How to Evaluate A Content Writer

When you're looking for a professional writer to create the content for your business's website, there's a single factor that should be your primary consideration. While price, availability, scheduling, and other factors are important, there's just one factor that should make or break your decision: Results.

Your best guide to the performance of any writer you are considering is the past work of that writer. It's very easy to measure if the writer has a good list of complete websites he or she has written within the past year or two. By visiting one or more of those websites and carefully looking at the entire site, visiting multiple pages, you'll get a very good idea of the capabilities of the writer.

It sounds too simple to be true, doesn't it? It's not. Such an investigation into past projects is hard work for you, but finding a competent professional writer who understands all the factors that go into creating the complete content for a business website is a difficult task.

For example, look a the list of work samples on the left in this blog. They represent my work for the past year. For each of those links, I have written all the content on the site. The variety of businesses in that list is a demonstration of my flexibility in many business subject areas, and the actual content on the site represents my web content and marketing strategies and my skill at presenting those strategies. By looking carefully at a site that is similar in some way to your own business, you'll be able to judge every factor of the content, and will know whether I would be a suitable writer for your project.

Any content writer you're considering should be proud to present a list of past projects, linked so you can quickly assess the quality of his or her work. If such a list is not available, use caution, and insist on seeing recent complete website work samples in a field related to your business.

Only after a close look at real-life examples of a writer's work should discussions about scheduling and price begin. Without an assurance that the writer can produce effective website content, there's no point to those discussions. No other factor is as important in choosing a content writer.

Email Me for a free evaluation of your web site's content. I'll be happy to help you understand how expertly-written and effective content can convert your visitors into leads and sales. Visit my Web Content Page for more information.

Unity & Continuity - Two Important Factors for Web Content

As I evaluate websites for small businesses, a flaw I often notice is that many of these sites were written by different people at different times. They lack unity and continuity. This presents a serious problem in retaining visitors and converting visits into leads and sales. Every business website should speak with a single voice. That's unity. In addition, every page on a business website should relate in some way to every other page. That's continuity.

On many websites, clicking a link to a different page often results in a jarring change of voice. The content reads differently and can seem unrelated to the content of the previous page. There's a break in the unity of the content. This can be confusing to the visitor, and is a common reason visitors leave your site. Confusing your potential customers is a very bad idea. It's much the same as handing a customer in your brick and mortar location off to a different salesperson without telling the second salesperson anything about the customer or what you've discussed. That lack of unity often kills a sale in real life and on your website.

Another problem that's related to unity is a lack of continuity on many business websites. When different writers create parts of your website, the relationship between one page and another can easily be lost. Not only do visitors see a new voice speaking, but they may not feel as though they're even on the same website. The first page may discuss a particular issue and use a particular marketing strategy. Then, when the visitor jumps to another page on the website, a different marketing strategy and voice suddenly appears. Again, the result is confusion and often results in the visitor making an abrupt exit.

Both unity and continuity are critical to success in retaining visitors and converting them into customers. The only way to achieve both is to have your entire website speak with the same voice and present a unified marketing strategy. If your website has both unity and continuity, your visitors are far more likely to visit multiple pages on your site and take action to contact you or to order products and services. It's that simple. To meet your goals of visitor retention and conversion, major site revisions should be done by a single writer or a content provider who can present a unified voice and carefully convey your marketing strategy across the entire site.

Email Me for a free evaluation of your website's content. I'll be happy to help you understand how expertly-written and effective content can provide the unity and continuity that effectively converts your visitors into leads and sales. Please see the links on the left sidebar of this page for samples of my web content writing.