Copywriting and Website Content – Creative Assets Inc Blog

Why Proofreading Is Essential

Proofreading gets your manuscript or other written work ready for publication. It deals with the presentation. It’s the final edit before you print.

Some confusion exists between editing and proofreading. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Editing is what you do first and proofreading is what you do last. Proofreading is the final step to polish the manuscript before publication. When the proofreading is done, the product should be ready to go to the printer.

Historically, proofreading came about after the printing press was invented. One arranged the little metal letters in place on the press and then printed a copy of the book or newspaper. That paper product was then read for final errors.

The confusion comes about because sometimes proofreaders find grammar and spelling mistakes. While it’s their job to do so, it’s not their primary function. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the like are the jobs of line editors and copyeditors to correct. The proofreader just makes sure they didn’t miss any.

The other, major task for the proofreader is tending to the physical appearance of the book and its machinations. That description applies to both paper and digital.

Proofreaders make sure your chapters all start with the same format, that your use of commas is consistent, that your table of contents or index leads where it says it does, that your margins are correct, and that elements of the book have continuity throughout.

Proofreading is necessary whether it is done by the author or by a professional. In today’s digital world, book text can be dropped into a preformatted page and most of the work will be done automatically. However, ask any published author and they will tell you that you still must proofread the result. For that reason, when a book is finished, even in today’s world, authors order a final copy to look over. When the printer sends a perfect copy, it’s a gift. That will rarely happen on the first round.

Using a professional who understands the format of the medium where the book will be published is a good idea. You will find, with so many devices out there, that the visual outcome of the digital version varies dramatically. You will have far greater control over the printed version, and you should exercise it! Take the time to proofread your book or go to the trouble of having others proofread it for you. You will be glad you did.

Creative Assets Inc does not currently offer proofreading services. See prices for other types of editing here.

Why You Need Copyediting

Copyediting is an essential part of editing. It checks your grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You might be more in need of it than you realize.

Does your writing need copyediting? Definitely. Ask yourself these questions;

Have I spelled everything correctly?
Is my grammar perfect?
Have I put commas in all the right places?
Is all of my other punctuation correct?
Have I left behind any incomplete sentences?

That list isn’t for beginners. It’s for everyone. Even the best writers need copyediting. If you’ve ever heard someone say that writers should not edit their own work, they are probably talking about copyediting. It is absolutely essential on the road to publication. It’s also nearly impossible to do own your own.

While all writers should do their own editing, it is a well-known rule that you need someone else to do a round of copyediting for you. For smaller pieces, like short articles and blogs, writers might self-edit if they are knowledgeable enough, although they are taking a chance when they do. When it comes to longer works like novels, you can’t do without copyediting. Without copyediting, readers will find errors left behind and they will stop reading your book –and then they’ll tell others not to ready your work!

Copyediting is simply part of the novel writing industry. It’s indispensable and unavoidable.

You don’t always have to pay for it. Most writers have a friend who is good at grammar and spelling. Be careful though, they can burn out easily if you push them, especially when working for free. Joining a critique group is another free method. The downside of critique groups is the length of time it takes for the group to get through a book. 1000-3000 words is often the maximum covered per meeting. If you have a 100,000 word manuscript, it could take some critique groups a year to get through your book. One more free method is to exchange books with another author. You will find, however, that you and that other author will not have the same level of experience with grammar, spelling, and punctuation. One of you will be getting the short end of the arrangement.

Free methods work for some authors. For those with schedules to keep or goals to meet, slower, less reliable methods won’t work.

Most writers I know gravitate toward professional editing the longer they stay in the industry. That tells me that the ones who make it lean toward professional editing. Decide where you are in your writing journey and then choose the method that works best for you.

If you are interested in having your work professionally edited, Creative Assets Inc can help. Click here to see rates for Copyediting and more.

Why You Might Need Line Editing

Line editing is designed to clean up a draft. It changes a draft from a bundle of writing to a written work that takes readers not only where they want to go, but where you want them to go as well.

Does your writing need line editing? Probably. Ask yourself these questions;

Does the style I use match the genre I’m writing in?
Will my writing distract the reader away from the point I want to make?
Is my writing concise?
Why doesn’t my writing sound better?
Why do I stumble when reading my writing out loud?
Can I make this seem smarter?
Did I write things that will confuse the reader?

A line editing session can help you with all of that.

Line editing will probably be the first editing you do –or the first kind you receive from someone else, that is. It will clear up the flow of your writing or the type of language you use. It can add a conversational tone to your writing when its needed or remove it when its not. It can remove unnecessary additives like “due to the fact that,” “as I was saying,” or “in my opinion.” It can break your writing into digestible paragraphs. That’s just a sampling.

Line editing gets to the heart of turning a piece of writing from something clumsy into something graceful, from something burdensome and boring to read to something that is concise and interesting.

Line editing is a lot like cleaning your house. Straightening your living room might mean putting your throw pillow back in order, or it might mean throwing some things out. That’s a great analogy to line editing. Writing needs to be well-organized and, quite often, it needs the extra fluff removed. For newer writers, however, it may be more like going to the dentist. You don’t want that tooth removed but you sure are glad when it’s gone. The good news about any editing, is that you don’t have to accept the changes. If you get your hands on a good line editor, however, you won’t be sorry.

A number of things can boot a reader out of a book or article; paragraphs or sentences that run on too long, writing that strays from the topic promised by the title, or a tone that doesn’t match what came before or after it. When you say he or she, does it indicate the person you thought it did, or does it refer to someone else by mistake? When you fix those things, your writing will sound better. You can test it by reading it out loud. It should sound smoother after your line editing and those moments that made you stumble should disappear. The result is a smarter piece of writing.

Line editing can be a pain but it’s essential, as much as, if not more than, other types of editing. It’s what turns a piece of writing from a rough draft to a nearly finished product.

If you are interested in having your work edited, Creative Assets Inc can help. Click here to see rates for Line Editing and more.

Why You Might Need Developmental Editing

Developmental Editing is a big job. It points out where a story can go wrong, where its weaknesses are, and even whether readers will be interested.

Does your written work need developmental editing? Ask yourself these questions about your writing;

Does it have loose ends?
Does it trail off into dead ends?
Is the Point of View consistent?
Did your plot and subplots all go full circle?
Did you add a character that went nowhere?
Do the closed arcs satisfy or leave the reader with some other reaction?
Is it boring?

Imagine reading a book and getting about three or four chapters in and realizing you just don’t care about the characters. The same can happen with TV shows but it will be for the same reason, and that reason is the writing. developmental editing is meant to save writers from such tragedies.

A lot of elements lend to creating interest, such as relatable problems for the protagonist to solve, a protagonist with flaws that makes readers yearn for that character’s salvation, or compelling cycles of try-fail, try-fail. Does your work hold up to scrutiny of those elements? You’ll want to know before you publish, certainly not after. That’s the goal of a developmental editor.

A developmental editor will advise you if a character’s arc starts and doesn’t finish, if a character seems to have no arc, or if a character’s growth falls flat or just doesn’t happen. The editor will find those moments when character point of view shifts awkwardly, is unclear, or varies from the format you have established earlier in the work.

Most of us have heard of ‘killing your darlings.’ That phrase can sometimes refer to jettisoning elements from your work that are dear to you, but which aren’t doing your story any favors. It can be an unnecessary character or a side plot that has no value. Those things are more evident to a developmental editor than to a writer. Suggested changes can be painful to face, and, in the end, the author doesn’t have to make them. However, a developmental editor will point them out so that the writer is aware of them. That type of advice can be difficult to absorb –at least early on in the journey of a writer. The more you write, however, the more you will value such advice.

Some crazy things can happen in long written works. Characters can inexplicably disappear and reappear –or be in two places at once. Location names can change. A character can change hair color, height, race, sex, or even personality. Author edits can cause such errors. You wanted the character to be a brunette male at first, but then changed your mind to a blond female. You made your changes, but in chapter three, up pops a paragraph with a brown-haired man using your character’s name.

A developmental editor fixes the basic building blocks like theme, point of view, arcs, plot, and so forth to assure continuity and understandability. They do not (or should not) fix your grammar, misspelling, or other such details. That is for later on, in another set of editing. developmental editing comes first, before line editing, copyediting, or proofreading.

The first novel written is always the hardest. Learning about developmental editing and the stages that follow can be a gut punch to the uninitiated. With more experience, however, writers take the stages of editing in stride. Those many steps are necessary and they create a work of art the author can be proud of. If you mention the above processes to an author who published without going through them, you will probably witness a photo-worthy cringe. Developmental editing is well worth any of the trouble or pain it induces. That heartache translates into a far superior product for the author.

You can seek developmental editing after the first draft, but it has more value after you have done a round or two of editing yourself. It has the most value when you believe your work is done. That’s painful to hear, I know. Written into that advice is the suggestion that your work is not done. Such is the journey of a writer.

If you are interested in having your work edited, Creative Assets Inc can help. Click here to see rates for developmental editing and more.

Is Your Vacation Rental Blog Ignoring Half Your Customers?

A blog that only caters to part of the clientele for your vacation rental management company is not really doing its job.

If you are a vacation rental management company, you know your business has more than one type of customer. You perform transactions that are both business to customer, B2C, and business to business, B2B. You do one with your Vacation Rental Guests and the other with your Vacation Rental Owners. Just like you, your blog needs to cater to both types of clientele. You wouldn’t let an employee ignore valuable customers. Why let your blog get away with it?

Blogs Generate Sales Leads

A blog attracts valuable attention to your website and to your business. Few things receive organic responses as well as blogs do. When you write regularly and stay on the key topics of your vacation rental business, pretty soon you will have a lot of key words that lead right to you. Search engines will respond, and so will those who are browsing the Internet. The question is, who does your blog cater to, your vacation rental guests, or your vacation rental owners?

Your Vacation Rental Blog Should Target both B2C and B2B Clients

Your blog should cater to both guests and owners. The first thought that might spring into your mind is that attempting to appeal to both clienteles might get your blog ignored by one or the other. If a person is dreaming of a vacation, an explanation of what lock to put on a vacation rental might not have a good appeal. Therein rests the problem that you need to solve. How do you cater to both?

Blog visitors tend to behave in similar patterns. If they find a blog they enjoy, they are likely to read another topic on that same blog site. You want them to stay on your site.

Below is a pair of possible solutions.

Two Options for Building a Vacation Rental Blog Targeting Both Guests and Owners

Creating Two Stand Alone Blogs

While this option is possible, it is not the easy route. To create two separate blogs without downloading WordPress onto your hosting site twice, you will need one of two things, some programming knowledge, or a contractor with programming knowledge. You can see an explanation of how the process is done here. It’s called MultiSite and is available through WordPress plugins. That’s a more complex route and that option is not covered further here in this blog.

A simpler option does exist. It’s one you can do on your own.

Use Categories to Divide the Topics of Your Blog

You can use the category feature to separate the topics on your blog. Categories are a commonly-used and handy feature of WordPress blogs.

On WordPress, if you go to your blog Dashboard, you will see the the option labeled Posts and under it a few options that includes one labeled Categories. If you click on Categories, you will see a form to create new categories for your blog. Create one for Vacation Rental Guests and another for Vacation Rental Owners.

Be sure your Widgets are set up to display Categories. You will find Widgets in the drop down under Appearance in your dashboard.

When you post your blogs, select the appropriate category.

Go back through your previously posted blogs and add check marks for your Guest and Owner categories on each blog.

If a blog applies to both categories, go ahead and check both.

Categories Help Marketing Goals

Following those steps, all by themselves, you will divide all you posts into two main categories. Do so regardless of what other categories you created and regardless of how many additional categories each blog belongs. By putting each blog in either Vacation Rental Guests or Vacation Rental Owners, you’ve accomplished two important things:

Readers will see that you have organized your blog with a category aimed at their specific interest
Search engines will see the words Vacation Rental Guest or Vacation Rental Owner as keywords on every one of your blogs!

Create Links to Your Blog Categories

An added bonus comes with categorization. You can create links that go to your categories. That means you could put a link for your vacation rental guests onto social media, like Facebook. When Facebook fans follow the link, they will arrive at a page that displays only the blogs from your Vacation Rental Guest category. You can use a link to your Vacation Rental Owners category in the same fashion.

With the categories in place and checked off on every one of your blogs, you will have an interest-targeted links that you can use as often as you like. The uses and locations for those links are as broad as your imagination.

A Well-Organized Multi-Purpose Blog

Creating categories on your blog is the easiest way to divide your blog between Guests and Owners. Once you have divided up your posts in that way, you can then share them with your separate clienteles.

Cater to Both Vacation Rental Guests and Vacation Rental Owners

A blog that only caters to part of the clientele for your vacation rental management company is not really doing its job. A vacation rental management company needs to appeal to both owners and guests. By tweaking your blog using categories, you can serve up targeted blogs to both audiences. The change will also inform search engines more precisely what it is that you do and that will make you more discoverable. With your WordPress blog as part of your main website, it will lead the blog traffic right onto your site. Once you have them there and interested, converting them into a customer is only a step away.

How to Answer Vacation Rental Reviews

The power of reviews is monumental for any company that seeks its customers online.

Answering reviews written by vacation rental guests can be hard. Even warm reviews can create dilemmas when responding. The question arises if you even need to answer all those reviews. The answer is yes. Answered reviews demonstrate that a business is connected, listens, and cares. Whether the review is good or bad, you improve your reputation by answering. After writing replies to hundreds of reviews, here’s what I’ve learned.

Answering Angry Vacation Rental Reviews

When a guest has a valid complaint, responding can elicit multiple cringes. Whether it is a cleaning oversight, an unexpected living condition, or a mistake in the booking system, the error is yours. Those can be the hardest to answer. However, when done properly, they might also turn out to be the easiest. Here’s how.

1. Investigate the Problem

Find out who is responsible and why. Call your cleaning company and find out what happened or ask your sales team how the booking error occurred. You can’t fix a problem that has “no source.” Establish how the problem occurred in the first place.

2. Solve the Problem

Solve the problems the customer noted, even if they’ve already left. Have the cleaning manager train the person who made the mistake. If the guest complained about a living condition, such as too much noise, put a note about that condition in the rental description. While such a note won’t make the noise disappear, it will no longer come as a surprise to guests, which will help a great deal. If it is a booking error, perhaps you have another rental that guests can use. In some situations, a refund may be the only solution. Follow your company policy for such situations but do something to resolve the customer upset.

3. Report that the Problem Is Solved

Now that you solved the problem, it’s time to write the response to that bad review. Am I saying you should let that bad review sit while all of the above is going on? Yes. On some sites you only get one shot to answer. Make it count. Resolving problems like the ones above should not take too long. If you find time stretching on, you can do two things; change the way your company operates and take action regardless of the resolution.

Streamline your operations so that, in the future, problems resolve faster.
- It can be done. When a staff writer, I had the company owner’s support in getting the above system in place. It was the owner’s task to ask why the problem happened, but when I asked if it was resolved, the staff answered to the best of their abilities. As soon as I got my answer, I wrote the review response. After a short time, we all got quite good at working together.
When the time stretches too long, it’s time to take action despite not reaching a resolution. Write the response. Note that your business takes the problem seriously. Then state that you are currently looking into it or mention whatever steps you are taking. This is a temporary patch for the hard-to-solve issues. It should not become a habit. If people realize that you offer such as a standard response, it will damage your credibility.

No matter how bad the problem is, when you report that it is solved and how you did it, review readers will be satisfied. Instead of seeing you as a bad company, they will see you as a company that had a problem and then solved it. It will show that you care and that, if they have a problem, you will support them.

Never Respond in Anger

In all the time of answering reviews, through all those hundreds of responses, I only considered a remarkably small number of them be bad apples. Only two, in fact, turned out to be impossible to satisfy. One of those turned out to be a professional “troll.”

A vacation is supposed to be a dreamy time of relaxation and fun. Lots of expectations go with it. When that bubble is burst, upsets occur. If you paid thousands for your vacation rental, the tub should be clean, shouldn’t it? Well, of course it should. Those guests should never receive a response that makes them wrong for their dissatisfaction. It is up to the person answering your reviews to maintain a cool, kind, and understanding demeanor – at all times. That doesn’t mean that person can’t roll their eyes once in a while, but when it comes time to put fingers to keyboard, disparaging thoughts should be cast aside.

Please note: a passive-aggressive response isn’t going to fool anyone.

Fighting a Damaging Review

Once in a while, a guest will defame you in a way that is untruthful and damaging. You do have recourse when that happens. If you can show that the review is dishonest, many sites will take them down. That doesn’t mean they will make it easy for you. You will have to contact the company that published the review and ask for its removal. If you are certain it is false and adamant that it should be taken down, perseverance may bring success. Be prepared, however. Sometimes it is impossible to get them removed.

What to Do When Guests Threaten a Bad Review

When a guest threatens a bad review, it might seem like they have you over a barrel. That is usually not true. You see, if someone says, “Give me a discount or I’ll write a bad review,” that’s extortion. It is an illegal act. One company I worked with would politely point that fact out to the customers, reminding them that they were speaking over a recorded phone line. That dissolved 99% of those threats. Reviews have power and modern customers know it. How you solve that volatile situation is up to you, but you do have options.

Upset Customers Want Acknowledgement

Remember, a person who is upset usually hasn’t had anyone listen to them and tell them they’re right, or at the very least acknowledge them for what they said. A mere “That’s not good,” or “That shouldn’t have happened,” will diffuse a surprising number of those upsets. After you acknowledge them, you may find yourself teaming up with that customer to solve the problem. Defusing problems in that way, right when you receive a complaint, can intercept bad reviews before they happen.

Responding to Good Vacation Rental Reviews

Good reviews require responses just as much as bad ones. When the review is favorable, you have plenty of options. For one, you can just say “Thanks!” Don’t overdo that one, of course. Your responses should be varied and genuine. If the customers compliment the view, agree with them and say that the sunsets on your beach are beautiful. The variations are as plentiful as the types of reviews written. Just answer positively, agreeing with their viewpoint. After all, your vacation rental is probably in a good spot and it should be easy to pull forth positive points to back up their views.

Respond to Reviews Regularly

When I took over writing reviews for one company, they had a deep, unanswered backlog. Some could not be answered because they’d been archived by the host sites. I set a cutoff date and dug in. I answered the oldest ones first and moved forward. Simultaneously, I answered all the new reviews as they came in each day. It took some doing, but I closed the gap until the company had no unanswered reviews.

Zero unanswered reviews is the ideal situation. If you do not have the staff or the time and resources to clean up your backlog, at the very least you should answer all your new reviews. You can usually do so in just ten to twenty minutes each day. The value of well-answered reviews can’t be understated in our current online shopping economy.

Where Are My Vacation Rental Reviews?

The sites where you list your vacation rentals should have reviews for your rentals on them. That’s the case with HomeAway, VRBO, TripAdvisor, and most others. Learn how to login so that you always have access to your reviews. Set up email notifications if you don’t have them already. Each site will work differently but it is worth your time to figure them out.

Evaluate the Value of the Review Site

You will also notice a number of other review sites have collected reviews on you. Not all review sites are created equal. Some have algorithms that label your five star reviews as suspicious and deem your more tainted reviews as valuable. You will have to decide if those sites are worth your time. Not all of them will be.

Answering Vacation Rental Reviews

Answering your vacation rental reviews is vital. An article on learn.g2crowd.com related that reviews influenced 97% of shoppers’ buying decisions. The power of reviews is monumental for any company that seeks its customers online. No matter how good you are, you will receive both good and bad reviews. Responding to them gives you back a measure of control. It delivers a message that you care and allows customers to see that you will fix problems that occurs. How you answer your reviews will paint an image of you to the public. You have the power to make your image a positive one.

Use Your Blog to Stake a Claim on Your Business Territory

Don’t hope your brand will become synonymous with your area. Make it happen.

A blog can help you to stake a claim in the territory where you live or work. The process is easier than you might think.

How to Claim Your Territory Using a Blog

The answer to claiming your territory by using a blog is as simple as repetition of your territory name. You should be writing blogs about what you do, what you offer, and where you operate. Each and every one of them can and should mention your territory. Do you operate throughout your county? Do you define your geography via city limits? Do you consider your entire state your territory? It doesn’t matter how small or how large an area on which you lay claim. What matters is how much you talk about it and how often.

Divide and Conquer Your Work Territory

The size of your territory is irrelevant when it comes to branding yourself as the solution for the people who go there. Let’s use a vacation rental company on the beach as an example. If a company claimed a single beach, such as Clearwater Beach, FL, plenty of options exist for dividing and conquering. Locals at Clearwater Beach consider it to have to parts, North Clearwater Beach and South Clearwater Beach. For a piece of vacation real estate that is not much more than a mile long, that’s pretty specific. It doesn’t end there, however. Clearwater Beach also has a well-defined marina area and famous Pier 60. By writing about each one of those micro-areas, you would still be writing about Clearwater Beach. Take a moment to consider the area you claim as your territory. It surely has divisions and points of interest. Use them. Blog about them and do so often. Each time you do, you will use keywords that focus on your territory even if you’re not trying!

Expand Your Reach Using Your Blog

Including descriptions and features of your territory in your blog is a great idea, but don’t stop there. Plenty of points of interest surround your domain as well. Clearwater Beach is an easy target as an example. The beach region continues north and south with nearly another dozen other named beach cities and parks along the coastal strip. Your territory will undoubtedly have nearby attractions that you can use to your benefit. Write about them. Figure out a way that they have something to do with you. No matter your business, public interest in your area and the areas that surround it will target two groups; those who are there and those that want to be there.

Make Your Name Synonymous with Your Territory

Once your blog reaches a critical volume, it stands a chance of being the go-to blog for your niche in your territory. Don’t hope your brand will become synonymous with your area. Make it happen. It takes dedication and hefty amount of blogging. In my experience, the number to shoot for is about 100 blogs. On the way there, or somewhere just after, you will achieve a real impact. By covering your territory and the surrounding terrain, you will cast a wide net. By blogging about micro-areas, you will create a tighter weave in your net. When people search for your industry, with your territory attached, you will appear in the results. With a well-defined territory, blogs aimed at micro-areas inside your territory, and mentions of regional attractions, you stand a chance of appearing on the first page, organically. Your blog is a beautiful way to define your business. Use it to stake a claim on your business territory!

Cheating Time to Make Dated Blog Posts Evergreen

Modern technology has a very simple answer to the problem of stale blog posts.

Blogging about local events is a great idea to focus attention on your activities. Unfortunately, those blogs go stale shortly after the event ends. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to recycle those old posts to bring new value to them again?

Can Dated Blog Posts Ever Be of Value Again?

When you blog about something such as a 4^th of July show, a Mardi Gras parade, or a Christmas event, you have an opportunity to use those posts over and over again. It remains true that they will never really be evergreen, of course. Few people take interest in holiday promotion when holiday is six months away. However, the 4^th of July will be back and so will all the other yearly events. That provides you with an opportunity to breathe value back into those posts.

When to Promote Event-Based Blog Posts

The key to a successful re-sharing of those old blogs relies on timing. You will want to promote them anew about 30 days or so before the event occurs again. The nature of the activity will determine variations in the adjustment of that date. If a Christmas parade happens the first week of December, you might want to break the “Thanksgiving barrier” and promote a bit earlier.

Promote Blog Posts Per the Schedule of Your Industry

Special circumstances will change the dating of your blog revitalization. For example, in the vacation rental industry, a leading time of 3 to 6 months is not a bad idea. That would make a Christmas post in July make sense. Just make sure to headline your re-sharing of the post with an explanation of why they should take notice now. “It’s time to book for December vacations!” With many rentals scheduled a year ahead of time, you could even try it in January. Label that one very well. Folks are a bit tired of Christmas once January gets going. A text-heavy promo might do better than a holiday image. Regardless of the challenges or the industry you work in, the promotion is worth it and you should have a timed promotion plan.

Your calendar won’t mind when you mark events a year in advance.

Use Technology to Help Schedule Blog Post Promotion

Modern technology has a very simple answer to the problem of stale blog posts. Digital calendars and planners serve the purpose fantastically. They’re nothing new, but not everyone uses them. A generation gap certainly applies, with adoption of the tech slower among the “more established” age groups. The revitalization of old blog posts makes digital calendars worth trying, though. A simple entry into a planner, such as Google Calendar, can create alerts that appear in your Gmail or which pop up on your digital device. Plenty of other digital planners and calendars are available that offer similar features. For the die-hard paper calendar users, marking your promotion dates when you buy the year’s calendar works just fine too. You will just have to make that little chiming sound on your own.

Use Social Media to Revitalize Those Old Blog Posts

Share your old blogs on all the relevant platforms such Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and so on. You should see a spike in views of that blog. Use the text space provided on the social media platform to explain why the blog is currently relevant. When you need to share them far ahead of the event date, explain to your followers why the should take heed. When the date is within 30 days, you won’t have to work so hard. Those old posts will get your followers reading your blog again. If the event has changed calendar dates, post the new dates.

Statistics demonstrate that once visitors arrive on a blog, they will often move on to read further posts inside the same blog.

Make Dated Blog Posts Serve You Again

If your blog is part of the main site for your business, and it should be, you will generate new interest not just in your blog but in your business. That’s the reason you have a blog on your site in the first place! Use those old, dated blog posts all over again when the time is right. You will take a previously wasted resource and breathe value into it all over again.

Blogging Creates a Bigger Footprint

A blog is a repeated message that leads to your website.

Website search engines are looking for you. Help them find you. One of the best ways to do that is a blog.

Websites Can Get Lost in the Woods

Imagine being lost in a forest while a search plane flies over. The most likely scenario is that the plane doesn’t see you. You decide to take action. You tear off a piece of your yellow blanket and tie it to a tree top. When the plane flies over again, your chances are improved, but not by very much. Left alone in the woods another night, you come up with a new, better plan. The next time the plane flies over, fifty trees have yellow strips of cloth flying in their upper branches. The search parties find you.

Communicate in Volume

When you publish your website, you’ve put out a single ribbon in a tree. Even with a five page website, you still only have five ribbons. Better, surely, but that’s just not enough. You want that rescue plane to see a swath of color. You want them to know, without a doubt, that you are there. A blog serves that purpose. It is a repeated message that leads to your website.

Blogs Present a Beautiful Opportunity to Reach New People

The more blogs you post, the more messages you put out there. Those blogs will each cover a different topic or, at the very least, a different nuance of a topic. With each post, you increase your chances of being found. With every blog, you create a new category of interest. Someone out there will be looking for just that thing. With lots of blogs, you will hit lots of interests for lots of people.

Central Theme Keywords

I once watched a gardening segment on the news where a woman described that you should plant flowers with the same colors in groups. That way, instead of one lone flower struggling to create an impression, you would have a whole set of them, creating a swath of color that you couldn’t miss. The same is true of using the same key words repeatedly in your blog. That will create a footprint for visitors and search engines. It will establish you as the expert on that subject. It will tell search engines how to categorize you.

Peripheral Topic Keywords

The guideline for repeating keywords has a flipside. Alongside your main keywords, use one or two others that are new and specific to each blog. That way you reach into one new niche after another to draw fresh visitors. With your central theme intact, you will consistently spread you influence.

Establish Yourself as the Authority

Another fantastic result of blogging is that you establish yourself as a subject-matter expert. Who knows more about your product or service than you do? Show off your knowledge. Introduce new technology. Provide solutions. Answer questions. Before long, people will see you as an expert in your industry. That is a position you want to be in. Authority translates into sales of your product or service.

Use Blogging to Reach Your Potential Clients

Blogging is a simple means of telling the world more about yourself or your business. It helps to brand you. It also creates repeated communications that will increase your chances of being seen. Use those posts to establish your brand with search engines and the general public. A volume of quality information on a subject will place you as an expert and inspire customer trust. Blogs do all of those things. They offer a solution that not everyone knows is there. Take advantage of what blogs can do and let searchers find you!

Branding Delivers Volumes in the Blink of an Eye

Take the golden opportunity to tell them what to think about you.

Branding means creating a concept, through images and words, that represents your company. The ideal effect of branding is to make people think about you and what you represent the moment they see your brand.

Branding Is an Old Idea That Still Holds True

Images work very well for branding. A name in front of a shape or photograph is popular. Another very successful method is to associate your company name with a particular font. The image then serves to represent your company. Much like a mark burned into the hide of an animal, a branding symbol represents who you are.

Encapsulate Your Image in the Customer Mind

The task of branding is to encapsulate all you do and all you represent into a single thought that your branding image stimulates in the mind. It’s a marvelous idea. After your brand is established, your promotional work becomes much easier.

Brand Images Contain Lots of Information

Creating a brand takes more than an image. The image does, indeed, speak for you, but first you must speak for yourself. You must tell people who you are. You must present your image to the world alongside of the essential data that tells people what to expect from you. You have to educate the public regarding what your brand means. Only then can that image remind them who you are.

In truth, a brand is more than just an image. It is who you are.

Tell the People Who You Are

Is your company dynamic? Is it helpful and caring? Does your product bring happiness? Does it solve a problem? Those thoughts will rise in the minds of your customer –or at least you hope they will. To achieve that end, you must first lay a foundation. That foundation is laid in words. You must first tell people who you are.

Get Your Brand Out There

When operating online, the creation of a brand may require a bit of work. Lots of media outlets flow onto our screens. Will your branding occur in banner ads or will you display it in social media posts? Lots of possibilities exist. That brings your primary tool to the fore. What about your website?

Your Website Is Your Brand Headquarters

No place is more important to establish your brand than your website. Once you become interesting enough for people to seek out who you are, you must answer the prime question. Who are you?! Visitors expect you to tell them.

Golden Opportunity of Branding

The writing on your website will answer the questions visitors have. In the simplest, most powerful words possible, you will tell them who you are, what you do, and what they should think about you. Yes, before they make up their mind, take the golden opportunity to tell them what to think about you. Now that’s branding.

The Art of Branding

A brand is a concept packed into a single location. That concept can be as large as you desire it to be. Concepts have the beautiful ability to convey volumes of information in the blink of an eye. Make use of that ability. Pack into your brand all you want your public to know about you and feel about you. With a successful branding campaign, what you communicate will stick in the minds of the people. Think of branding as an art. Create your masterpiece and then present it to the world. The more artful your endeavors, the more valuable your brand promotion will be.