Last week, Rand Fishkin of Moz released a study by BuzzSumo revealing the engagement data on 757k blog posts. Of those less than 10% actually received links and most received very few views. If you’ve received either, you are one of the lucky few, and it’s likely your content was pretty darn good.

As many of our clients are aware, one of the cornerstones of our marketing philosophy is that clients must be in control of their own web presence. Through our regular efforts, we work to help clients create high-calibre sites and shape strategic campaigns, but our clients are ultimately the guiding force behind their own engagement and lead generation efforts.

Without direct involvement, we know that most clients can’t achieve the authenticity and business-building engagement critical for online success.

For that reason, we are discontinuing blog writing as a service immediately.

In truth, we never really offered editorial content writing for blogs, but were willing to contract writers in order to help some clients get started. Over time, however, it has become challenging for us to manage writers cost-effectively, while at the same time some clients have been looking at their blogs improperly as content-building projects (for SEO) rather than the relationship generators they should be. In reality, posting blogs without engagement can very quickly lead to lower rankings due to low quality content flags.

Where Does All the Best Blog Content Come From? Well, from you of course.

By eliminating this service, we’re hoping to both streamline our efforts, and encourage our clients (and future clients) to remain involved in their own business building efforts. As such, we encourage you to plan a blog writing schedule (or calendar), get ideas and/or articles from your own internal team, your own daily interactions, or to contract a writer who understands your business and vision directly to draft blogs which you can personalize. (Not everyone was born a writer, but we all have our own experiences and opinions a writer can help us express.)

In other words, we want you to think of your blog as a source of ideas, feedback, and most importantly, discussion, as well as a form of prospect attraction, rather than a search engine optimization task to be checked off a list.

Note that our team will always be happy to guide you with the posting and optimization of your content, as well as the creation and editing of standard web pages, downloadable offers, and other elements of your core marketing content. We’ll always be here to help – we just want to be sure we’re putting our time to best use and encouraging you to direct your own destiny, including your blog posts… and enjoy improving the results that come from doing a great – and personalized – job at it.

Another Reason to Craft Your Own Blog Content, Courtesy of Twitter

In case you haven’t heard, there are some interesting changes taking place with Twitter. Previously, viewers could see share counts attached to messages, blog posts, and other content. Soon, those share counts will be disappearing (similar to the way it has for LinkedIn).

As content creators, this shouldn’t mean a great deal to us. After all, the reason Twitter is removing the share counts in the first place (we suspect) is because they were being abused by automated software, paid schemes, and gamification. Having lots of views, or even shares, didn’t necessarily mean anything, and in fact could lead you to draw false conclusions if you weren’t paying attention.

The one thing shares did allow for, though, was a quick form of social proof for readers and followers. If they saw a blog post with lots of shares, for example, that was a sign that the content might be worth checking out.

With that option gone from Twitter, smart marketers are going to have to do what they should’ve been doing anyway: engage users online and draw people in with the strength of their ideas and convictions. That means your post doesn’t just have to come from you, it needs to be insightful and have at a specific reader in mind.

Online marketing and social media are always changing. However, the best practice of sharing your own thoughts and being helpful to your readers has never gone out of style.

Tips For Finding and Choosing a Copywriter

Some great sources for high-calibre copywriters include www.indeed.ca, www.indeed.com, monster.com:

• Conduct an interview and view their portfolio for style and quality, as well as originality. Ask the writer to do basic research of your topic and company, based on the reference materials you provide.
• Ensure articles include sub-heads and are written in a manner that makes them easy to read (bite size chunks) in a language level that matches your readers’ expectation. If uncertain, keep it simple smarty.
• Most important of all, write to a single topic, and without using the same words repeatedly. Avoid old-school seo “tricks” – there are none.

Once you have the draft post in your hands:

• Review and edit to personalize the content before posting to your blog.
• Incorporate keyword phrases based on topic (be sure you are talking to one topic in the title, h1, and craft a marketing-style meta description to prompt the reader to click the search results link) or ask the team at KAYAK to assist.
• Include an image that fits with the article by either searching and purchasing from your preferred stock source, snapping your own, or asking your marketing team member to assist with image research.
• Scan all written content submissions through the industry standard duplicate content checker, CopyScape.

IMPORTANT: Best to never seek or use writers from low-cost websites, as there’s not only a real danger of receiving low-quality work, but writers from these sources are often inexperienced or not familiar with your local culture, putting your content and marketing efforts at risk of not resonating with your readers. And then, what's the point?