Author: The Writers For Hire, Inc.

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Scheduling Your Content Campaign

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Call it a content schedule, a content calendar, a content marketing plan, an editorial calendar, or anything you like. Whatever you call the document that puts—and keeps—your content campaign on schedule, it’s a necessity given the current nature of marketing.

That’s because marketing has done a hairpin turn away from old-fashioned scattershot advertising campaigns and toward targeted content-centered marketing. This type of directed marketing takes calculation and planning.

For most companies, building a calendar for a content campaign will mean getting multiple parties to agree on the plans it lays out and their feasibility. From the C-suite, through creatives, merchandising people, and finance, it must work for everyone. And it must be easy for everyone to access.

Prerequisite #1: Develop a content strategy.

What do you want your content campaign to accomplish? Who are the customers or clients you must reach and convert for this content campaign to succeed? Which channels and types of content will best do the job of gaining the attention and interest of those customers?

Collective brainstorming that brings in the perspectives of all involved staff members can help answer these questions.  Other methods include audience focus groups, customer surveys, your own online research, and market research data compiled by “business intelligence” firms.

These techniques and sources can help you thoughtfully choose the channels where your content will most likely hit its target audiences.

The “flip side” of this choosing process is also important and involves using some measuring tools to gauge how well those channels work for your campaign.

KPI’s, or key performance indicators, are very useful tools for doing that. They provide the numbers savvy content marketers use to keep a close eye on how their channels perform. These indicators are accessed through available software that can collect information such as:

  • Search engine performance, or ranking
  • Rate of click-through
  • Traffic on your website
  • Number of unique visitors
  • Time spent with your content
  • Return on investment (ROI)
  • Conversions (sales)
  • And more

KPI software compiles the information you want and presents it as reports. These can be shared with your stakeholders to direct either staying on course or making strategic changes.

Prerequisite #2: Get buy-in for your content marketing plans.

Again, all parties should be involved in this stage. Be sure not to leave out anyone who will be responsible for the creation, editing, revising, proofing, or dissemination of content. You don’t want to spring the news of a fully formed campaign, as an unwelcome surprise, on those who will be producing it!

Achieving buy-in from these professionals will involve having—at least—these three discussions:

1) The rationale for having a schedule in place.  Upsides to point out include: Everyone will know what is required of them and can better manage their time; staff can better coordinate their efforts; content is improved by advance planning; everyone can see the “big picture” of your marketing strategy; and any other reason that applies to your company’s methods and culture.

 2) The methods that will be used to share and access the campaign calendar. This decision, too, is connected to company culture. For instance, if you have an existing, well-used intranet, locating your calendar there can make a lot of sense. If you have employees who like hard copies, you can provide those as an option. Be creative. If you need to post a large laminated monthly content calendar on the wall as a visual reminder, do that.

3) The types and frequency of content, the channels where each kind will be published, and the people responsible for each content category. The more your content production staff knows in advance about exactly what they’ll be producing and how often, the better.

As you have the third discussion, consider these content types and which of your people can best team up to produce each type:

  • Dynamic, interactive website copy. Include a homepage, “about” page, product pages, blogs, tutorials, white papers, case studies—whatever serves your business best.
  • Regular emails. Keep your customers in-the-know about your new or seasonally offered products, services, locations, sales events, your people, and more. Note: Always send a test email before sending your latest one to customers!
  • Ad copy, both digital and print, and advertorials. These can tell well-timed, newsy, relatable stories about your offerings and what makes them great.
  • Social media. Platform choices are now almost limitless. Of course, your choices will be based on your target audiences. For example, LinkedIn and TikTok usually serve quite different audiences—professionals and youthful users, respectively. Social media platforms are spontaneous by nature, making them good places to promote seasonal or special events that grab customer attention quickly.
  • Digital or print brochures. This time-honored tool still works for at-a-glance advertising and can now live on your website or be attached to an email or blog for easy download.
  • Landing pages. When your customers or clients are searching for what you offer, these stand-alone webpages are exactly where you want them to land. Once there, they’ll find engaging copy, graphics and more that show they’re in the right place.
  • Sales and data sheets. These give potential customers all the particulars about your products and services.
  • Press releases. These quickly get important company news out or show how your company is responding to a news event related to your industry.
  • E-books. These downloadable books do digital wonders to exhibit your company’s thought leadership.

There are many ways to facilitate discussions and achieve buy-in. If time permits, a “content scheduling workshop” may be a good idea. When planning a workshop or meeting, allow time to field questions, make clarifications, and entertain input and practical suggestions.    

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Make or choose a content planning template.

There are at least a few good reasons for using a template to develop a content schedule:

  • A template standardizes and simplifies the planning process.
  • A template sets expectations for the completion of the phases of production for each piece: outlining, creation, editing, revising, proofing, and dissemination.
  • A template puts accountability for deadlines in a visible form for each team member.

There is no one “right” template for content planning. Your company’s template should be customized to work best for your team and environment. It’s great for everyone to have an overview of your entire campaign, but if you are planning lots of content for each channel, assignees will probably thank you for producing a separate sub-calendar for each channel.

Here’s one possible template structure for master planning:

Online tools such as this one are also available to make scheduling your strategic marketing content easier, and to help automate your marketing efforts.

Build your editorial calendar.

As Jay Leonard of Business2community.com notes, “If you schedule campaigns or posts in no specific pattern, you might find that your reader activity isn’t as great as it can be.”

Of course, the whole idea is to get lots of reader activity, which means getting the eyes of your customers on your content. So, when building an editorial calendar, what kinds of factors should you consider? Here are some of the “biggies:”

  • The scope of the campaign, in terms of both content and time.
  • The frequency of publication for each type of content. A blog, for example, may be posted weekly; a newsletter produced monthly; a landing page updated annually.
  • The budget allocated for creating, refining, and publishing each type of content. Writing an e-book will take more of your staff’s time than a blog post. Editing, proofing, and uploading voluminous web content will take much more of their time than writing a press release.
  • Seasonality and other factors that make specific times optimal for publication of certain content: holidays large and small, company anniversaries, planned sales events, and community outreach events, for example.
  • The workload for creatives, graphics people, and other marketing staff. Pacing will be required.
  • Timing of interviews with in-house or external subject matter experts. Internal experts must be available to meet with writers.

With all these factors in mind, you can build your schedule, incorporating the time to be spent on each task (outlining, creation, editing, revising, proofing, dissemination) and deadlines for completion.

Find specific topics.

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) suggests finding angles for content topics by using a keyword research tool such as Serpstat to find the intersection of your holiday, event, or occasion and the name of the product or service you want to promote. At this intersection, you will find the best ideas and inspiration.

CMI also suggests using TextOptimizer to “better understand and optimize your content to match Google and your site users’ expectations.” This type of tool can help your writers find the best search terms to include in each piece.

Get advance sign-off on your calendar from all parties.

Let everyone involved in any phase of producing, refining, approving, and posting your content have a look at your calendar before it goes live. Depending on an individual’s role, they may need to see all or part of the calendar.

This last viewing gives everyone a “heads up” on their upcoming content-related workload. It also provides a “window” to adjust the schedule if necessary before it goes into effect. Adjustments might be needed to better coordinate steps or better align content to a buying calendar, cashflow, or other factors.

Manage your scheduled content.

Managing your content can mean sending, or automating the sending of, advance notices about upcoming content deadlines. It can also mean regular “status” meetings.

Both tactics will help your team avoid “oopsies” by giving members opportunities to anticipate problems and decide how to deal with them in advance.

Also, if your KPIs and customer feedback indicate that changes should be made to content plans because of changing market conditions and trends, advance notices and meetings give time for discussion about exactly what those changes should be.

Download Critique Feedback Rating Royalty-Free Stock Illustration Image – Pixabay

Evaluate your calendar regularly …

An annual survey of everyone who uses the editorial calendar will help you stay on top of what is working with the format and use of the calendar, and what could use some tweaking.

It’s possible that methods of access might need to be changed, or that another format would be more practical for users. It’s also possible that upgrading the content strategy template by adding or improving imbedded communications tools would make it more usable.

… or get a content marketing strategist to help with all of the above.

Getting the help of an expert content marketing firm can make a lot of sense. With a deep understanding of marketing concepts and well-honed content writing skills, a company like The Writers for Hire can step in to assist your marketing department or completely handle each step of the process:

  • Developing audience personas
  • Answering the question, “Which problems do my customers need to solve?”
  • Clarifying your brand’s qualities
  • Selecting the channels your customers or clients most use
  • Choosing KPIs to measure channel performance
  • Producing a complete content calendar or multiple calendars

And, if you wish:

  • Writing original, timely content for all your channels

When you hire a seasoned team to help develop your content marketing plans, the process becomes a collaborative and painless one. And your staff can continue doing what they already do best.

Old Tricks, New Clicks: Content Creation Strategy for Repurposing Your Content

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

As a tactic long employed by the top content marketing firms, repurposing content is an excellent way to give old work new life and expand its reach.

But what does it mean to repurpose content? And what are the rules for doing so?

Stay tuned as we go over ways that content can be repurposed, the benefits it can bring to your content creation strategy, and how to get started yourself. 

What is Content Repurposing?

Repurposing content is quite simple: you take all or part of an existing piece of content and reuse it in a way that expands its original scope and reach.

The most common way to repurpose content is by converting the content into a new medium. For example:

  • Using an existing article as the base for a video script
  • Converting a blog post into an infographic, slideshow, etc.
  • Creating social media posts to promote the content
  • Creating accompanying narration for an article so it can be listened to

For more ideas of ways to convert content, see Backlinko’s in depth review of different content types.

In addition to conversion, republishing and/or rewriting the content for new platforms is also a good way to repurpose it.

The latter is especially viable when you’re already thinking about doing major updates on the piece in question.

4 Benefits of Repurposed Content

If the idea of repurposing content is new to you, you may be wondering why you should bother. Well, believe it or not, there are actually a lot of benefits to repurposing your content. Here are our top 4:

1. It can significantly boost your audience. 

A blog post that is also converted into an accompanying video and gets a tweet promoting it is going to get more eyes on it than a post released by itself.  By the same principle, it can also give old content new life by putting it in front of fresh eyes. 

2. It provides a great opportunity to update your keywords.

Updating the keywords in previous content becomes more beneficial the longer it’s been since the original publishing date, as the SEO landscape will have inevitably changed. 

Post-published keyword refresh years down the line can help old content rank higher in search results again, which can breathe new life into the piece even if you don’t directly promote the update.

3. It provides your audience with multiple ways to consume and engage with your content.

Actively and passively consuming content is as different as night and day in terms of practicality and multitasking.

Active consumption, such as reading a book or article, requires the audience to put effort into absorbing the content out of its medium. Increasing their immersion in the content can lead to stronger retention, at the cost of excluding your focus from most other tasks.

Meanwhile, passive consumption, such as watching a video or listening to a podcast, delivers the content directly to the audience without them having to do anything besides hit play.

This decreases immersion and retention but frees them up to perform other activities while it plays in the background.

By providing both active and passive ways to consume the same content, you will naturally appeal to a wider swath of the audience than if you only published one or the other.

4. It’s easier to scale than creating new content wholesale. 

By recycling content, you save yourself a massive amount of work because a good chunk of your research and organization is already done.

You just need to present it in a different way than you already have.

This not only saves you valuable time but can also be a large money saver as well. After all, ass we all know, time is money.

Content Creation Strategy to Repurpose Your Content

Now that we have established the top reasons for repurposing content, let’s take a look at how to repurpose your content.

Focus on Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that’s optimized to stand the test of time, remaining relevant to readers even years after its initial publication.

Evergreen content typically takes the form of listicles, tips, “how to” guides and tutorials, product reviews, and certain types of videos. Needless to say, it forms the backbone of many a content creation strategy.

On the other end of the content spectrum, you have more perishable content such as news coverage, which typically lose their relevance in the online zeitgeist (read: SEO rankings) within a few weeks to months of initial publication.

The phrase “old news” exists for a reason; people stop caring as much about news coverage they’ve already seen, and it’s hard to get them to care again unless you introduce something new and substantial to the established narrative.

With all the above in mind, you’ll be using stronger content marketing tactics by prioritizing Evergreen content for repurposing.

The limited shelf life of perishable content dampens the long-term gains that repurposing provides, and overall will end up making more work for you.

If you aren’t already sure of your current content catalogue, you should do a full audit to figure out what’s still relevant and likely will be into the foreseeable future. From there you’ll have a list of works best suited for recycling. 

Don’t Be Lazy With Your Recycling

It might be tempting to think you can do the bare minimum to convert existing content into a new form and still reap the benefits for your content creation strategy.

Don’t. Because you won’t. 

Content that only has the bare minimum effort put into it is destined to turn out lackluster.

Sure, you can put an article to words and record yourself speaking said words aloud, and it will technically be a video. But unless you’re capable of stellar voice work, a video produced with these elements alone will probably put your audience to sleep.

And even if you are by some miracle capable of the stellar voicework to make it not boring, chances are you also have enough professional pride to not settle for the bare minimum.

Do Your Research! Figure Out the Best Practices for the Mediums You Recycle Into

Going off a similar principle to the above example: what works in one medium might not work well in the new one.

You should tweak and optimize your content to adhere to, if not exceed, the standards of what you’re converting it to.

Going the extra mile will help your repurposed content stand out from the pack.

Split Your Content up Into Smaller Chunks

Parceling out a larger piece of content in appropriately sized, platform specific chunks is a great way to repurpose it with relatively little work.

Rather than doing a medium conversion, you’re just reducing its presentation to the most strategic, attention-grabbing bits that will draw the audience in to engage with the full work.

Embrace Visual and Audio Presentation

Text works fine, sure, but putting in the effort to convert text content into visual and audio versions can pay off massively (see the passive vs active consumption argument in the benefits section). 

Articles can be converted to graphics and videos fairly easily with the help of contractors, if you lack the means to do it yourself.

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Wrapping it Up

Armed with all the information above, you should be well prepared to begin your journey into content repurposing.

That said, it’s not just videos and graphics which you can get outside help for; if you’re still unsure of where to start or aren’t confident you can handle the additional workload, you should consider hiring a writing agency to help you repurpose your content.

Your Keyword Compass: The Complete Guide to Finding Target Keywords

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Okay, is everyone ready for the target keyword scavenger hunt? Make sure you have your map, your compass, a magnifying glass, some trail markers…

Don’t worry— finding target keywords isn’t actually a scavenger hunt that requires a map and compass. But you can think of target keywords as the true North on a compass, pointing you in the direction of high search engine rankings. Or, from a user’s perspective, you can think of target keywords like guiding stars, directing them directly to your site and content.

However, from a marketer’s perspective, you can think of target keywords as a crucial component of your campaign plan. Since every click counts and every search query holds potential, the importance of keyword research, selection, and tracking cannot be overstated.

But how do you actually identify target keywords? This guide will help you determine which keywords are best to rank for and understand which keywords are easiest to rank for in your content plan. You’ll also gain insight into two popular tools for tracking your keywords: Moz and Semrush.

Keyword Research and Brainstorming

Before diving into keyword research, it’s best to first lay a solid foundation. This preliminary phase is crucial for aligning your keyword strategy with your overarching campaign goals and understanding the area of the internet you’ll be working in.

Prepare

Define your campaign goals

We suggest starting with clearly identifying the goals of your campaign, as this will serve as an overarching guide to the rest of your keyword and campaign marketing efforts.

If you need help defining your campaign goals and objectives, consider the following graphic:

Graphic created by C. Bechteler 

By clearly outlining your objectives, you can tailor your keyword strategy to support these goals effectively.

Identify your target audience

Your target audience plays a paramount role in your target keyword selection. Who is your campaign trying to reach? Assess audience demographics like age, location, and even their income level. Explore their interests, preferences, and online behavior. These insights will help you choose keywords that resonate with your audience and align with their search intent.

Brainstorm general keywords to rank for

Now that you have a clear understanding of your campaign goals and target audience, it’s time to brainstorm general keywords that align with your objectives. These keywords should encapsulate the core themes and topics related to your marketing campaign and business or industry. Consider both the products or services you offer, as well as any specific terms or phrases that your audience may use when searching for information related to your niche.

Identify and assess key competitors

Although the word “competitor” might leave a bad taste in your mouth, knowing who your main competitors are can actually help facilitate your keyword research. For each of your top competitors, find out which keywords they have high rankings for. This will help you gain contextual competitive insight that you can use to:

Graphic created by C. Bechteler 

Keyword Vocabulary

Before we get into researching target keywords, we want to take a moment to review four types of keywords that you’ll (directly or indirectly) encounter during your research.

Short-Tail vs Long-Tail Keywords

Graphic created by C. Bechteler 

Informational vs Transactional Keywords

Graphic created by C. Bechteler 

Research

Explore the web

We suggest kicking off your research by doing some initial googling to get a feel for the topics and types of content that people are looking at in your marketing campaign’s associated space. Look up the keywords and search terms that you came up with during your brainstorming, look at your competitor’s content, and just surf around the web to see what you find.

Use tools to identify keywords

Since keywords are such a, well, key to marketing, it’s no surprise that there are several different tools that can help you identify possible target keywords. Google Keywords and Google Trends are two popular tools that you can use for free.

Alternatively, two powerful tools that you have to pay to use are Moz and Semrush. We’ll go over these tools in more detail further down in this guide, but they both include features that allow you to see what keywords your competitors’ are ranking for, and also review statistics about the keywords you previously brainstormed.

Keyword Analysis and Selection

The truth is, there’s no one type of keyword that you should focus on in your marketing campaign. Instead, it’s best to choose a range of keywords. The following graphics help demonstrate how this mix of keywords will help you create a strong campaign.

Graphic created by C. Bechteler 

Tracking Keywords

Finding your target keywords is just as important as the ongoing process of tracking and monitoring them. This process enables you to gauge your ranking progress, measure your performance against competitors, identify opportunities for campaign optimization, and make informed decisions to adapt your strategy accordingly.

Keyword Tracking Metrics

Every business is different, and so everyone will have their own opinions on which metrics you should pay attention to when tracking your keywords. However, the following list should provide you with a strong foundation and a good starting point:

  • Your local and national ranking position

This metric shows where your website ranks in local and national search engine results for your target keywords. Tracking your ranking position over time helps you assess your visibility and monitor changes in your SEO performance.

  • The search volume of your keywords

This metric yields insights into the popularity and potential reach of your target keywords. Remember, high search volume keywords may attract more traffic, but they also tend to face higher ranking competition, whereas low search volume keywords attract less traffic, but offer are easier to rank for.

  • Share of voice (SOV)

Share of voice, or SOV, refers to the proportion of impressions your website or content receives in search engine results pages (SERPs) for selected keywords compared to the total number of impressions generated by all of your competitors targeting the same keywords. The SOV metric provides insights into your brand’s overall visibility, authority, and digital market share of your chosen keywords.

Keyword Tracking Tools

We recommend using a tool to help you streamline the process of tracking and monitoring your target keywords. Two popular options that are popular with marketers are Moz and Semrush, although one might better suit your circumstances than the other. You can use our chart below to identify which tool best fits your needs:

Graphic created by C. Bechteler 

Find and Track Keywords with The Writers For Hire

You now have the keys to the castle! With this guide in hand, you can jump into finding and tracking keywords to ensure your marketing campaign is nothing short of a success.

Of course, there’s nothing like starting a new campaign with some friendly support and writing services from a trusted content agency. Our team at The Writers For Hire is keyed up and ready to help you conduct target keyword research, identify and track the right keywords, and develop an SEO content strategy that delivers the results you were hoping for.

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The Future of Content Marketing

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Content marketing has boomed in the last few years and there are no signs of that changing anytime soon. So, why have content marketing strategies become such a fundamental marketing component that almost every business imaginable has embraced?

The answer is very simple. When you provide your prospective customers with valuable, helpful, and free information, they notice who you are and what your business does. We build truly meaningful relationships and trust with our audiences through content marketing.

Content marketing enables businesses to reach their audiences through information they want to consume instead of bombarding them with information they have no interest in.

Content marketing has come a very long way since the emergence of the internet, social media, and platforms like YouTube, and, as technology evolves, so content marketing strategies evolve with it.

In this article, we will explore in detail the future of content marketing and the impact new technologies may have on content marketing best practices. In particular, we will explore the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the content marketing paradigm, how social media is likely to change over the coming years, and changes in the way content will be consumed in the future.

Artificial Intelligence – Good or Bad for Content?

For many people, the thought of artificial intelligence and how it may impact their lives in the future is a daunting notion.

These fears and anxieties mainly result from a lack of understanding of this wonderful technology, and because it is well known that new technologies can be used positively or negatively.

The application of AI in the creation of content is still relatively primitive.

In other words, an AI-generated novel is not going to win a Pulitzer anytime soon.

That being said, some major and quite impressive advances in AI-generated content have been made in the last couple of years. Let’s explore this in more detail.

How does AI-generated content work?

Many definitions of artificial intelligence exist, but John Mcarthy offers a very helpful definition in his 2004 paper:

“It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.

It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.”

AI-generated content is simply content generated by computer software programs that scan the internet for information, much like a search engine does.

Once the user has entered a command or request into the program, the program pulls the most relevant information from the internet and other databases and converts that into new text using Natural Language Processing. This whole process happens in the space of a few seconds or minutes.

Current AI technology fully relies on content previously written by humans to produce “new” AI content. This has profound implications for the future.

Writing is an art and AI is not yet an artist. AI can’t create new ideas, conduct scientific research, or synthesize information in the same way humans can. AI technology also lacks creativity, understanding, linguistic nuance, and conversational context.

With that in mind, let’s consider a scenario where we remove humans from the content equation entirely and leave AI to create all new content for a two-year period. In two years’ time, we will end up with an initial wave of new AI content which was written by AI by drawing on existing human text.

Then we will have additional waves of content where AI not only draws on existing human text but also on AI text. Let’s call this ‘compound AI content’ (AI content generated from AI content). Eventually, we will end up with content that makes no sense, has no original ideas, and lacks creativity. Put simply, we will end up with robot content that sounds robotic.

Fortunately, it’s not all bad news for AI-generated content. These technologies won’t replace professional writers but will instead assist them in the future.

Advantages of AI Content Generators

Many companies have already incorporated AI technology into their business operations to automate some functions, such as the use of customer service chatbots, analyzing data, and managing inventory.

The use of AI as a tool to generate content is slowly but surely becoming more popular as new, more advanced technologies such as ChatGPT become available. These technologies can be used to:

  1. Generate new ideas. Any professional writer understands blank page anxiety, which is when they have a topic to write about with no idea where to start. This is where AI can be very helpful. Writers can easily generate new ideas by asking the AI content generator a few questions.
  2. Bulk up existing content. If you get stuck halfway through an article or blog post with no idea which direction to take it, you could generate additional artificial content. However, caution is imperative here. Be sure not to use the AI content verbatim in your article.
  3. Speed up your writing. One of the main benefits of AI content is the speed with which these technologies pull information and compile new text. It is still your responsibility to check that the information is correct and the content is modified to human standards to ensure your audience and search engines are happy with it.
  4. Quickly get research sources. Another great advantage of AI content generators is the ability to quickly compile sources of information you want to reference in your content. It is very likely that not all the sources AI recommends are of the highest standards, so be sure to double check them.
  5. Save money. At the moment, content written by professional writers is still very much the preferred choice for large businesses that have significant online authority. AI can and should be used by smaller businesses with limited budgets and resources to optimize their content output schedules, provided they strictly adhere to search engine and SEO best practices.

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Disadvantages of AI Content

No computer or software program is perfect, which is why we get regular system updates on our smartphones, mobile devices, and computers. The same goes for AI content generator algorithms. Some of the main disadvantages of AI content include:

  1. AI content generators can produce inaccurate content. Even the most advanced AI programs can’t claim to produce error-free content. ChatGPT, for instance, tells users on their website that some responses the chatbot provides can be incorrect, harmful, or biased.
  2. AI content generators can produce plagiarized content. Any academic or professional writer will tell you that plagiarism is a big concern when writing anything. Plagiarism is when someone tries to pass off someone else’s work or ideas as their own. There are strict laws that prohibit writers from plagiarizing, and AI is not yet sophisticated enough to distinguish between original and plagiarized content.
  3. AI content can lack emotional depth and empathy. It is natural that a computer has no feelings, which means that AI content can sound cold and robotic.
  4. Search engines consider some AI content to be spam. Search engines rank all website pages according to originality, quality, and how useful the pages are in relation to their user’s searches. AI-generated content with no human intervention or edits still has a long way to go to meet these strict search engine quality criteria.

When asked why he thinks people should embrace AI, Erik Mudge, Principal Engineer at Red Engineering with a strong background in computer science said:

“People often see AI as being something scary that will one day take over the world. However, this is simply not true.

AI is programmed with a specific purpose, and it is programmed only to be able to perform that single purpose, like being able to identify a specific object in a picture.

It is only programmed to learn about how to identify that object, and so cannot do anything else. To program a computer to undertake a specific task like this may take a human programmer a lifetime or more to complete, if at all.

With AI, this can be achieved in a much shorter timeframe and can add so much value to tasks that can’t be automated in the traditional way, saving time and money.”

What does Google think about AI content?

Google has very recently changed its position on AI-generated content. In a Google Search Central blog post published in February 2023, they assert that they reward high-quality content, however it is produced.

They reward content that demonstrates qualities in their E-E-A-T framework, which means expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. In their blog, Google provides the following guidance:

“How can Search determine if AI is being used to spam search results?

We have a variety of systems, including SpamBrain, that analyze patterns and signals to help us identify spam content, however it is produced.

Will AI content rank highly on Search?

Using AI doesn’t give content any special gains. It’s just content. If it is useful, helpful, original, and satisfies aspects of E-E-A-T, it might do well in Search. If it doesn’t, it might not.

Should I use AI to generate content?

If you see AI as an essential way to help you produce content that is helpful and original, it might be useful to consider. If you see AI as an inexpensive, easy way to game search engine rankings, then no.”

The bottom line is that even using the best AI-generated content verbatim on your website may result in search engine penalties and lower rankings. AI should, for now at least, only be used as a supplementary tool.

Web 3.0, NFTs, and Blockchain Technology

Web 1.0 was the first version of the World Wide Web and was mainly made up of stationary information-only websites and pages, allowing for very little, if any, interaction.

This was followed by Web 2.0, which is underpinned by user interactivity and collaboration and is the current, user-generated content era, utilizing vast centralized data centers to store user data.

Web 3.0, also known as the “semantic web,” is the idea that the internet can evolve beyond the current Web 2.0 model of centralized services and data collection/storage to a more decentralized and user-controlled model.

User data is fast becoming the single most valuable commodity after oil, and some businesses are exploiting their user data for capital gains.

The main idea behind Web 3.0 is to create a more open, transparent, and secure internet that is based on a decentralized system, peer-to-peer networks, and blockchain technology.

With Web 3.0, users will have much greater control over their personal data and digital identities and will be able to interact directly with other users and services without the need for intermediaries such as Facebook or YouTube.

Web 3.0 aims to be a more democratic and user-centric online realm that empowers individual users and communities to create and share content, conduct transactions, and build applications in a decentralized and permissionless environment.

Web 3.0 is still in the infant stages of development, but it has the potential to transform the online world as we know it.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital files/assets that are unique and cannot be exchanged on a one-to-one basis like cryptocurrencies. NFTs are created using blockchain technology, which allows for their ownership and authenticity to be verified and tracked in a decentralized manner.

Put simply, NFTs are unique digital signatures that distinguish one-of-a-kind digital assets from other similar digital assets such as music, digital art, and videos. NFTs are often traded in digital marketplaces, and some have sold for millions of dollars.

Blockchain technology allows for recording transactional and other information in such a way that makes it very hard or even impossible to change or hack the data. It is a digital ledger that can be accessed by multiple users, allowing for secure and efficient data sharing.

Each block in a blockchain contains a record of a transaction, and once another block is added to the chain, it cannot be altered or deleted. This makes the blockchain a highly secure and tamper-free database.

Blockchain technology was originally only used in cryptocurrency technologies and was made popular by the Bitcoin white paper in 2008.

Today, blockchain technology has been adopted in other industries and applications, such as supply chain management, voting systems, digital identity verification, and even digital marketing. LinkedIn offers very informative insights into how blockchain technology will change digital content marketing trends.

Mudge asserts that:

“With Web 3.0 on the horizon and the decentralization of information, blockchain technology is likely to become one of the most important techniques for distributing data and content in a safe and consistent way.”

Voice search will dominate.

Voice search has changed the way people find and consume their content and is already having a profound impact on content marketing. Some of the ways voice search is likely to impact content marketing strategies include:

  1. More conversational content. Voice search queries tend to be more conversational, personal, and natural-sounding than traditional text-based searches. To optimize for voice search, content marketers need to focus on creating content that answers specific questions and provides value to users in a more conversational tone.
  2. Increased emphasis on local search. Voice search is often used for local search queries, such as “near me” searches. Content creators must ensure that their content is optimized for local search by including location-specific keywords and phrases, and ensuring their website is optimized for local SEO.
  3. Optimization for featured snippets. Voice search devices often read out featured snippets from search results. Content marketers need to optimize their content to appear in featured snippets by providing clear and concise answers to common user queries.
  4. Easy to read structured data. To appear in voice search results, content needs to be structured in a way that is easy for search engines to read. Content creators must use structured data markup to help search engines understand the content and context of their pages.
  5. Stronger focus on mobile optimization. Voice search is primarily used on mobile devices, so content creators must also ensure that their content is optimized for mobile devices, with fast loading times, responsive design, and easy-to-use interfaces.

Voice search is very likely to continue to have a significant impact on content marketing campaigns, particularly because younger generations enjoy the convenience of voice assistants and searches.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a type of AI that allows computer systems to automatically learn and improve from their experiences, without being intentionally programmed to learn.

In other words, the computer system teaches itself new information by analyzing data entirely on its own.

Machine learning has some significant implications for the field of content marketing. It opens up the possibility for content marketers to create much more personalized and targeted content.

Some major machine learning advantages include:

  1. Personalization. Machine learning algorithms can analyze large amounts of data to identify patterns and trends in customer behavior, enabling businesses to create more personalized content that resonates with their target audience.
  2. Automation. Machine learning algorithms can automate certain tasks in content creation and distribution, such as identifying the best time to post content, selecting the most effective keywords, and generating content ideas.
  3. Predictive analytics. Machine learning can be used to analyze customer data and predict future behavior, allowing businesses to create content that anticipates the needs and interests of their customers.
  4. Content optimization. Machine learning algorithms can analyze the performance of content and provide insights into how to optimize it for better engagement and conversion.
  5. Content curation. Machine learning can be used to curate content from a variety of sources and deliver it to users based on their interests and preferences.

When asked how important machine learning is to advance the tech industry, Mudge said:

“Machine learning is an essential tool in the tech industry. It allows a programmer to produce software that undertakes complex tasks in a fraction of the time it would take to produce a traditionally coded application, as long as the programmer has sufficient training data available.”

No More Cookies

We are all too familiar with that annoying pop-up when you visit a new website: the cookie policy.

Although it is very difficult to predict exactly when cookies will become a thing of the past, there are several glimmers of hope that suggest we may see cookies disappear altogether.

These include some privacy concerns where users are more aware than ever of how data is being captured, stored, and used. Many countries, such as the European Union, have implemented strict laws that protect their citizens’ rights to data protection.

These laws are being adopted more widely across the globe, rendering cookies and data collection in a controversial light.

Lastly, Apple has already blocked third-party cookies on their Safari browser, and Google plans to do the same on Chrome within the next year.

The Metaverse

Source: Pexels.com

Many tech giants, including Facebook’s parent company Meta, believe that the metaverse is the future of the internet.

The metaverse is essentially a 3D online world you access through augmented reality headsets. The idea is to create an immersive 3D digital world that runs parallel to the real world where we interact with others in real-time across vast distances.

The metaverse will offer a much more personalized engagement with the internet as we know it. Some of the main changes the metaverse can bring about in content marketing include:

  1. New forms of content. The metaverse will create new opportunities for businesses to create interactive and immersive content that goes beyond traditional forms of marketing, such as videos and blog posts. This could include experiences that allow users to interact with products in a virtual environment or attend virtual events.
  2. Targeted advertising. The metaverse will allow businesses to target advertising to highly specific audiences based on their virtual activities and behaviors. For example, an advertiser could target users who have visited a specific virtual location or interacted with a certain virtual object.
  3. Social engagement. The metaverse will provide businesses with new opportunities to engage with customers in a social setting. This could include virtual networking events, group activities, and community building.
  4. Enhanced data analytics. The metaverse will provide businesses with a wealth of data on user behavior and preferences, which can be used to inform content marketing strategies and improve the effectiveness of campaigns.
  5. New revenue streams. The metaverse will create new opportunities for businesses to monetize content and experiences, such as virtual goods, in-game purchases, and subscriptions.

The Future of Social Media

No one can say with certainty what social media will look like in the future, but several factors such as new technologies, the ever-changing regulatory environments, and changes in consumer behaviors allow us to make calculated predictions.

It is very clear from the enormous amounts of capital Meta, Microsoft and Google are investing in developing the metaverse that they likely plan a shift to 3D virtual social media and other platforms.

It is likely these companies will keep the traditional versions of their current platforms, which may over time be phased out as the metaverse takes hold.

We may also see an increase in video and immersive content, including 360-degree videos on social media as 5G technology improves and becomes widely available. Privacy concerns will likely lead to more secure messaging and spam elimination.

It’s very likely we will also see an increase in more focused social media communities. Social media platforms are likely to continue to fragment into smaller, more specialized communities, catering to specific interests and demographics.

Finally, we could see a serious crackdown on fake news circulating on social channels due to stricter laws and regulations criminalizing the deliberate spread of disinformation.

How will content consumption change?

The way in which content is consumed is not fixed. Our choices were still very limited just a few years ago when only newspapers, radio, and terrestrial TV dominated.

With the rise of streaming giants like Netflix, traditional TV ads almost instantly became a thing of the past to those who committed themselves to on-demand streaming.

In much the same way, consumers today only want to engage with content that is of true value and interest to them, which means super personalized content is the future of content marketing.

Mobile content will take center stage as mobile devices increase in popularity. Consumers have their mobile devices with them 24/7 and expect seamless access to information.

Virtual and augmented reality technologies will continue to evolve and offer consumers new and more immersive ways to engage with content. Subscription-based models are likely to become increasingly popular, as consumers seek out high-quality, ad-free content experiences that offer greater value for money and convenience.

Lastly, there will be a much greater focus on quality, original, trustworthy, and authentic content.

Embracing New Technology

Let’s imagine that the telephone was rejected as a communication medium back in 1878, or that no one saw the value in the electric washing machine in the early 1900s.

We would have no international communications and people would still be doing backbreaking domestic work from sunup to sundown.

Part of the human spirit is to develop, improve, and advance what we know, which, fortunately for us, results in improving old technologies and developing new ones.

Technology can greatly improve the quality of our lives. It is through technology that we connect and collaborate with one another, incubating new ideas, developing lasting relationships, and growing our businesses and economies.

Modern technology gives us access to information in a way that our ancestors could only ever have dreamed about. It can help us restore and protect our environment and live sustainable lives.

New technology must be scrutinized to ensure we understand the potential risks and downsides, but it must not be rejected simply because we have a limited understanding of it.

Mudge concludes that:

“New technologies are increasingly making tedious tasks easier with ever-decreasing learning curves.

As technology moves on, certain functions that we as humans undertake are increasingly reliant on new technology, and older technologies are being phased out.

If as a business you are not open to new technologies or you are resistant to adopting them, you may get left behind.”

Owned, Paid, and Earned Content: What’s the difference?

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Content campaigns are a great way to attract new clients and raise brand awareness. However, not all online content can, or should, serve the same purpose.

Join us as we discuss the different categories of content and how to properly utilize them in your next content marketing plan.

The Three Types of Content

Content within your content marketing plan can be broken down into three categories: owned, paid, and earned.

Owned Content

Owned content consists of websites and social platforms. It might be a personal/business site, a blog, or an official LinkedIn, Facebook, X(Formerly Twitter), Instagram, or YouTube account.

Most, if not all, of your paid and earned content will reside under the umbrella of your owned content platforms, as these platforms are where you host everything for audiences to engage with.

Paid Content

Paid content consists of commissioned media created either in house or by contractors. It’s through publishing paid content on your various platforms that you generate earned content from audience engagement.

Paid content can take a myriad of forms, such as:

  • Articles and blog posts
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • Slide decks
  • eBooks
  • Whitepapers
  • Email newsletters

Earned Content

Earned content consists of:

  • Social media likes
  • Comments
  • Media coverage (such as reviews, official endorsements, etc.)
  • General audience engagement

Given its nature, earned content is almost completely reactionary; you have the least control over it of these three categories. With this in mind, you should put every effort into tailoring your paid content to generate the desired response in your audience. What these efforts entail is up to you to research, though we’ll touch on some basic strategies in the next section.

How to Implement and Improve Owned, Paid, and Earned Content

Create or Review Your Content Marketing Plan

Now that we’ve established how the three categories differ, you should stop and consider how they each factor into your current content marketing plan, taking a top-down view of your owned content to your earned content and the flow between them.

If you don’t have a content marketing plan, you should start one immediately.

A content marketing plan serves as the skeleton for your marketing efforts, laying out which pieces of content will be published, where, and how often.

They’re an invaluable tool for keeping track of your overall content marketing campaign’s progress and give you a framework you can revise and improve on in the future based on the results.

Without a content marketing plan, your campaign will be effectively flying blind, which is just asking for easily avoided mistakes and misunderstandings.

Conduct Keyword Research

Keywords are derived from the terms and phrases your audience types into search engines when they’re looking for something specific. These might be something along the lines of:

  • “Best ways to improve content marketing strategy”
  • “Seafood near me New Orleans”
  • “How to attract customers”
  • “Vegan recipes using oatmeal”
  • Etc.

We can pick out the keywords of each of these queries by focusing on the subjects and what the user wants to do with them:

  • Content marketing strategy
  • Seafood, New Orleans
  • Attract customers
  • Vegan recipes, oatmeal

The better you can align the keywords of your content marketing campaign with what your audience is typing into search engines, the more likely you are to rank high in their search results. This process as a whole is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

SEO spells the difference between appearing on the sixth page of google and appearing on the first page. Keyword research is the first step to SEO, implementing the results into your content as much as you naturally can is the second.

Luckily you don’t have to figure out the keywords for your content marketing campaign manually. Tools like those produced by SEO provider Moz make the process far more hands off.

All you have to do is make a list of the key terms that will be recurrent in your campaign, type them into a keyword analysis tool, and make note of the monthly search volumes and difficulty rankings. A difficulty under 50 is considered moderately attainable, while a difficulty over 50 is more competitive and will require more effort from you.

Next, you should search for all the variants of your keywords and add these results to your list as well. You’re trying to cover all the possible ways a user might type these combinations of specific words into the search engine.

If you find yourself struggling to come up with variants, you may consider using AI such as ChatGPT or Google Bard to help. Simply ask them to think like your target audience (describe them to the AI; their core traits and what they’re looking for) and type in search terms for you.

After you’ve finished with the keyword analysis tools, its time to move to live testing. Type the keywords you’ve assembled into google and take note of the drop-down suggestions you get, as well as the first page results. Be sure to look through the “People also ask” section as well to identify other keywords or subject matter you might’ve missed.

The last step in keyword research is compiling all your data into a master list, and sort it to find the most viable keywords out of the bunch (those that both scored under 50 on the analyses and proved to bring up relevant results in your live testing). Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel are great programs for compiling and can also easily do the sorting if you have the technical know-how. If you don’t, you can instead type your list into an AI like ChatGPT and ask it to the do the sorting for you. Once it’s down, keep track of your keyword list for further analysis and updates.

Optimize Your Owned Content Platforms

Your platforms are the heart of your content marketing strategy. Figuring out how to effectively leverage them will determine your success or failure. 

One of the easiest ways to improve your owned content platforms is to strive for better readability.

The more readable your sight is, the easier it is for your audience to parse what they’re looking for. And the easier you make it for your audience to engage with the platform your content lives on, the more likely they are to do so. 

The inverse is also true: if you neglect readability and user experience, then your audience will likely click on your links, stay for maybe a few minutes, and then leave in frustration or annoyance.

Improving your site’s readability is a complex process with numerous variables to consider, far more than would fit in the length of this article. To find out more, please see this previous article on it. Also check out this post if you’d like to improve your website but need some assistance.

Create Paid Content That Sticks

Creating effective content is harder than it sounds. To summarize, there are three main points to remember:

  • Find quality sources: Boring content is bad. Poorly sourced and misinformed content is many times worse. Do both yourself and your audience a favor by only relying on authors who are experts in the field or published by reputable organizations, that cite the sources of their information, and provide unbiased analyses.
  • Choose the right outlets: Figure out which ones your audience uses the most, be it articles, social media, email, video, etc. and prioritize producing content for that channel.
  • Tailor the length to your audience: This is tricky to get right and there’s no exact method to nailing it, but a good rule of thumb is to keep your content between 1500 to 3000 words.

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Know Your Audience and Your Earned Content

You can’t do much to control your earned content aside from knowing your audience well and treating them right. There are two main points to this

The first is don’t make your paid content self-centered. Focus on your audience, their pain points, and how your product or services can alleviate said pain points. Remember that they care more about how your brand can help them, rather than about your brand itself; if your brand can’t help them, they’ll keep searching until they find one that can.

The second is to take the initiative to understand and engage with your audience. Doing so will help you both retain your current customers and acquire new ones.

Get to know your audience’s pain points, what they need and want, what problems they face. Be consistent with your publishing schedule, don’t keep them guessing when you’re going to drop the next piece of content.

And finally, make the effort to engage with your audience over social media and email, and encourage them to leave their honest thoughts via reviews and testimonials. These last measures are especially useful as they build both trust and brand loyalty.

Decoding Confusing Terms in Content Marketing

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

In the world of content overload, the key to standing out among your competitors is your content marketing campaign.

Great content campaigns— as part of a solid overall content marketing strategy—provide customers with highly useful information, deliver value, and help shape brands into market leaders. That is why brands cannot afford to make mistakes when putting content out there.

Top brands recognize the importance of ensuring high-quality content always hits the mark with the target audience.

Unfortunately, content writers may occasionally miss the mark by confusing certain terms in content marketing. It’s not always their fault, though. Some of these terms are frequently used inappropriately across various platforms, misleading content writers. That is why clearing the air is crucial in order to ensure great content marketing strategies meet their intended targets.

5 Confusing Terms in Content Marketing

1. Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is about establishing oneself as a go-to source in one’s respective industry. Thought leaders become standard-bearers for other professionals in that field.

Thought leaders are typically CEOs, influential entrepreneurs, or authoritative academics. These individuals are known for their track record and become well respected for their achievements.

Consequently, many thought leaders become content writers by authoring books and memoirs or contributing to major publications.

The term “opinion leader” is also utilized when referring to thought leaders.

In essence, thought leaders and opinion leaders are synonymous. Both terms refer to influential individuals in their respective fields. As a result, either term may be utilized when drafting content marketing materials.

It is worth mentioning that both terms are interchangeable, though it is up to each individual to choose the term they feel best suits their persona.

The biggest contribution that thought leaders make to their field is taking complex concepts and translating them into accessible and engaging narratives. They intertwine often complicated subjects with their unique perspectives based on experience and knowledge.

They know how to cater to their audience by delivering insights very few others can provide.

However, some content writers mistakenly attempt to replicate thought leadership content by producing generic materials as part of a broader content marketing strategy.

The problem with this approach is that audiences do not want generic content. They seek insights and perspectives not readily available.

In short, audiences seek personal contributions from influential individuals, not run-of-the-mill content. That is why brands seeking to produce an effective content marketing strategy must strive to provide singular perspectives relevant to their fields.

Producing common, generic information will not cut it in today’s marketplace. The best brands and professionals offer their expertise to the benefit of their followers and consumers.

2. SEO Content Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been the bread and butter of brands seeking to position themselves in the vast expanse of internet searches.

SEO content marketing utilizes keywords users utilize to find the content they want. Content writers employ keywords to ensure their materials are visible to anyone looking to find it.

Some brands employ content marketing services to produce SEO-optimized materials.

While working with content marketing services can be a great way to produce materials, a dark side must also be considered.

Some content writers utilize a practice known as “keyword stuffing.” Keyword stuffing consists of artificially including relevant keywords within the text, even when the text seems nonsensical or illogical. The point is to “trick” search engine algorithms to find the material and provide users with links to websites and product pages.

In the early days of search engines, this practice worked. However, as search engines used improved algorithms, they were able to detect keyword-stuffing practices.

Search engines such as Google punish websites employing this content marketing strategy by shoving such content to the bottom of search results.

The bottom line is that any effective content marketing strategy must strive to deliver useful content. Gibberish littered with keywords will not suffice.

Brands looking to work with content marketing services should do their due diligence. These services should demonstrate a track record of quality work. In such situations, brands can be sure their content will meet today’s rigorous SEO requirements.

3. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is often tossed in as an umbrella term for any type of online advertising. While digital marketing encompasses a wide range of online marketing tactics, digital marketing offers much more than just online advertising.

Brands employing digital marketing have various channels to choose from.

For instance, channels such as social media marketing, email marketing, video content, blogging, e-books, and newsletters can all reach a wide audience. Some of these channels are quite cost-effective, while others may require a more substantial investment.

Unfortunately, some brands believe that a content marketing strategy involving digital channels is solely based on throwing content out there. The belief that “more is better” can ultimately lead brands down a disappointing path.

When a content writer produces content for the sake of producing it, they knowingly or unknowingly damage the brand they represent.

Audiences do not want content just for the sake of it. They want content that speaks to their wants and needs. That is why the “less is more” approach has never been more relevant to digital marketing.

When thinking about how to create a content strategy, considering the most appropriate channels is crucial.

For example, a brand can choose to focus on one or two channels as opposed to casting a wide net. Becoming highly proficient in a single channel can yield far better results than attempting to scatter content across multiple channels.

In addition, working with an experienced content marketing service can help brands hone their sights on the most effective channels given their products and industry. Above all, effective digital marketing focuses on delivering the right content to the right audience over the right channel.

4. Content Marketing Strategy

Traditional advertising focuses on selling products and services to customers. This approach features products, extols their best qualities, and then urges audiences to purchase.

Traditional marketing utilizes calls to action and catchphrases to prompt customers to acquire the products and services in question.

As the world became increasingly digital, traditional advertising began to fade. The once-popular infomercial format became largely obsolete.

Digital channels such as social media have essentially replaced mainstream ones like television and radio. Print advertising agonizes as people predominantly choose digital formats over print.

Given digital marketing’s growing influence, content marketing has become a highly influential way of reaching customers.

Today’s consumers are no longer satisfied with customer testimonials and product demos. They want to get more information and content from brands. These savvy customers want to know the research backing a brand’s claims. Delivering this sort of value is not something done over a thirty-second TV spot.

Now, more than ever, successful brands use content marketing to communicate with their customers. They employ content marketing strategies to inform consumers but also “sell” their products and services.

The key is to deliver valuable information without sounding salesy. The most effective content marketing strategies employ solid data and evidence that can support customer testimonials. Smart consumers can see through actors pretending to be satisfied customers.

Concrete content marketing can win over skeptics. Therefore, brands must consider working with content writers or content marketing services known for their track record in producing high-quality content marketing materials.

Specialized content producers can mean the difference between building rapport with customers or completely alienating them.

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5. Content Marketing Services

In the traditional marketing world, brands employ marketing or advertising agencies to craft their campaigns. These agencies take care of virtually every aspect related to campaigns. From filming TV spots to writing brochures, advertising agencies have the skills and experience to produce well-rounded campaigns.

As the world transitioned from a traditional to a digital marketing world, traditional advertising agencies were faced with a dilemma: They either got with the times or faced extinction. Sadly, some went the way of the dinosaurs. Those that remained had to evolve in order to cope with the emergence of digital media platforms.

From the emergence of digital marketing came new firms specialized in digital content marketing.

These content marketing services could produce a wide of materials suitable for the array of available digital marketing channels.

As is the case with most fast-growing industries, new competitors entered the market, claiming to possess the expertise needed to excel in digital content marketing.

Many of these competitors could not live up to their claims, often employing inexperienced or untrained content writers. The results have led some brands to tarnish their reputations by producing subpar materials.

In some instances, unreliable content marketing services have produced such low-quality materials that brands have lost followers and customers.

In this regard, brands must do their due diligence when choosing individual content writers or employing content marketing services. Nowadays, practically anyone can claim they are a social media marketing expert or possess ample experience in digital marketing. But, the fact remains that a proven track record is the best way to gauge a content marketing service’s effectiveness.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Content Marketing

The widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) in virtually every aspect of life has raised concerns about its use in content marketing. Some brands may feel compelled to harness the power of AI in their content marketing strategy.

Indeed, the use of AI can be quite useful in planning great content marketing campaigns. For instance, using AI to process large data sets used to pinpoint target customers is quite encouraging.

But what happens when brands attempt to use AI in content marketing materials?

Ethical considerations aside, practical issues come to mind. Firstly, AI lacks the depth, insight, and experience that comes with becoming a seasoned professional. AI cannot hope to replicate the insights that years of industry experience can provide.

If anything, AI content is known to be generic and lacking in originality. This characteristic makes AI an unsuitable competitor for human intuition.

Also, AI does not always get things right.

While AI can produce substantial amounts of text in very little time, the text is often flawed.

In fact, it generally takes longer to review and correct text than it does to produce it from scratch.

This reason underscores the need for human intervention despite the purported benefits that AI provides.

Lastly, AI does not have a voice. AI’s voice comes from the language models employed to generate text. These language models attempt to mimic the way a person would actually sound.

While this text may seem convincing, audiences crave unique perspectives that come from real-world experience.

Perhaps AI may one day be on par with human intelligence. Nevertheless, that day appears to be quite distant. In the meantime, no substitute for human content writers in effective content marketing strategy can be found.

A Final Thought

AI tools can be quite effective in content marketing. They can assist in research, summarize materials, and generate useful lists and content ideas.

Some content writers employ AI in drafting outlines and brainstorming ideas. These uses make AI a highly useful tool. But AI is nothing more than that.

Like a typewriter or a pen, AI is a tool that enables human scribes to generate meaningful content. Thought leaders can harness AI’s power to facilitate their content production. However, AI cannot hope to contend with opinion leaders.

Thought leaders earn the right to be called as such due to their years of hard work and dedication to their craft. This reason highlights why AI-generated content remains vastly inferior to that produced by highly respected professionals and opinion-makers.

Planning Your Digital Marketing Content

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Today, content isn’t a “frill” ornamenting your marketing strategy; to a large extent, it is the strategy. And a content-centered strategy requires a plan.

Sprinkling random content “here and there” doesn’t constitute a content plan. It’s certainly better than nothing, but to consistently connect with and sell to customers or clients, a strategic content plan is where the smart money is now.

Companies of all sizes are putting their marketing budgets to work to create and publish content that transcends traditional advertising. Rather than just “getting the word out” to the world about their offerings, they are engaging target customers with targeted content.

Recent statistics show that around half of marketers plan to up their content marketing budgets, and that 80 percent of marketers see their content strategy as “very successful.” This growing trend means that by 2026, the content marketing industry is on track to hit 107 billion U.S. dollars. 

Who Are the Customers You’re Writing Content For?

As leading multinational services firm Deloitte states, “It’s no longer about reaching as many customers as possible, but instead reaching the right ones.”

So how do you determine who the “right” ones are?

An effective approach is to build customer personas that include age, gender, education, needs, lifestyle, digital channels used, and the types of media your customers read and view.

Normally, you will need to build more than a single persona to represent your customer base; for example, say you’re marketing condos. Both young couples and retirees may desire a simple lifestyle, but for different reasons, and their online habits probably differ, too.

There are a variety of ways to go about building customer personas that represent your typical or most likely customers. Among these are:

  • Using market research and data compilation available through “business intelligence” firms
  • Doing your own online research
  • Holding Focus Groups
  • Performing surveys and getting feedback from your customers through social media, newsletters, or in person.
  • Gathering insights about customer traits from your customer-facing employees
  • Asking your customer-facing employees to list the most common concerns voiced by customers

Using a good mix of science-derived data with in-person impressions is your best bet for developing reliable customer personas. Statistics and personal insight each contribute valuable information the other source can’t.

It’s also important to recognize that most customers today are tech-savvy. So, whatever their demographics and tendencies, they’re looking for a smooth digital experience. They don’t want to waste time or get stuck trying to access your linked content. So, work the access and usage kinks out of every piece of customer-serving content you place before it goes live.

Your new website sales pages, social media content, or landing pages can do wonders for your engagement and sales—but only if you’ve ensured they’re easy for your customers to find, understand, and use.

Create Strategic Content to Reach Your Customers

Before we talk about specific types of content, let’s look at some general ways content can make connections with your customers.

  • It can meet them “where they are” in the buying process. Have they just begun to consider investing in “X,” which you happen to offer, or are they making comparisons to zero in on a decision?
  • As your customers are making decisions, your content can address their desires, requirements, and feelings.
  • Your content can use the experiences of previous customers to show that your offerings have worked well for them.
  • It can show your customers how to use your products or services to their best advantage.
  • It can help establish your firm as a thought leader in your field.
  • It can introduce your company’s team members and their expertise.
  • It can provide a descriptive, pictorial tour of your facilities.
  • It can provide answers to your customers’ questions and engage them in conversations.
  • It can work to establish your reputation in your community, region, nation, or the world.
  • It can help you know your customers or clients and their preferences better, so you can continually improve content to better speak to them.

Where Will Your Marketing Content Live?

When picking the channels that will work best for your brand and audience, first consider your overall approach.

To engage customers better, companies are turning more and more toward using content (blogs, social media, resource centers, etc.) to promote their brands and the quality of their offerings, rather than running traditional “marketing projects.”

Budgeting for production and publishing for each type of content is part of the decision-making process, too.

Possibilities for content include:

  • Website Copy (Homepage, About Us, product pages, blogs, white papers, case studies)
  • Ad Copy that grabs attention
  • Advertorials for magazines and newspapers
  • Brochures: Digital and print
  • Ebooks that show your company’s expertise
  • Emails—digital or print
  • Landing pages that show “surfers” the features of your products and services
  • Newsletters that keep your customers updated on your latest news
  • Press releases that publicize your latest locations, products, and services
  • Sales and data sheets that enumerate and explain the benefits of your offerings
  • Social Media (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Snapchat, Pinterest, Quora, Tumblr, and others, including many audience-specific channels)
  • Earned media (content written about your business by someone else, that you didn’t pay for, but earned by your reputation).
  • Wikipedia articles that show authority in your industry

Generate Ideas for Brand-Perfect Written Content

Every piece of on-brand content starts with a spark that generates an idea. Below, find 23 “spark plugs” for flashes of insight that generate audience-right content ideas.

  1. Feature interviews of your own employees and experts.
  2. Share case studies that describe customer experiences and testimonials.
  3. Tell your company’s story. Make it personality-centered and historically interesting. This could be turned into a blog series, an e-book, or a series in your newsletters.
  4. Introduce your exciting new products or services.
  5. Canvass your audience through social media about their primary needs and concerns, then use the results as topics.
  6. Create seasonal content that follows inventory changes and sales.
  7. Promote upcoming industry gatherings or describe a recent one, highlighting what your offerings brought to the table.
  8. Recycle content ideas you have used successfully, approaching them from a different angle.
  9. Think in terms of “topic clusters.” Brainstorm about all of the topics that are connected to large, central one.
  10. Do some surfing to find the types of content your competitors are using.
  11. Write engaging digital instruction guides to your products or services. Be sure they’re never boring.
  12. Write about how cutting-edge and on-the-horizon technology will soon be affecting your industry.
  13. Ask for audience input on tricks or techniques they’ve discovered while using your offerings.
  14. For blogs, consider inviting an occasional expert guest blogger.
  15. Share attention-grabbing industry statistics and show how your company is in the center of creating (or changing) them.
  16. Think in terms of your target customer’s “buying journey” and write some content for each stage.
  17. Ask your employees and experts what they think customers would most want or need to hear about
  18. Do a comparison of your products or services with others on the market. Be sure the information is accurate.
  19. Follow the news and write content connected to major stories that impact your business (or that your business can impact).
  20. Use a current cultural phenomenon as a theme for transitory content like emails and newsletters.
  21. Show your customers how your products are made, or how your services are carried out.
  22. Write a press release or blog about a charity event or cause, and how your company has contributed.
  23. Partner with a collaborator or influencer—someone who can catch your audience’s interest—and inject their quotes, images, or videos into your content. Choose carefully.

Who Will Be Responsible for Each Piece of Written Content?

It’s time to size up the abilities of each of your potential content creators. Do you have journalistic types who are seasoned interviewers, able to churn out newsy press releases, advertorials, and newsletters?

Do you have other people who are crackerjack social media posters who love conversing with clients?

Put them to work to create posts and interact with your customers on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the rest.

What about research “detectives” who can track down industry statistics and quantified industry trends and translate them into striking graphics?

Or tech-savvy types who can write your instruction guides or white papers?

As with any other kind of team, your content team will operate best with a defined plan and a workload that’s reasonably paced.

For each person on your content marketing team, also consider:  Is the tech each person will need to produce their content available, integrated, and are they trained in it?

Put Your Content Marketing Strategy on a Schedule

If you’re going to keep everyone who’s involved in your content creation, approvals, and publication in the loop, a schedule—or content calendar—will do the job.

This tool gives all involved a big-picture view of your content strategy, keeps the content creation workflow moving, and (importantly) enables budgeting for associated costs.

A content calendar is just what it sounds like. It’s a shareable calendar that shows when each type and piece of content will be produced and go live for customers. It can be shared through your intranet, another in-house system, and/or in physical form. The main idea is to make it easily accessible and useable.

Getting your calendar together will normally require some input from all parties concerned, from executives to marketing, creatives, buyers, distribution and possibly others.

Measure the Success of Your Content Marketing Strategy

How can you know if your content plan is working? By using KPI’s—key performance indicators, that report back to you numerically to give you the specific pieces of information that spell “success” and “growth” to your organization.

KPI’s can include search engine performance (ranking), website traffic, number of shares by visitors, click-through rate, number of unique visitors, and more. Whether you keep track of a few indicators or quite a few is up to you.

You can track KPIs through software that uses business analytics to gather data and provide reports on your performance within selected indicators.

Getting Help from Content Marketing Services

Planning an entire content campaign is challenging because it usually: a) Encompasses many types of content, b) that must be coordinated to stay on-message, c) sound authentically “you,” d) be produced and released in a timely manner, e) be measured frequently for effectiveness, and f) be adjusted accordingly.

There are real advantages to hiring a marketing-savvy content planning team. This is exponentially true for large campaigns that involve many types of content.

Our teams at The Writers for Hire collaborate with your team to develop your content plan as if it were our own.  A skilled team can help you see through the “forest” (your overall objective) to the “trees” (the individual pieces of content that will accomplish it) by:

  • Developing your customer or client personas
  • Zeroing in on the problems your customers want to solve
  • Helping to define your brand and the factors that distinguish it
  • Determining which KPIs can best track your campaign’s performance
  • Helping pick the channels where you can best engage with your audience
  • Creating your content calendar or calendars, to ensure your campaign stays on schedule
  • (If desired) Writing brand-right content for all your channels

A content campaign that is fresh, ambitious, and achievable is the goal. A content marketing services team can give you a boost in all three areas, giving you a content campaign that works for your brand, 24/7.

Key Considerations for an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

When it comes to content marketing, a thought leadership campaign is an initiative in its own right and intellectually completely independent from all other content marketing strategies.

The reason? Thought leaders are unique rare individuals or organizations and it is they who inform a thought leadership campaign. 

What Constitutes to Thought Leadership?

Thought leadership is not an exact science and depending on who you ask what a thought leader is, you will most likely get very different answers. Forbes, however, presents two handy definitions of thought leaders:

  1. “A thought leader is an individual or firm that prospects, clients, referral sources, intermediaries and even competitors recognize as one of the foremost authorities in selected areas of specialization, resulting in its being the go-to individual or organization for said expertise”.
  2. “A thought leader is an individual or firm that significantly profits from being recognized as such”.

If we take the example of a consultant neurosurgeon who has devoted his or her life to the effective removal of Glioblastoma brain tumors over a thirty-year period with an average of 80% to 90% success rate, they would most definitely become a thought leader, and therefore, high in demand. 

Over their careers, they most likely came across very challenging unique individual cases that may have required experimental treatments and surgeries that have never been done before. In addition to their education, training, and everyday experiences, these experimental treatments have allowed them to gain unique knowledge and experiences which are of great importance and value to the wider field of oncology. 

So, with the above example in mind, we concur with the simple definition from dictionary.com suggesting that a thought leader is:

“a person or organization that is a recognized authority in a particular field and whose innovative ideas influence and guide others”

What is a Thought Leadership Campaign?

In simple terms, the purpose of a thought leadership campaign is to empirically build a strong, credible, industry-expert brand, and, ultimately to capitalize on your own, or your organization’s unique knowledge and expertise through robust, multichannel marketing interventions. 

If we refer back to our neurosurgeon example above and assume that the neurosurgeon is employed by a large hospital chain that wants to raise its public profile.

The neurosurgeon will make the ideal thought leader that can inform a campaign by the hospital to promote their oncological departments, utilizing details from some of the effective experimental treatments carried out by the neurosurgeon, accompanied by facts and statistics that inform the public about their efficacy and success rates.

Thought Leadership vs Content Marketing

Although both are critical tools in any established organization’s digital marketing success, there are significant differences between traditional promotional content marketing and thought leadership content marketing campaigns.

  • While traditional content marketing aims to inform and help solve issues, thought leadership campaigns aim to promote discussions around the expert opinions and information you promote. The idea is to get people talking about you or your organization.
  • Traditional content marketing such as weekly blogging may focus on creating high-volume content published very frequently. Thought leadership focuses on high-quality, narrow-focused empirical content with a lower publishing frequency.
  • Content marketing sells to your audience, while thought leadership captivates your audience.
  • Content marketing promotes industry standards, whereas thought leadership campaigns have the ability to change or modify entire industry perspectives and practices.

Planning Your Thought Leadership Campaign

Thought leadership campaigns are some of the most effective ways to grab your audience’s attention and to drive revenue, but, creating a powerful campaign can be challenging. LinkedIn suggests that only 17% of B2B buyers see thought leadership content that is of exceptional quality.

It all starts with planning and following a structured approach.

When asked what some of the key considerations are in the planning stage of a major marketing campaign, former Creative Director at Ogilvy Namibia and founder of Brands By Aura Namibia, Nardus Erasmus said, “It's important to know your client and what makes their business unique. You can’t create an effective campaign without close collaboration and integration with your client”.

Founder of Brands By Aura Namibia, Nardus Erasmus

1. Thought Leadership Campaign Objectives

Embarking on a thought leadership campaign with no clear objectives is like jumping in your car and driving away with no destination. The scope and content of your campaign are determined by your objectives such as:

  • Sales: It is becoming ever more challenging to sell to consumers through traditional methods such as leaflet drops, print advertising, billboards, etc. Instead of being sold to, consumers prefer finding products/services themselves and making informed buying decisions based on expert information and educational content that addresses their concerns and questions.
  • Brand Building: Thought leadership campaigns are a great way to put a human face to your brand. Business equals relationships and a key objective of a good thought leadership campaign should be to connect with your audience on a personal level. 
  • Public Relations: Enhancing your public profile should be a key priority for all businesses, and writing your own expert content can go a long way in building credibility and trust with the public. 
  • Recruitment and Selection: Once you or your business is an established authority and you start publishing content around your expertise, you also generate interest in prospective talent. Driven professionals always seek out the best organizations with the best prospects of learning specialized skills.
  • SEO: Search engines love quality, novel, and expert content as this improves the quality of the results they offer their customers. This means your content may be prioritized and appear more frequently. 
  • Building a Strong Social Presence: It goes without saying that any valuable expert content does really well on social media. People tend to like and share thought-provoking content more and you may also get a few followers, likes, and shares.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Once you have set your objectives, you need to start thinking about your target audience. As with any effective marketing campaign, it is critical to know who you are talking to. Do some research on their age groups, how they digest information, where they get their information, their interests, and how your products/services can meet their needs.

 3. Contextualize Your Campaign

Any thought leadership campaign must be situated within the wider industry context with background and insights on the issues you are addressing. For instance, if you or your company has made an advancement in science and you want to tell people about it, it is important to first do research on all the latest developments on this issue and then describe how your advancement is unique and how it benefits the industry and your target audience.

4. Conduct Competitor Research

In order to get your campaign as original as possible, you need to know what your competitors are publishing and what platforms they are using. You want your content to have a district voice that is completely independent of your competitors. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their thought leadership campaigns and build your content with that in mind. 

5. Clearly Define Your Expertise

This step involves thinking critically about what expertise your organization can offer that others can’t. Make a list of the key points to focus your thought leadership campaign on. Articulate in detail how specifically your knowledge, products or services help your audience with their struggles or needs. 

6. Set KPIs

Start thinking about how you will measure the success of your campaign.

You can track the qualitative feedback, comments, and responses from your audience on social media, how many shares and followers you generate, conversion rates and look at how much time they spend reading your content to name a few.

Your KPIs will tell you what works well and where you can optimize your content.

7. Stick to Your Calendar

Creating an editorial calendar is critical for you to manage your thought leadership campaign. Your calendar helps you organize content deadlines, publishing dates, and SME interview and collaboration management. 

Align Your Channels With Your Goals

The audience you are targeting will determine the channels you will use. For instance, if your thought leadership campaign aims to educate younger individuals on advancements you have made in the field of virtual reality, you should consider using social media posts.

If you are looking to attract new talent, you may want to publish your content on job boards or professional networking sites such as LinkedIn. 

If you want to tell professionals in your field about your developments, publishing your thought leadership content in a trade publication would be ideal. If your advancements are of a significant and groundbreaking nature, you should not hesitate to approach mass media outlets such as newspapers, radio, and television.

You should also consider publishing any groundbreaking developments in academic or other journals such as the Journal of Neuroscience, for example. 

Wherever you decide to publish, always ensure that all your content is available on your own blog and other platforms. These platforms incur the least cost and will drive more people to your website. 

Best Practices for an Outstanding Thought Leadership Campaign

Because a thought leadership campaign is essentially evidence-based marketing, the campaign architect must ensure that it conforms to the following quality hallmarks:

  • Stick to the golden rule of quality over quantity
  • Keep empirical, fact-checked evidence at the core of the campaign
  • Use credible sources for any research (Not Wikipedia)
  • Keep it smart, informative, and creative
  • Ensure the content is thought-provoking 
  • Keep a clearly defined marketing purpose in mind
  • Tailor the content to the target audience
  • Ensure the information adds value to the wider debate and industry

When developing your campaign, there are broadly four areas you should focus on

  1. Data: C-level decision-makers and customers are more likely to make a buying decision when you present them with data that backs up any claims you make. Everyone likes to get a new perspective and insights on existing issues and the more compelling your data, the more leads you will likely generate. 
  2. Story: A good thought leadership campaign is not just about presenting facts and opinions with data, but rather using those data and opinions to tell a story. Here you should really consider your audience and ensure you communicate your expertise with examples and analogies to make the data clear and digestible.
  3. Design: Firstly, when you publish content of such a specialized nature, you want to ensure your documents, blog articles, whitepapers, and so forth are grammatically correct and follow a logical structure with clear headings and signposting. Secondly, there is no reason not to incorporate visual aids such as pictures, graphs, tables, or even infographics. People are more likely to read content with visual aids because it brings the campaign to life.
  4. Consistency: If you are planning a long-term thought leadership campaign, you must ensure that all the content you publish is of the same standard in terms of the quality of the information, the design, the layout, etc. You should compartmentalize the entire campaign into separate units and publish them regularly according to your calendar to build anticipation with your audience.

Erasmus says “Don’t underestimate the power of visuals. We are naturally drawn to colorful objects for a reason, they intrigue us. Where you may need to use several paragraphs to explain a simple concept in writing, a simple visual representation speaks a thousand words”.

Thought Leadership Campaign Challenges

As with any marketing campaign, you will face several challenges. The enormous interest in thought leadership has sparked an abundance of thought leadership content being created, the majority of which does not meet any sort of quality standard. 

A powerful campaign must be able to navigate through the noise, adhere to the quality metrics and be accessible. If the content you publish is boring and predictable, you give your audience no reason to return for more, and you will cultivate a negative perception. 

Another issue thought leadership campaigns must overcome is striking the right balance between publishing valuable information without divulging critical intellectual property which can lead to a loss of competitive commercial advantage once in the public domain.

An effective thought leadership campaign must have actionable insights that provide solutions to problems, without which your conclusions will lack enthusiasm and inspiration. 

How Writing Agencies Develop Thought Leadership Campaigns

Although thought leaders are without a doubt experts in their field of study or occupation, they are not necessarily great at writing, and this is where a writing agency becomes invaluable.

Writing agencies usually employ well-educated writers from many different backgrounds and with varying levels of experience. When it comes to a thought leadership campaign, you need a diverse team of writers, not just one freelancer.

In addition to having the right balance of skills and bandwidth, a writing agency helps you to manage the entire project, which includes managing your editorial calendar, conducting all the necessary high-quality research, and interviewing the right people with the right questions to get exactly the information you need to inform your campaign.

When you as the thought leader work with a writing agency, your obligations are limited to filling in the expert knowledge gaps in their writing, saving you an enormous amount of time and effort.

A thought leadership campaign will likely have to be written across multiple mediums for many different platforms. Writing agencies are proficient in all the various mediums such as ebooks, whitepapers, books, blogs, case studies, etc. These writers also have a deep understanding of SEO best practices and can ensure your campaign appears in search results.

Finally, writing agencies are used to working to strict deadlines and can produce large volumes of proofread and edited content quickly. 

Erasmus concludes, “Thought leaders are not created easily. Once you have refined your craft, you are at the embryonic stage of thought leadership. You have to keep pushing yourself to the outer limits and the unexplored regions of your craft in order to become a thought leader”.

“Must Read” Nonfiction Books for 2024

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

A great nonfiction book stands out for its ability to captivate readers with engaging prose and meticulous research. Its writing style is clear, concise, and compelling, effectively communicating complex ideas in an accessible manner.

The book offers a unique perspective, shedding light on lesser-known aspects of a subject or presenting fresh insights into familiar topics. By incorporating storytelling techniques, it weaves a compelling narrative that keeps readers enthralled from start to finish.

Moreover, an outstanding nonfiction book is relevant and timely, addressing pressing issues or themes that resonate with its audience. Its originality and innovation challenge conventional thinking, inspiring readers to view the world through a different lens. The author maintains a balanced and objective approach, presenting various viewpoints while staying true to the book’s purpose.

Human elements, such as personal anecdotes and real-life stories, add relatability to the subject matter, fostering emotional connections with readers. The book is accessible to both experts and novices, avoiding unnecessary jargon without oversimplifying complex concepts.

With a well-structured layout, the book seamlessly guides readers through its chapters, leaving a lasting impression through its emotional impact. It provides practical applications or takeaways that enrich readers’ lives and challenges them to grow intellectually.

Critical acclaim, positive reviews, and endorsements further solidify the book’s reputation as a remarkable nonfiction read. In essence, a great nonfiction book leaves an indelible mark, enlightening, inspiring, and engaging its readers throughout their journey.

With these elements in mind, here is a great reading list encompassing ten amazing nonfiction books sure to grip the imagination and pique curiosity!

“You Just Need to Lose Weight” by Aubrey Gordon

“You Just Need to Lose Weight” by Aubrey Gordon is an outstanding nonfiction book that challenges societal norms and perceptions surrounding weight and body image.

With compelling writing and personal insights, Gordon dismantles harmful myths about weight loss and advocates for body positivity and self-acceptance.

This engaging tome presents a refreshing perspective on health, emphasizing holistic well-being over restrictive diets and unrealistic beauty standards.

This compelling narrative challenges notions such as 'being fat is a choice' or the 'obesity epidemic' by providing evidence to dispel these myths.

Through research and lived experiences, Gordon offers a powerful and relatable narrative that resonates with readers from all walks of life. Its empowering message of self-love and body inclusivity makes 'You Just Need to Lose Weight' an exceptional nonfiction read.

It prompts readers to question and rethink prevailing notions about weight and health.

“You Just Need to Lose Weight“ is available on Amazon.

“This Is Supposed to Be Fun” by Myisha Battle

For anyone who’s ever felt frustrated by repetitive and uninspired messages from dating app matches, this book is here to address every concern.

Myisha Battle, a clinical sexologist and experienced sex and dating coach provides a refreshing approach that diverges from the usual cliches like “there’s plenty of fish in the sea.”

In her book, Battle acknowledges the challenges and complexities of app dating, describing it as dealing with unfavorable circumstances. Based on client stories, Battle delves into the pitfalls of app dating, focusing on the games that make app dating a dreadful experience.

With a feminist and antiracist perspective, Battle’s coaching stands apart from typical dating self-help books. Her advice aligns with these principles as she endeavors to dismantle misogyny from the framework of heterosexual dating.

Battle presents a practical and emotionally supportive action plan, interweaving client stories, valuable tips, and reflective points. For those who cannot afford a personal dating coach, this book offers an excellent alternative to navigate the dating landscape successfully.

“This Is Supposed to Be Fun” is available on Amazon in audiobook and Kindle versions.

“We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe” by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson

“We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe” by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson is a compelling book that takes readers on an entertaining and enlightening journey through the mysteries of the universe.

With humor and accessible language, the authors tackle complex scientific concepts, making them engaging and understandable to a broader audience. They candidly admit that much humankind still doesn’t know about the cosmos, making science a thrilling and ever-evolving exploration.

Cham’s whimsical illustrations complement Whiteson’s expertise, adding charm to the book.

The authors address big questions like dark matter, black holes, and the universe’s fate, inviting readers to ponder the frontiers of human knowledge.

Overall, “We Have No Idea” offers an enjoyable and thought-provoking experience that inspires curiosity and wonder about the vast unknowns of the universe.

“We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe” is available on Amazon in audiobook and Kindle versions.

“More Than a Glitch” by Meredith Broussard

“More Than a Glitch” is a captivating read that exposes the hidden biases and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

Broussard, a computer scientist, and journalist, skillfully unravels the myths surrounding AI’s infallibility, revealing its inherent flaws and the real-world consequences of its misjudgments.

The narrative offers a critical examination of AI’s impact on society, from biased algorithms in criminal justice to AI’s limitations in healthcare and education.

Broussard’s meticulous research and engaging storytelling highlight the urgency of understanding and addressing AI-related issues.

Her insightful analysis demystifies AI, making it accessible to a broader audience while empowering readers to question and challenge the technology’s role in their lives.

“More Than a Glitch” is a provocative exercise that underscores the importance of human accountability in developing and deploying AI systems.

“More Than a Glitch” is available on Amazon.

“Riding with George: Sportsmanship & Chivalry in the Making of America’s First President” by Philip G. Smucker

“Riding with George: Sportsmanship & Chivalry in the Making of America’s First President” is a great nonfiction work that offers a fascinating glimpse into the character and values of America’s first president, George Washington.

Through insightful analysis supported by dedicated research, Smucker explores Washington’s love for horsemanship and how it shaped his leadership style and character.

This stimulating discussion underscores the importance of sportsmanship, chivalry, and integrity in Washington’s life, revealing lesser-known aspects of his personality.

Smucker’s vivid portrayal of the equestrian world in colonial America adds depth to the narrative, immersing readers in the cultural context of the time.

“Riding with George” not only presents a compelling portrait of Washington but also sheds light on the values that played a crucial role in shaping the nation’s founding father.

“Riding with George: Sportsmanship & Chivalry in the Making of America’s First President” is available on Amazon.

“Stories That Stick” by Kindra Hall

“Stories That Stick” by Kindra Hall is a captivating nonfiction book that unveils the power of storytelling in business and communication.

Hall expertly weaves together personal anecdotes, real-world examples, and practical advice to demonstrate how compelling narratives can captivate customers and influence audiences.

The book presents a clear and actionable framework for incorporating storytelling into various aspects of business, from marketing to leadership.

Hall’s engaging writing style and her passion for storytelling make the book an enjoyable and inspiring read. Readers are entertained by the stories and equipped with the tools to apply storytelling techniques in their professional endeavors.

“Stories That Stick” stands out as a must-read for anyone seeking to harness the persuasive and transformative potential of storytelling in the business world.

“Stories That Stick” is available on Amazon.

“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs” by Kerry Howley

In her highly entertaining book, Kerry Howley addresses the alarming reality of human beings whittled down to data and subject to surveillance in the digital age.

Through the captivating story of Reality Winner, a millennial and NSA employee, Howley illustrates the profound implications of online life and surveillance.

Winner, a polylinguist tasked with aiding the US military in target selection, found herself at 25 years old, sentenced to five years in prison for leaking classified documents related to a Russian election attack.

Howley skillfully analyzes the harsh and surreal conditions surrounding this dramatic case, illustrating how it implicates society at large.

Even if phone surveillance merely reveals visits to innocuous websites, virtually everyone is entangled in the broader implications of a surveillance-based society.

This book holds readers captive, compelling them to read it in various daily moments, underscoring its gripping and insightful nature.

“Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs” is available on Amazon.

“Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother” by Sonia Nazario

“Enrique’s Journey” is an eye-opening and heartbreaking nonfiction book chronicling a young boy’s perilous and emotionally charged journey.

Nazario follows Enrique, who embarks on a treacherous odyssey from Honduras to the United States to find his mother, who left him behind years ago to seek a better life.

Through extensive research and immersive storytelling, the author portrays the harrowing challenges faced by countless undocumented migrants attempting to cross borders and navigate through dangerous territories.

This gripping read exposes on the human toll of immigration policies, exposing the hardships, dangers, and sacrifices involved in seeking a better future.

'Enrique's Journey' serves as a poignant testament to the resilience and determination of those pursuing the American dream, making it a powerful and emotionally resonant nonfiction work.

“Enrique’s Journey” is available on Amazon.

“Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life” by Eric Metaxas

“Fish Out of Water” is a fascinating nonfiction book that follows the author’s quest to discover life’s true purpose and significance.

Metaxas navigates through philosophical, religious, and existential themes, offering a thought-provoking exploration of the human condition.

The book delves into the universal search for meaning and fulfillment with a compelling narrative and introspective reflections.

Metaxas's engaging writing style draws readers into his journey of self-discovery, making the book relatable and inspiring.

'Fish Out of Water' invites readers to ponder life's deeper questions and embark on their quests for meaning, making it a captivating and intellectually stimulating nonfiction work.

“Fish Out of Water” is available on Amazon.

“You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula” by Hanna Matthews

In response to the pressing concern of reproductive rights in America, this book on abortion stands as a poignant and distinctive work, neither a eulogy nor a battle cry, but a heartfelt love letter.

Written by an abortion doula, activist, parent, and writer, the author, Matthews, provides firsthand accounts from clinics that have now become battlegrounds.

The book is a testament to moral clarity, medical precision, and captivating prose, making it a significant addition to the bookshelves of both seasoned advocates and those new to the cause of bodily autonomy.

Matthews addresses the historically taboo topics related to our bodies, including periods, sex, infertility, miscarriage, birth, death, and postpartum physiologies.

She confronts the challenges in expressing the intricacies of abortion, as societal perceptions have often obscured its true realities with mythologies, moralization, and politicization.

Through this book, Matthews adeptly educates readers, inviting them to engage with this sensitive subject matter while fostering a sense of empathy and understanding.

“You or Someone You Love” is available on Amazon.

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One Final Thought

The best nonfiction books have the power to challenge readers beyond their preconceived notions and push them outside their comfort zones. These books encourage readers to think critically and open-mindedly by delving into unfamiliar territory. They present alternative perspectives and fresh insights, prompting readers to question their existing beliefs and assumptions.

In this exploration process, readers can learn and grow, broadening their understanding of the world and embracing new ideas. Through exposure to diverse viewpoints, readers gain a more nuanced understanding of complex issues and develop empathy for different experiences.

Ultimately, the best nonfiction books serve as catalysts for intellectual and personal growth, guiding readers toward greater self-awareness and a deeper appreciation for the diversity of thought and human experiences.

SOPs That Work for Your International Business

Posted on by The Writers For Hire, Inc.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Your business can’t live—well—without them. SOPs provide your people with indispensable guidelines for operation, standardization, safety, and regulatory compliance. 

Creating effective SOPs and keeping them current is always a challenge—and when your business’s locations span the globe, the challenge is compounded.

When formulating your international SOPs, some of the main areas to consider are:

  • What’s the best format and distribution method to use across international and cultural boundaries, and what other adjustments, such as to photos and graphics, need to be made?
  • What are the regulatory differences that need to be integrated with your materials for each location?
  • Which method of translation is best for putting your SOPs into the languages used by overseas staff?

Format and Distribution Challenges With Global SOPs

Formatting and distribution are overlapping terms in the realm of SOPs. Some formats will lend themselves better to certain methods of dissemination than others, and better serve your company’s international configuration.

Digital Distribution of SOPs

Distribution via internal websites is a trend that makes sense for international corporations because content can be adapted relatively simply to each country’s language and culture.

One international company whose SOPs were written by The Writers for Hire (TWFH) shares its global standards with employees via an internal SharePoint “website.”

The site enables users to view content in their own language. Images, such as photos of employees, don’t favor one culture over another.

One formatting option for such an SOP intranet 'website' is to give each standard (Uniforms, Driver Qualifications, Opening and Closing Routines) its own tab.

Each tab leads to a table of contents for subtopics, and each subtopic leads to standards for that topic.

A supervisor may wish to pull up an entire set of standards related to their area of responsibility, so this is a key capability to look for when choosing a company to facilitate your intranet.

“Modern” SharePoint has improved its navigation options as well as its branding and customization capabilities by using “hubs” rather than a traditional navigation system. Microsoft says, “This type of structure is far more flexible and adaptive to the changing needs of your organization.”

Using one of many cloud-based document management systems to hold your SOP content is another digital distribution option. Individual pages (in PDF or another format) are shelved in your “library” of SOP content. Each page can address an individual topic such as “Jobsite Safety Procedures” or “Equipment Maintenance.”

“Physical” Distribution of SOPs

Some companies still choose to send out their standards via email for printing at each location. The biggest problem with this method is version control; paper copies will almost certainly become obsolete as procedures change.

Emailing updates to be added to these paper copies is a sketchy and inefficient method of keeping standards current. You don’t want employees using outdated or even illegal or dangerous procedures.

Language Challenges—Translation for Your International SOPs

Should you use human or machine translation to ensure your SOPs work well around the world?

There are advantages and disadvantages to each method. There’s also the possibility of using a combination of the two.

 With skilled human translation:

  • Your translators either work independently or are hired through a service.
  • You can expect the highest degree of accuracy. This, of course, is essential when it comes to the SOPs that guide your business. The language you choose is normally the translator’s “mother tongue,” so their knowledge will be much deeper and more nuanced than the programmed content used for machine translation.
  • You will usually pay more. The cost is prohibitive for some businesses, depending on the number of languages needed and the length of their SOP content.
  • You may need to wait longer. With other jobs on your translator’s or agency’s calendar, yours may need to stand in line. Even if a translator gets to work right away, it will take them some time to translate a large quantity of written work.
  • If your company needs its SOPs translated into several languages or more, the human process will almost definitely be slower and more expensive than machine translation.

With machine translation:

  • Translation will be done through programmed systems that try to simulate the way human brains work.
  • It’s easy to find online, and they work fast.
  • It’s cheaper. You will either be using a free program or a paid machine translation service that delivers translated content or attaches to your cloud-based intranet site to translate its pages into your employees’ native languages as needed.
  • It may work better for translating between some languages than others.
  • There is always some degree of inaccuracy in the translations, due to programs’ inability to understand inflections, expressions, and what is and isn’t acceptable in a particular culture. Programs only “know” what has been fed into them—and they’re not imaginative.
  • Inaccuracies will need to be cleared up, either by native speakers or an automated method. A method that TWFH has used is to have programmers write a custom script that runs “in the background” during translation. The script contains a dictionary of words that should NOT be translated. This works well for countries and locales that have good internet connection speeds but may not work where connection is slow.

Using both methods together is the trend at present.

Although machine translation is becoming better and better, there is usually still a need to review machine-translated SOP content, correcting it for local expressions, appropriateness, and spelling.

Many types of machine translation software are available online. They will typically do the vast bulk of your translation work, and some types include features designed to prevent or fix mistranslation.

Read this article for a good overview of the state of machine translation and the features of seven popular, top-performing brands.

Regulatory Challenges With Worldwide SOPs

Ensuring compliance with all applicable regulations is a major reason SOPs are essential to your business.

But laws, ordinances, and accepted practices vary from country to country and from one locality to another.

New regulations are sometimes passed, making it necessary to adjust your SOPs accordingly. Because of all these factors, regulations are one area where efficient version control is a must.

“Food safety is one of the areas that can be most difficult,” says TWFH’s Kathleen Rinchiuso, who has been involved in producing SOPs for a large international company.

“For instance, what temperature can a restaurant hold food at? And Europe has banned a lot of dyes that the U.S. hasn’t banned,” she notes. “And even locally, there are different food handling regulations.”

Standards for the handling and transportation of chemicals varies overseas, and companies that produce or use them in their products must deal with those variations when formulating SOPs.

Types of work uniforms, too, may be a cultural issue, and subjects as innocuous in western countries as tattoos and jewelry may be controversial in other regions of the world, Rinchiuso notes.

Rinchiuso recounts that TWFH established contacts in all of its large SOP client’s “biggest markets,” and then used a survey system to garner feedback about proposed standards from subject matter experts (SMEs) in each of the client’s overseas locations:

“SMEs know their local standards best, so we asked, as part of the survey, whether they needed small or big changes.”

To request large changes, the SMEs could explain their reasoning in text boxes. Once all the data was gathered, company standards were established, with final decisions resting with the company’s head of project. Quarterly reviews continue to allow for the discussion of regulatory issues.

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