Outsourcing Your Blog Content Creation Overseas

The old adage you get what you pay for is exactly right when it comes to outsourcing your blog writing overseas. Indian and Philippine writers simply do not have the grasp of the American language to communicate properly with blog readers. When you are serious about communicating your message, you simply do not want a United Kingdom spelling of a common word that Americans may consider a misspelling as well or the strange use of everyday term.

Your website and blog content is about communicating your business message and should not have the distractions that a non-native speaker may include in an important post or online message. It is not as if they do it on purpose, clearly non-native speakers want and try to write and speak like a native speaker, but they can miss commonly used syntax or introduce strange wording or meanings without knowing that they are doing so.

I've seen some bloggers charge $5 a post for blog writing, but on analysis the post was worded strangely or included misspellings. There is simply no replacement for a native speaker when it comes to crafting your message for your blog or website.

Looking for Posts

Now that Blogger has a new future publish date, we are able to post ahead and wanted to point out to you where you can find our content as we will no longer be providing teasers for our daily posts cross linking our blogs.

Monday and Thursday find our posts here at Blog-World Watch

Tuesday and Friday find our posts at Web-World Watch

Wednesday and Friday find our posts at Design-World Watch

We'll be watching our stats and making changes as needed. Right now Blog-World Watch is our most popular blog with readers using RSS subscriptions. Web-World Watch is our most syndicated blog on the Web; featuring our headlines on a variety of website, and Design-World Watch is our newest blog and is still building traffic.

Blog Content Matters! It's All About The Readers

Many blog owners forget that blogging is not all about search engines, it is about the readers! Oh, I am not saying that search engines aren't important, but to have a blog really work for you on many different levels, your having great content and building readership should be your focus.

Search engines cannot be scammed. What garners subscribers and readers to a blog as well as encouraging people to come back is what search engine love too and will reward.

I've had a few incidents recently where prospects want super cheap writing for their blog. They don't care about topic or content, "just slap something up there for the search engines". What they forget is search engines are highly developed cyber intelligence tools; weighing content of a website, analyzing topics on a page, reviewing keywords, looking for duplicate content in their index, and then assigning a score which affects organic placement. Great on-topic content both on a website and on a blog is rewarded by both search engines and by readers. Content is truly King!

We do not do "production blogging". We care about what we write and our business has grown tremendously based on the quality of content that our writers produce.

Here's a good example:

Production blogging on a GPS tracking firm site provided by another firm: http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/teens-and-parents/vivien/

Our blogger writing on-topic content: http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/gps-tracking/what-does-the-gps-in-gps-tracking-mean/

Which would you rather read? A post on an alcoholic neighbor which has no bearing on the website content or information that enhances the website and services you provide. Which do you think will build authority for search engines?

What's the Best Size For a Blog Post?

Many beginner bloggers think that more is better and actually I am here to tell you that actually less is better.

From my experience as a professional blogger, the best length for a blog post is about 250 to 350 words. This is enough content to really flesh out one idea and yet small enough to not bore your readers. On top of that, it is easier to build strong keyword density on one topic in a shorter blog post then it is to build density in a long blog post.

For my professional writers I recommend that they write their blog post in the blog control panel and then migrate it to Word to do a quick word count, until they get a good feeling about how long a post is. The more you blog the better you get at gaging just how many words are in a typical post.

Another thing to remember is that content scanning is a typical behavior on the Web. So paragraphs that will be published on the Web should be shorter versus those in print publications. A typical web content paragraph will be about two or three sentences long versus a print version being more like five to six sentences long.

Studies have been done on Web content that show if the paragraph is too long, a reader may skip it entirely. So, when writing for the Web on blogs, remember shorter is better both for post length as well as for paragraph length.

Just as a point of reference, the blog post above is 251 words.

Finding Content For Your Blog

After you have been blogging for awhile one of the biggest problems becomes "where do you find things to write about?"

Here are several techniques that I personally use to find content for my own three blogs.

1. Start a note card and keep it with you when you are out and about. When you think of an idea jot it down. Some of my best ideas come to me while I am sitting watching my kids at a soccer game or sitting in a waiting room in the doctor's office. Another great time is while I am walking on my treadmill. I keep a card and pencil there to jot down new ideas.

2. I have a list of 10 topics written in advance and I have broken them into my various blogs and if I need a topic, I just pick up my list and start writing. As most of my blogging is done first thing in the morning before I start work and coffee has not cleared all of the dust from my brain my advance topic list is a lifesaver.

3. Use Google News. When I have to write and I am totally tapped out, I go to Google News and enter my top keywords. There is always something in the news that pops out. Although I may not blog on that topic, sometime the article gives me a new topic, viewpoint, or spin-off idea.

4. Subscribe via feeds to at least one professionals forum in your industry. I can easily follow what is happening and is the buzz in my own industry by rapid scanning topics and the first 250 characters of the posts using My Live as my RSS feed portal. I like My Live as it has no ads and is totally customizable. This provides a wealth of content ideas and new topics.

5. Write ahead if you can on the weekend. If you are using WordPress, I have found that to write ahead on the weekend and set your blogs for a future publishing date help to keep the pressure off of you. When you blog from your topic list and publish ahead, blogging stays fun and easy.

Feedburner PRO Tracks Feed Visitors

If you are blogging and don't have Google Analytics installed in the footer of your blog and don't have your feed URL wrapped by Feedburner, you are missing out on great information that will help you to understand your readers better.

In my own personal case, I used to blog Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Web-World Watch and only on Tuesday on Blog-World Watch and only on Friday on Design-Wold Watch. After watching my Feedburner stats, I found out that Blog-World Watch was my most popular feed and changed my writing schedule for increased writing frequency to feed my audience. With these great free tools installed what could you find out about your own readers for your own blog to help you blog more effectively?

Lots! Feedburner used to charge a monthly subscription charge to have PRO level stats. Since being purchased by Google, Feedburner PRO stats are free. If you are already using Feedburner, you just need to click the PRO link in the control panel to be able to get more information about your readers like how many are subscribed, what pages the aggregate audience has viewed, how many have clicked in. Don't worry, there is no personally identifiable information just summaries. But the summaries can help you to identify is your audience growing, shrinking, and what do they like to read.

Knowledge is power! If you want to grow your reader base then you need to understand why people read your blog. Once you know, take concrete action to improve your writing for your audience.

So, as in my case wrap, your feed with Feedburner, enable PRO tracking, and make sure to install Google Analytics, and then you to can blog for your audience more effectively.

Blogging for Business

I just had a client call me about their blogging services being done by another firm and he mentioned that the blogger was doing social network blogging and what did I think about that. The client is in a high tech market and the topics of the posts were things like: Little Norrie, Corrie, A New Car For Graduation, Daddie Finds a New Love. Good grief who was writing these posts a high schooler?

Blogging for business is just that serious business. Readers on a business blog want to read blog posts that speak to their interest and reason for visiting in the first place. Blogging is not about attracting the MySpace generation who doesn't have money to pay for the products that are used by fleets and courier services in this case.

My rule of thumb has been that business blogging should be on topic for the industry, be written in an engaging style, offer a reason for people to subscribe or visit again, and build authority on the product or service for the client for Google and other search engines.

Blogging is serious business! By the way, we got the job and the client fired their social networking blogger.

Why You Should Never Use Blog Content as Website Content

I have a pretty pointed take on this subject and so if you disagree, just post your comment below. I think that blog posts are just that blog posts. Blog posts should not be copied, compiled with other blog posts and migrated into website content or used to create a book or e-book.

I have personally had several situations recently where this has happened. Here's why I simply do not think that it makes sense to use blog content for anything other than what it was intended - blog content.

1. Blog posts by their very nature are derivative works. They are a discussion on an article that someone else has published and researched, a discussion from a widely published online news article, or may be in some rare case unique content. Although there may not be a real copyright infringement issue on blog post content, they are derivative works. Derivative works do not belong in your website. Unique content belongs in your website. For extremely high profile websites where there is a huge investment in technology and marketing and the fact that our society is so litigious blog posts may even make that site a target for copyright infringement actions.

2. From an employer point of view when a client takes blog posts and moves them into their website content, they are paying $15 a post and website content (uniquely created) starts at $80 a page and $169 if we do not design your website. This is grossly unfair to our writers to pay them for a blog and then have the end user change the use of their writing. We've even had one situation where a past-client cheerily told me, I'm going to write a book using your blog posts as the content isn't that great? These situations are grossly unfair to our writers. We have great writers and I value their expertise. Based on some of these recent situations, we now license our blog post content and copywriting content. We want to control what happens to what we create and want to make sure that our writers are fairly compensated for what they do.

3. Not all writing is "Work for Hire". In all of our contracts now, we stipulate that our writing is not to be considered "Work for Hire". In fact if it is not spelled out in the agreement and you do use the content for other than it was intended in the original agreement you may be setting yourself up for a law suit. Your situation may be different, but I am just pointing out a fact that this could be a possible sticking point when you decide to use a written piece in another fashion than it was intended.

4. Blog posts are written in a casual tone and style. Website content is written in a more informational style with a strong marketing focus. Blog posts are more point of view writing.

The bottom-line from my perspective is that blogs should stay as blogs. If you like a blog post and think that it would work great on your site. Ask your writer to do a feature article and let them know it is website content, pay more, get a longer piece, and clarify your rights to the content. Do the right thing when it comes to your writers.