourite checklist. Here at Just Words, we use quite a combination of these on a daily basis. An on wicked Fridays, when both deadlines and the weekend looms large, we love to use Write or Die to balance our work and play. (Like I said, its Wicked with a capital W) 3. Data Science and Marketing – Buzz word update 10 years ago, Digital Marketing and eCommerce was touted as the next big thing after the internet to conquer the world. That prediction has come true. Smart businesses have made digital a part of their regular marketing strategy. Today, the same prediction holds true for Data Science. In the next few years, it will be the one thing that controls a lot of our decision making. From Big Data to IoT, here’s what savvy marketers need to get started. 4. Smart, Alert, Strong, Kind, Brave No – we aren’t describing qualities of a good content marketer. It is what we need to teach our kids when it comes to the big (sometimes bad) world of internet. And apologies for the cheat – this one isn’t a blog but a whole website. Why is this featured here? Because along with being content marketers, we shoulder the responsibility of making the world a better place with safer content for kids. This one is for your tea-time reads. Because we love to take a Saturday outing to a school near us to share some of this awesome content. 5. Influencers are the new brand We’ve all been through that phase when we want to drink a particular brand of cola because our favourite actor was making it look ‘oh-so-cool’. (taste, health and calories be damned!). That is the power of influencer marketing which both traditional ATL and BTL have always been good at exploiting. But the internet has made ‘brands’ out of food bloggers, shopaholics and even toy reviewers – everyday people who now have a decent ‘following’ on the internet. The numbers may not match up to Kim Kardashian’s but it is still good enough to get a lot of their followers to try out products. If you are selling tees, have a popular ‘Instagram model’ wear one and endorse it – and get their followers scampering to your website for more. Connect food porn with blogs and you just may get a restaurant’s registers ringing. 6. The updated guide to writing Privacy Policies We content marketers don’t like to talk legal mumbo jumbo. Most people just find a similar website and do a straight cut paste after a Ctrl + F and replacing the company name. Do you have such redundant pages on your website which you can put an insomniac to sleep? Let’s take the ‘boring’ out of this page, keep it in the language we speak and understand. And more importantly, let’s not make it ‘fine print’ but be transparent and engaging. 7. Marketing conferences – to go or not to go Do companies gain anything tangible by sending employees to marketing conferences? Is it just a bunch of people giving out ‘gyan’ while others hover around the cafe? Do employees get to network for their personal gains and not come back with anything tangible? Conferences are tricky – you can’t see the benefits immediately but you can definitely see the costs in your monthly bill. While it does get a bit difficult, our favourite Rand Fishkin sums it up well CFO: What if we invest in our people and they leave? CEO: What if we don’t and they stay?  8. If You Had 24 Hours to Improve Revenue as Much as Possible, What Would You

We decided to create a series of Justwords FAQs since we felt this would answer a lot of common queries we usually receive from clients. Hope this helps.   Question: What is the content creation process at a content marketing agency. via GIPHY Answer: A lot of this depends on the type of project that has to be delivered, the industry that we are writing for and the platform for which the content has to be written. For example, the way we would approach social media content writing would be vastly different from the way we would probably do a research piece or say an ebook. Also the type of article that will get written for a B2C company will be different from a B2B brand. But despite these differences in categories, there are a few elements that are common to all content writing processes. Here is a simplified version of the process that we follow. Take a look at our approach:   1.Objectives and target audience Understanding the client’s objectives and target audience is our next move. You might want to enhance your brand’s awareness, get more traffic to your website, get more clicks, boost sales or simply engage with customers through informative content. Once we understand your goal, it becomes easy for us to start thinking how the content should be developed. It is also important for us to know who your target audience is, so that we can write content that addresses them specifically. We believe that content without a purpose is unsuccessful.   2. Content calendar Next, we create a content calendar for clients. This covers probable article topics, keywords that should be ideally used, and publishing dates and so on. A lot of research goes into preparing this calendar to come up with what’s best for you.   3. Understanding the subject Since we write on a variety of topics and industries on a daily basis, it is essential for us to understand the subject well. That is the only way to create original and useful content. So, we either discuss with clients about the topic or request them to suggest subject matter experts who can help us.   4. Right writer Not all writers are suited for all topics or subjects, and we realize that. So, we make sure that your content is written by someone who is best at it. Google-friendly content – When we start writing, we keep in mind that we are writing for the audience you want to focus on. Unlike what many people might think, Google values content that is informative for actual people and not written for search engines. We make sure that the content is useful, well-written, interesting and very original. Keywords – While using keywords, we ensure that they are relevant and used naturally in the content. Keywords are not forced into lines where they don’t make sense, or the articles are never stuffed with too many keywords. Images and videos – If the client wishes, we can also weave in high-quality images or videos into the content to make it more attractive. Stringent review – After the content is written, it is subjected to stringent quality checking and proofreading. We make sure nothing goes to the client without the editorial team’s approval. The content is then sent to the client for approval. If there are changes to be incorporated, the editor in charge of the project gets it done. In short, we never leave a client unhappy. We believe that our thorough review process is what helps us delight our clients. Publishing – Finally, when you are happy with the content, you can publish it on any platform you want to. We hope this has provided more clarity into the content creation process. If you have further questions about content writing services or anything else, please drop us a mail at sales@justwords.in  

Just like there is a success mantra shared by good blogs, there is a list of things that most unsuccessful blogs share in common. You know it when you see them. You don’t stay on the site for more than a few seconds but it is enough to identify the traits. And you instinctively bounce right off the site. It is not that some people decide to wake up one day and decide to make a bad blog. It’s just that they haven’t taken the time to know better. After all, everyone starts a blog for the same reason – they’ve heard that content marketing will do a world of good and even bring a windfall of leads and conversions. But such blogs created with the wrong intention and half a mind, don’t go anywhere. Sometimes, even the best websites are guilty of bad blog practices. They may do a lot of things right but miss a single step that pulls the traffic and engagement down and eventually their motivation to write too. And unwittingly, you may be guilty of a couple of such practices too. It’s time to break free and taste the sweet success of a blog that works for your business. Here are the 10 things you need to change right away. 1. Not writing often enough   via GIPHY According to MarketingProfs, there are over 2 million blogs written everyday. Yet, less than 12% bloggers update their blog every week. Isn’t that an ironic statistic! What would happen if everyone actually started following the norm and publish one blog a week – or one a day. We can’t imagine how much the internet would explode. Would we have time to read anything beyond the headline and synopsis? Would blog posts be limited to 140 characters? What does infrequent writing mean? What if it was updated six months back? We would wonder if the business went kaput after and no one updated the blog. Or did the company stop doing something new and innovative? It would make me question if the business is legitimate at all. For a brand that isn’t too well-known, this can pose problems on multiple levels. The authenticity of the brand will be questioned. Besides, not enough fresh content means that you won’t have enough traffic coming to the blog. You won’t have subscribers, readers, engagement, leads or conversions. In this case, its better to outsource your blog writing to a professional blog writing company. This will solve your problem of low content creation and irregular posting. 2. Writing too often  Here’s the other side of the equation. ‘Rumour’ has it that the more you post on your blog the better. It isn’t exactly a rumour though. Hubspot has come up with supporting statistics with industry benchmarks. Companies that produced 16+ blogs a month saw 3.5x more traffic and 4.5x leads. So you decide to work as hard as a sweatshop worker and churn out blog and blog every day. More the better. After a few months of blood, sweat and tears, your blog hasn’t seen much of a jump in traffic or engagement. Doesn’t hard work translate to rewards and revenue? The critical mistake here is to take Hubspot’s advice at face value. It is not just about how frequently you blog but also the efforts you put in behind promoting each post that will lead to traffic and conversions. In the frenzy of writing hard, you may not have given enough time to promote a post. Unless you are a brand who already has an existing readership, posting everyday will mean less time to promote a post. This also brings down the chance of ‘social proof’ for a post – that someone liked, shared or commented on it. The result – it’ll look like readers have abandoned your blog despite your best effort. Posting too frequently is also detrimental to your follower count. If I get too many emails, I may just unsubscribe (even if they are good). Another thing is that people won’t be able to give time and space to all your posts. They’ll read one in a week when they have time but the other six will be lost. 3. Bad headlines ‘Headlines’ is our favourite topic. So much so that we speak about it in almost every blog we write about content guidelines. If your headline isn’t good, you’ve lost 80% of your readers. In the process of creating headlines, don’t get overly clever or cute because readers can see right through it. And the worst kind of headlines are those that confuse. Your reader unintentionally lingers around your article for a few seconds only to figure out what it is all about. Take this one for example: Would you believe, America? Something unbelievable has happened… but where? In America or somewhere in the world? Take another one that is trying to be funny: Container carrying fruits crashes on highway, causes jam. So the fruits got converted into jam or the cars stuck on the highway? Some headlines end up being vague. Man arrested for offences With no details on the timeline, location, the man or the offences, people may not want to read any further than those four words. 4. Blogs with no images Images break the monotony of text on the blog. It gives a breather in terms of space and a better direction to our imagination on what is written. Take two recipe blogs for example – one that simply states the ingredients and the recipe, the other offers step by step visual instructions to make the dish. It is but obvious that you’ll choose the latter if you are making the dish. There is a comfort in knowing what the dish looks like while making it which helps you know if you are doing it right or wrong. No matter how technical the subject, breaking the pace of reading with images is a must. Charts, graphs, infographics and even videos can add life

  In my years as a content marketer, here is one thing I have observed – there are more businesses that fail at content marketing than those who can make it work. A seemingly common complaint of business owners and marketing teams is that content marketing was perhaps a little overhyped and sometimes it didn’t seem to justify the amount of money and resources that was being spent to achieve the desired ROI. So here is what I would like to tell people. Content marketing needs to loads of patience and expertise. It also needs to be done correctly to achieve the results. Infact, only 29% of B2B marketers consider their content marketing to be “very effective”, whereas 54% think their strategy is “moderately effective” and 10% think that they are minimally effective, according to the latest CMI (Content Marketing Institute) industry survey. Source: CMI: Content Marketing Institute I am not surprised by this result. Content marketing seems to have caught the fancy of every brand/business. Most business owners and marketers want to do content marketing to improve leads, traffic, ROI. Most companies are also allocating a significant part of their marketing budget on content marketing. Almost everyone is doing it. But the question here is – “Are they doing content marketing right?” According to the Smart Insights, “As many as 72% of marketers rated their content marketing as “limited,” “basic” or “inconsistent,” in a research conducted in 2016. As an informed marketer, you might be curious to know what else is needed to succeed in the content market, apart from a documented content strategy. The random information available online may baffle you. So, I have put together all our research and experience in content marketing and condensed it into a list of 7 actionable tips – Seven things that should be done differently in order to succeed at content marketing:   1. Know Your Audience at a Deeper Level   Have you ever heard of “confirmation bias”? According to Science Daily, “In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.” Most of the content marketers make this mistake. They base their decisions based on their own initial assumptions or some glamorous metrics rather than conducting a thorough research about their audience – their habits, likes and dislikes. This leads to confirmation bias and statistical errors in decision making. In order to prevent it from happening, you should get to know the demographics of your audience — not just at the surface, but at a deeper level.   This includes their needs and wants and what type of content will catch their attention. Most of the content marketers just have a basic understanding of the buyer personas they are targeting; however it doesn’t work in this competitive age. To have a better insight into your target market and ensure success at content marketing, you can do the following: Interview your prospects Analyze their search behaviour Eavesdrop on the conversations taking place on social platforms such as Reddit and Quora Watch your competition and Talk to industry influencers The idea is not to hit the publish button until you are sure that the content you are creating is going to add value and improve your customer experience. Develop buyer personas and create compelling content to engage with your audiences. Here is a simple template on how to create a buyer persona that I found on Buffer that was really quick and helpful. Here are other templates for buyer personas. Buyer Persona Template Hubspot also offers this really great template – Persona Templates So there you go. This exercise should help you understand your target audience and make you familiar with what they are looking for.   2. Value Maximization Investing heavily in creating quality content is a good idea, but you’ll not get the maximum ROI on it, if you are not using your “existing content” smartly. For example, if you’ve spent $200 on a piece of content, and used it once on your website, you’re missing out on a plethora of opportunities. The same content can be repurposed and used on different platforms and websites in different formats while saving you money and time. You can maximize the value of your content and improve ROI on your content marketing dollars through these steps: Create Evergreen Content Repurpose your content into videos, podcasts, interviews, infographics, slide decks, downloadable PDF documents or ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, quizzes, images, animated GIFs, Vlogs, and Webinars, etc. Syndicate your content Revisit your content and update it frequently   3. Focus on Quality and Not on Quantity As mentioned above, only 29% of B2B marketers consider themselves “very effective”. This also means that 71% of them are not doing it right. So, what are these 29% marketers are doing differently. They are creating really good content. They focus on quality and not just quantity. They are sharing information that is of value to their customers. That is where content marketing thrives. That is where Google crawlers starts noticing you and you start getting more traffic. Good To Great: How To Create Content That Is Better And that’s the basic of content marketing – The content that you create. It’s time to look closely at the kind of content you are creating. Is it run-of-the-mill stuff? Can it easily be found on the web? If that’s the case, chances are you will not really be scoring high with your content marketing efforts. So, make sure that the content you are creating is unique, is something that your audience needs and that it “solves” their problems. Such kind of content will attract eyeballs and bring you valuable back-links and traffic. The world has exploded with content. There are over two million blogs published each day. So, if you are creating the stuff, which has already been published many times before, nobody will be interested in it until ofcourse you are saying something

  Remember what chef Gustav said in the movie Ratatouille? “Anyone can cook”. “But that doesn’t mean everyone should” replied the Remy, the rat. Here’s what happens with the internet – Anyone can write. But not everyone is a writer. The problem is, it looks like everyone who can write (or cannot) is actually writing a blog these days, thanks to the increasing popularity of content marketing services. This gives your readers a few seconds to decide whether they should read your blog or not. Imagine their crowded Twitter stream and Facebook feed where they are likely to discover your blog. Will it have enough gusto to get them to click, stay on your site and read through? Things get worse with the copycats who sneak up on a popular piece of content and re-write it as their own to take away traffic and engagement from right under your nose. Writing a good blog that keeps readers hooked until the very end requires a good degree of expertise. Every point has to be thought through well to keep the interest level up while you also ensure that you save the best for last. As a content company, we love to experiment with our own blog, speak to our readers and understand what they’ve loved or hated. We also love to reach out to the universe and pick fragments from the collective research knowledge of our peers and present it in a concise manner for our readers to sift through. Based on this, we’ve put together a quick eBook that you can sift through in your next coffee break. Unlike ultra-long listicles, we don’t have 25 points for you to read and memorize. Instead, we summed up all our research in just 5 points – or rules that we follow when we do blog content writing. The first rule is around the most important part of your blog – the title and opening. A great title is 80% battle won. That’s because 80% readers won’t get beyond your title if it doesn’t grab their attention. There are data-driven strategies for writing catchy titles – how many words the title can have to how titles that have numbers work well.   Just beyond the title comes the synopsis/opening paragraph/meta description. These crucial two opening lines determine if someone will click through to read the rest of your article. It needs to be tweaked according to the platform where the article is promoted. It works slightly different for search and social. Search needs to have a little extra emphasis on keywords. Twitter needs to have just about info spread between the post and the link text. Facebook needs a more entertaining version with information spread between various post texts and link texts. In all these versions, it needs to have either enough shock or awe value to get the reader clicking. How do you create that? Read on. Our next point covers an interesting pain point in writers – on keeping things short and concise, so that you can set the rhythm for your readers. Editing is one of the biggest problems that writers face – to write, edit, re-write and then edit some more. Fortunately, there are many tools readily available these days to make editing a little easy. Our eBook also shares some interesting reads from CopyBlogger and thejohnfox.com. Next comes a perfect Solution (or should that be ‘solution’) to remembering when to keep the caps lock on and when to let it go. We have the neatest trick in the book to get you going! And if that’s not cool, we also have some crisp punctuation hacks that can help you navigate the world of comma, colon and periods without batting an eyelid. And last but not the least, we present a list of little-big things that will leave your copy error-free and get you a good night’s sleep. (Lord knows writers deserve one) If you want to go from 2 to 5 on that writing scale right now, here’s the link to the eBook for you. Do let us know if you liked it. We’ll be delighted to hear from you!

So, here we are, with the second part of our business blogging series. In the first part of business blog, we talked about how to give your blog a human voice, how to plan your blog, its topics, and content, and finally the various ways in which to promote the same. I hope you found it useful. In this part, we will be talking about ways in which to optimize your blog in order to attract the search engines. We will focus specifically on the usage of keywords and meta descriptions that should be used in the content, the kind of images and videos that should be used, and also the various other ways in which you can optimize your corporate blog. That’s a lot on our plate! So, without much ado, let’s get started with that very important issue of search engine optimization.   Keywords and Meta Descriptions Let us start with discussing the definitions of keywords and meta descriptions. A keyword is generally a single word or a conglomerate of words or a phrase, which is a subject matter of importance or significance. When you want to look up a certain topic of your interest, the word or words you type into the search area of your search engine form your keyword or keywords. Once you type that in, the search engine throws up a long list (of thousands and thousands of links, spanning pages) which are in some way or other relevant to your search topic. Now, when you look at the links (in blue, usually) that the engine places on your page, you will see content, about two lines long, right underneath the links. This content explains, in gist, what the link above contains. This is the meta description. It ideally contains within it the keyword or keywords, marked in bold. For a blog post that does well on search engines, it is crucial that you pay special attention to optimizing the search process with focus on your keywords and meta descriptions. Let’s move on to Keywords.   Frequency of Keywords First, let’s talk about how many times you should use a keyword in your blog post. While the jury is still out on the perfect frequency, one thing is for certain – Never resort to keyword stuffing in your blogs. Back in the day, optimization your post for keywords used to mean incorporating many keywords in your content. This is rooted in an old-school understanding of the search engine optimization process. And then Google unleashed Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird and the search world changed. Once that happened, SEO content writing changed forever. Today, when search engines and even searchers find content stuffed with keywords, they think of various kinds of red flags and their trust in your content is hurt at the word go. It not only harms your credibility, but Google now automatically demotes your link down in the feed, as soon as keyword stuffing (which is using as many of these as you can with the only aim to gain in rank in searches) is detected. So, make sure you avoid that. A general rule of thumb is to incorporate keywords about one or two times in the body of the post. In short, the keywords should appear in your post in a reader-friendly and an unpretentious way. Not only will you avoid the dreaded stuffing game so detested by the search engines, you will also be able to concentrate on the focus of your post.   Placement of Keywords So, where else should you place your keywords apart from the body of the content. Opening and Introduction The first place to start with is quite naturally the headline. This will be the first step in a search engine’s and also, your reader’s efforts in trying to determine how relevant your blog content is. So, it is very important to include a keyword here. Now, trying to place the keyword or keywords in your headline and still keeping it short, compelling, and interesting sometimes proves to be quite difficult. But it never hurts to try. The first 65 characters of your post are crucial as the rest is truncated by Google on the SERPs (search engine results pages). Actually, this measurement is done not by character count, but by pixel width. Earlier this used to be about 500 pixels. Now this has been increased to 600, which roughly means about 65 characters. So, it will always help to have a keyword somewhere within this space. With the eyeballs on the first part or top fold priority content of your blog always at a premium, make use of the reader’s first curiosity or interest in your content and place your keyword there. This will egg him or her on to read more. URL and meta description Two more places where you can place your keyword or keywords are the URL and the meta description. This will give the reader a specific idea about what the link is all about. Search engines like Google look at your URL to try to find out about the content of your post. It is one of the preliminary elements engines crawl through on any page. It is believed that each blog post dwells in its own unique and specific URL. So, utilize that opportunity to optimize it for your own needs, that is attract readers, drive more traffic. Make certain, therefore, to include one or two your keywords in the URL. Along with the URL, the meta description is another of your first, short, and crucial sales pitches to the world of your readers. So, make it count as well. It will always be helpful and naturally, will always be appreciated.   Focus  As far as keywords are concerned, remember the best is to keep them narrow in their focus. Which means, that use keywords that will be relevant only to specific readers, who will be your ideal targets. The way to go about doing this is

Before we get started with this blog, I want to answer a basic question that I get asked pretty often – “So what’s the big deal about business blogging?” The big deal about a business blog is that it’s a great asset to have for any business. It gives the two most important things that any business craves for – inbound traffic and leads. That apart, it adds to your brand value and is correlated to better business results. But hey wait. Business blogging is not just setting up a blog, filling it in with anything that you want to and waiting for the magic to happen. It requires nurturing, regular postings, some really good content, careful optimization, and a dose of promotion. Also, it would be good to remember that a blog is a long term strategy and not something that happens overnight. Be willing to invest it in and your business will definitely reap the rewards. Through this two-part series on business blogging, we shall walk you through a couple of fundamental points and best practices about how to write your business blog so you can start reaping the advantages of this great asset. 1. Giving it a human voice The most crucial thing about any blog is its human voice. Corporate blogs, which are generally hosted on the newsroom microsite or media or pressroom page of any company’s official website, can generally be distinguished from the rest of the website by nature of the content. While the rest of the webpages might contain plain, business-like language and information, setting the tone for the company in general, with blogs you can have a slightly free hand. Your tone can be informal, for a change. The blog page is where you can actually let some of your creative juices flow. Talk about personal experiences, inside stories, individual accounts – anything that will attach a human angle to the staccato business your company is associated with. The personal touch that your content posts on the page is to let the reader know that the company is real and human. No matter what your product or service is, servicing the consumer or interacting with him or her is usually considered a critical aspect of any business plan. So, keep your ideal consumers in mind while writing the blog and ‘talk’ to them. Give them the feeling that you know them, understand them, and only want to help them. For example, in our blog (the Justwords blog), the writer shares her own point of view about how to make editing or proof reading easier for any writer. By talking about her own problems regarding the task, she gives it a human voice and brings the content on a rather boring topic closer to the reader. Here is a quick read. Find content proofreading boring: Here are 7 brilliant ways to get the job done 2. Plan your content right What should we write on? Welcome to the most commonest problem any business blogging team faces. Our recommendation here would be  – a. Understand what your consumer wants to know most about your product or service Listen to conversations that the sales or marketing teams have with clients. That should give you a ready list of questions consumers ask about your business’s products. What is that they want to know, what is it that they want to be solved, what kind of information are they seeking? Jot down all those points and you should have a list of topics that people want to hear about your business/product/service/industry. For eg, the Hero Fincorp blog, the team talks about common issues that customers face while talking a two-wheeler loan in India. The idea is not to blankly sell one’s products (in this case two-wheeler loans) but to help the reader with his pain points. In return, you get a loyal follower and maybe even a customer. b. Get the team involved It’s always a good idea to get the whole team involved with the content planning process. Seek out opinions from different departments, understand what they are thinking about the business products and brainstorm together. Often different departments look at the same product in a different way and that gives a lot of variety to the ideation process. If you are a small company, create a simple Google sheet for blog ideas and ask everyone to put in their ideas whenever they think of something. Bounce those off the editorial team and see which one works. c. Curate  Sometimes, it might be a good idea to just curate a really good piece of content with your company’s view point on it. For eg, if Moz, Content Marketing Institute, HubSpot, Copyblogger brings out a really stunning piece of study which entails a whole lot of data points, we make sure we write a piece on that. Just make sure you are lending some additional value to what is already been said and offering your opinion. . d. Highlights and customer success stories If the customer’s pain points do not fit into your plan, then there are other topics you can try. You can talk about anything from company highlights (this could be a particular achievement of your company in the last quarter or maybe a year) to customer success stories (this could be the account of a particular case in which a customer has found tangible benefits from the solution that your company’s product or service had offered them). Your reader will associate the positive results recounted in such blog posts with positivity and faith in your product or service, and that goes a long way in turning a blog into a traffic-drawing tool. Remember, the success of a corporate blog lies in catering to what your ideal consumer wants to know more about. Only, this can convert mere interest in your business to an actual sale, which in turn will lead to a loyal following or relationship with the ideal customer – the ultimate

  We SEO people are always a nervous lot. Apart from obsessively checking rankings, we are always waiting for Google to surprise us with some new update, trying to understand the intent of Google’s new programmes or its new acquisitions or decipher the messages that the search engine giant puts out on its webmaster blog. And because there is nothing we can do but wait with bated breath to understand the ramification of every new move and its effect on the SERPs, we are constantly searching for ways to understand the complicated nuances of SEO. Don’t get me wrong. We love Google and all the authenticity it tries to bring to search results. But it also means that we have to constantly stay on our toes, be vigilant of changes and keep a keen eye on the trends that will influence Google’s strategy in the near future. Over the last year and the first few months of 2017 some clear trends have emerged that have signaled Google’s preference for certain things. Check here this informative timeline created by Moz on the activities of Google in 2016.   Image Source: SEO and Digital Trends in 2017 (Moz) Based on the activities that Google has been associated with over the past year, we have created a list of trends that are most likely to be prominent in SEO in 2017. If you are a smart SEO professional, strap up and let’s begin. Here are the top five things you need to know about SEO today.   1. Creating ‘intelligent’ and optimized content There are over 2 million blogs created on the internet everyday. The mind-boggling amount of content shows that people will be flooded with more choice than ever. There will several ‘expert’ views on the same topic. So how will your content outshine them all and get Google love? The answer lies in how much you plan ahead before you actually write. By ‘intelligent’ content, we mean content that is driven by data. It starts with understanding user intent via keyword search volumes, questions on open forums like quora and strategic target audience surveys which give you an insight on what they would love to read. This research will help you with multiple things Use the keyword in various contexts to ensure that you display authority on the topic to search engines You create holistic content which provides full coverage of the topic You get ideas to write long long-form which is otherwise difficult to come by. Once your content is SEO ready (and by that we mean everything from title to footer is written with the audience in mind), be ready to amplify it with social media influencers to improve engagement. 2. Create ‘Responsive’ content How often do you search on mobile v/s desktop? According to Google, 34% online purchases currently happen on mobile. Here’s an interesting statistic for you – The foot traffic in retail stores declined by 57% in the last 5 years but the consumer spend on each buy tripled! What does this mean? People are able to gather a lot more information about their purchase before they actually visit the store for purchase. Whether a user buys online or offline, being mobile optimized is no longer optional. Here’s what you can do right away Check your mobile load time: You can check your mobile load time here with Google’s page speed insights. If your speed time is less than 3 seconds then you are on track. If it is longer, 53% users may bounce off your site. Mobile SEO is real: Mobile SEO is about providing the right amount of information that can be quickly swiped through. While all other aspects of SEO hold true, some additional requirements for mobile include highly optimized images, javascript, CSS and redirects. Optimize for mobile intent: When a mobile user searches for a shop or location there is a 50% they’ll head there very soon. So what are people looking for here? Good reviews, timings, location, phone number and a little extra something that will ensure they visit.   3. Optimize for “Near me”   If you are a local business, hyperlocal will be hyper-valuable for you in the coming year. From booking movie tickets to buying groceries, people are looking for the trusted service from their local stores with the convenience of online shopping. After all, who wants to wait in a winding supermarket queue on a Sunday evening! Wouldn’t it be better if your world came closer to home? From “Guitar classes near me” to “Lunch options in <<location name>>”, online marketers need to fully own local search to capitalize from this phenomenon. Here’s what you can do. Present local info correctly:  Many Google local guides review if your shop is open at the time mentioned online and if you live up to your description. Double check your name, number, exact location and timings Optimize your local business page: Start by verifying your business listing. In addition to the above info, you can also share what is unique about your business and also respond to reviews.   4. Change in the way people search   With search results becoming more and more efficient, most people use search to find an answer to their question quickly. Sensing this, Google started showing part of the answer within search results itself. While this slightly dissuaded people from visiting the website for the answer, it also led people to start optimizing towards directly answering people’s question. This was moving towards a step in the future where people are now extensively using voice search. With the emergence of ‘search assistants’ like Siri and Cortana, the world is set to ask more questions around “Who, what, when, where, why and how’ directly. Here’s how you can take advantage of this trend  Answer user queries: You know the questions so structure your blogs and articles to answer these queries. Type “How to make Pizza” and you’ll see part of the instruction steps jump out of the

Is writing an acquired skill or an in-built talent? I say it is a little bit of both. Most writers have the talent to observe their surroundings and provide a unique interpretation to it. They also have an active imagination. In addition to this, the ‘skill’ of writing undergoes a constant change. It gets influenced by what you read and eventually choose to adapt with your unique touch. The ‘skill’ also gets honed when you discover how you can improvise your efficiency over a period of time. The collective wisdom of the internet and its community of writers has propelled the creation of tools that can be helpful to all kinds of writers – beginners and experts, long form and bloggers – to write better. We bring you a list of 25 tools that makes your writing job easier. 1. Read-O-Meter Because the internet is inundated with plenty of content on the same topic, the first impression on whether someone should spend time on your content matters a lot. Telling them that the read is about 10 minutes and can be finished during a quick coffee break makes it a little more attractive. So how do you calculate reading time? According to The average reading time of an adult is roughly 275 words per minute. Add around 12 seconds to each inline image. Once you have the word count and the number of images, you can calculate the read time. Or, you could simply go to Read-O-Meter, copy-paste your text and get the reading time! Remember how you used to look at the scroll bar when the page loads to see how much time you’ll spend there? The time calculator tool not only makes it better but puts it out there and saves your brain from the additional calculation. Also see: WordPress plugins that calculate reading time 2. 750 Words / Penzu  Every writer nurtures a dream of writing something that makes them happy. It isn’t for the world to see – necessarily. It is when you let words flow freely. When you vent out your emotions. It is when you are surrounded with confusing thoughts and want to write things down to get a sense of clarity. To record your thoughts and keep it private, choose a platform like 750 words. Another cool online journal used by 2 million writers is Penzu. The platform is home to several food diaries, pregnancy journals and dream journals. 3. IO IO is a good way maintain your online journal or blog with a certain degree of anonymity. You can publish online for others to read but do so anonymously. It is like putting your thoughts to words without attaching your name to it. It is like a platform where there can be a free flow of thoughts without attracting or distracting with attention to the thought-bearer. 4. Write or Die   Ha! Now here’s a tool that will help kill your writers block… or you (just kidding). Set off your word count and add in a timer.  You can also set a grace period. If you don’t reach your goal on time, off goes an annoying sound that’ll jar you into reality and make you get back to writing. You can choose the level of annoyance in the sound that can propel you to write. On the other end, you also get some positive reinforcement with a ‘good’ sound if you manage to reach your target word count. If you are the kind that loves to procrastinate then Write or Die will help you get over it. 5. The Most Dangerous Writing App   Designed to fill a writer’s mind with fear bordering on terror, The Most Dangerous Writing App is for those with a strong heart and like a challenge once in a while. I wouldn’t recommend using it every day but for moments you are working with an extremely stiff deadline, the app may just do the trick of helping you reach it. Go to the app, set your word count. Let’s say you want to write 300 words, the clock immediately starts ticking. If you pause for more than five seconds, everything you just wrote will be gone – FOREVER! The app basically wants you to stop editing and just write and write and get everything out at once. 6. Tomato Timer   Need something less intimidating but equally helpful in increasing your productivity is the Tomato Timer. You can set your word count and time and look to finish your project within the set timeline. This seems like a meek version of the Dangerous Writing App though. It won’t ‘kill’ you to use it but over time it can be helpful in increasing your productivity. Consider using this app if you are a freelance content writer, this tool will help you optimize your time on which projects you should drop and which you should continue working on. 7. Hemingway Editor Want your grammar corrected as you write? Try the Hemingway Editor. It’ll highlight your complex and lengthy sentences and let you correct them easily. The site has different colour codes for different types of errors. It can highlight words for which you can use better synonyms, or even sentences with passive voice that need rephrasing. First click on ‘Write’ and you can directly write here or copy-paste from your writing tool like Word. Next, click on edit to see suggestions from the tool. The tool presents a quick highlight of ‘hard to read’ and ‘very hard to read’ sentences that you can quickly consider rephrasing. 8. Google Docs Docs for writing? Yes. And it is a great tool at that too. You see, writing is not just about writing. It is also about ideating (sometimes as a team) and collaborating with multiple people on edits. Google docs is a popular tool used by many big content teams to easily share ideas and edit them. The tracking feature also tells you who made the edit and lets you