Finding a business that doesn’t have a website, blog, and social media accounts is like finding a unicorn. But not the good kind of unicorn who has amazing magical capabilities. The bad kind of unicorn (who knew there was such a thing?); let’s instead pick on sheep and refer to the aforementioned business as the “black sheep.”
Why You Don’t Want To Be The Black Sheep In Business
Businesses need to stand out (like a magical unicorn). However, standing out doesn’t mean that you have to obstinately choose to ignore the importance of a website, blog, and those pesky social media accounts. Let’s face it, we live in a digital world and that means that businesses (even those hardy brick and mortar locations) need to have a digital presence.
A failure to have a digital presence is, to continue our sheep metaphor, like leaving the pasture gate open and wondering why your investment has fled. Through a digital presence you are automatically giving your business a chance to succeed, by succinctly introducing it to a waiting audience of potential consumers, industry connections, and soon-to-be loyal brand ambassadors. With this in mind, if you do define your business as the “black sheep,” then fear not…an online content provider is the answer to the problem that you didn’t know you had.
The Benefits Of An Online Content Provider
An online content provider used to refer to a platform that would push your digital content out into the world. Like many things in business, the term has now gained new meaning in today’s digitally prevalent world. In layman’s terms an online content provider is quite literally a platform (or business) that will not only have the resources needed to create your content, but also the digital tools needed to effectively push it out to interested readers, viewers, or otherwise engaged individuals.
Do you remember the days of massive flashing banner ads? Back in the early 2000s the Internet was filled with these ads. It was also filled with articles, websites, and blog posts that suffered from keyword stuffing. Fortunately, the Internet (or more aptly put, the businesses using the Internet) slowly learned from their mistakes. The flashing banners ads had been designed to mimic real life billboards, which for the longest time provided a great advertising opportunity for small and large businesses. Keyword stuffing were early attempts at satisfying the search engine algorithms that denoted which sites would be displayed at the top of a search page.
Both of the latter two entities were designed to “satisfy the masses.” However, as you probably know all too well, the businesses that thrive no longer try to appeal to the masses. Instead, they create personalized marketing campaigns to reach their intended audience. This switch is part of the reason that an online content provider now has the dual role of creating content and sending it to the right people, on the right communications platform, and at the right time.
Before you ditch your “black sheep” status in an effort to throw together a website, blog, and social media accounts, take a moment to answer the following questions.
- Do you know your target audience?
- Do you know the multi-media channels needed to reach your target audience?
- Do you grasp basic SEO concepts?
- Do you have the coding skills or the wherewithal needed to use Squarespace (or a similar) website creation tool?
- Do you know graphic design?
- Do you know how to write well? Follow up question, do you know how to write clearly and in an engaging fashion?
- Do you know how to create a content marketing plan? Follow up question, do you know how to implement said content marketing plan?
- Do you know best practice website, blog, and social media tactics?
- Do you use a CRM?
- Do you have the time needed to not only create content, but to also manage the distribution of your digital content?
The list of questions could go on; but the above 10 cover the basics. If you hesitated in answering “yes” to any of them, don’t worry, you’re not alone. You are, however, one of the many people who can and should turn to an online content provider, sometimes called a content marketplace.
The right online content provider will offer you not only the content that your business needs to succeed, but also access to the people and tools who are experts at doing just that. From writers to content managers to SEO gurus, an online content provider is your one stop shop to a high quality solution to the problem that you now know you have: without a digital content strategy, your business is at a significant disadvantage.
While you can try to complete all of the tasks needed to form a comprehensive digital content strategy, the main challenge that you will face can be found in question 10: Time. There never seems to be enough of it. For small business owners, especially those who are forced to wear multiple hats, time is often their arch-nemesis. Fortunately, an online content provider also resolves this issue by providing a digital solution with little to no time commitment from your end.
Choosing The Online Content Provider That Is Right For Your Business
The benefits of an online content provider are practically immeasurable. However, since businesses are typically data driven, let’s narrow the “practically immeasurable” list down to the top five. 1) The right online content provider offers flexibility. 2) Quality is met with easy to use tools. 3) Writing at engaging levels is easy to access courtesy of actively recruited freelancers. 4) Opportunity abounds thanks to the digital following of the online content provider, as well as the tools that they have to easily connect with your CRM and push out your content to an eagerly awaiting audience. 5) Save time.
Contact a member of the WriterAccess team today to learn how you can enjoy the practically immeasurable benefits of working with an online content provider.
Laura P has written 4,000+ articles, blog posts, product reviews, press releases, and website content for a multitude of clients. In the past 7 years, she has developed written, marketing, video, and web content for clients in the real estate, information technology, restaurant, auto, retail, equine sales, oil and gas, and public relations industries. Laura is highly proficient in SEO optimization, particularly in real estate and retail industries. She ghost wrote IT white papers, government contract task orders, RFIs, and RFPs that resulted in millions of dollars won. She has 7-years of experience working with and interviewing olympic athletes, small-business owners, CEOs, SMEs, and entrepreneurs on complex topics. As a professional writer, Laura strives to create content that is both meaningful and relatable to her readers.
