Four out of five consumers use search engines to find information on businesses and companies in their local area. When conducting these online searches, these consumers are looking for answers to specific questions.

And as a business they’re interested in, you have to clearly and concisely present the answers.

From discovering a product or service that’s right for their needs, to engaging with a brand that resonates with their goals and desires, freelance technical writing, one of the top forms of online marketing, is essential to help your customers find you (and vice versa).

But how can you use freelance technical writing to your advantage? And what does this entail?

At the center of any marketing strategy is solid writing. Freelance technical writing includes creating branded content, copy for social media and blog posts, and targeted ads to boost your business reach, among other strategies.

If you’re looking to increase your business’ visibility and engagement online (as well as in-person), you need to increase your technical writing skills or hire a freelance technical writer.

Here is everything you need to know about technical writing and why it’s important.

What Is Freelance Technical Writing?

Technical writing is writing that helps to explain technical or specialized topics in ways that everyday consumers can understand. This is often instructions or ways to use something (ex: information on a specific product or service).

Technical writing isn’t just instruction manuals, though. This genre also includes things like informational blog posts, guides, educational blurbs, courses, and even handbooks.

Although this type of writing sounds like it only applies to IT, software, or computer companies, it can also apply to universities, financial companies, government agencies, medical practices, industrial or commercial manufacturers, etc.

Why Hire a Freelancer Over a Full-Time Writer?

Although there’s a definite draw to hiring a full-time writer, sometimes this can be costly. You might only need writing for certain things, for example, blog posts. If there are only specific areas that a writer could benefit, it might not make sense to hire a full-time person. Depending on your budget, it may not even be feasible.

Freelancer writers are people you can hire on a contract or as-needed basis. If your goal is to have a person to help with blog posts, social media ads, etc. your company could benefit from a contracted person over a full-time employee.

Over the years freelancing has increased greatly. More and more people are turning to this profession—even full-time! And today, finding a writer is easier than ever.

Depending on what you’re looking for, how much content you’d want your freelance writer to create, and how much you’re willing to spend, there are different rates. Here is a list of different pricing for freelancers, based on word count. Using this pricing list is one of the easiest, smartest, and most affordable ways to reach strong freelance content writers.

Tips to Finding (and Creating) Strong Technical Writing

Whether you’re looking to start creating your own written content for your business or hire a freelancer, here are some tips you need to consider.

The best technical writing should be the following:

1. Well prepared and easily understood. When you first meet with the freelance technical writer you’re looking to hire, he or she should be prepared with samples of his or her writing, research (when applicable), goals for the piece(s), and any supporting documents.

Depending on the agreement between you and the writer, you should give him or her a brief on the topic and set up a contract including timeline, revisions, and other expectations. From there, the writer should create work that is well prepared and easily understood by you (the client) as well as the common reader (the customer).

2. Written to and focused on the reader. The best freelance technical writing should be focused on a particular audience. For someone building a business, this target audience is the potential customer. Any content created should answer the customer’s potential questions, as well as be in terms that he/she can understand.

3. Structured and organized. Any content created for your company should be structured in a way that’s both clear and concise. If the writer is creating a list, for example, then that needs to be organized by bullet points or numbers. You can also incorporate relevant visuals to balance the text and spark visual interest for the reader.

How Does Technical Writing Benefit Your Business?

Technical writing is what bridges the gap between the language of your industry and the understanding of the readers, consumers, and potential customers of your business.

When someone searches your product/service/company online, you want them to discover content that’s easy to understand, readable, and engaging. That’s why you hire a technical writer.

First and foremost, technical writing can help to establish your online brand. When you boost your writing, you’re naturally boosting your credibility. People will not only understand what you’re trying to tell them, but with a solid voice sharing information, they’re also more likely to trust your company. This can lead to potential sales.

Strong writing also boosts your engagement. People are commenting, sharing, and tagging content that’s relevant to them. Although you might not always have high shares on every social media post, strong writing helps to reach those potential customers in the first place, and this will only help to boost your brand.

Technical writing also helps to increase your Google rank. When your freelance writer creates a post, he or she will use relevant keywords. These keywords will help boost your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which will help your business to appear higher on Google searches.

With a higher rank, you’ll be discovered by more people. As this increases, so does your site’s reach, as well as the conversion between views and purchases.

Where Can You Find the Best Freelance Writers?

Finding the right freelance writer for your content or business may seem daunting at first, but it all starts by knowing what you’re looking for and how much you’re willing to spend.

First, create an action plan. This will include what you specifically want your writers to create content-wise. This should include not only potential ideas and topics, but also a loose timeline of when you’d like the information to be shared.

It’s helpful to include things like events and important dates in this plan so that you can potentially work around these larger scale dates and use your content to drive interest to those specific events.

You’ll also want to think about your expectations. Do you want a certain number of words? How many revisions? Is there a certain time you want the pieces to be sent, or a means in which they’re delivered?

Knowing the answers before you contact a freelance writer can help you both see if it’s a good fit.

You’ll want to keep budget in mind, too. There are different writing packages based on your needs. If you’re looking for basic content, for example, it will be cheaper than a specialized or ‘Elite’ writing packages.

When you feel confident and ready to start searching, here’s where you can sign up for a free account and start looking for the freelance writer that’s right for you and your business goals.

Start Strengthening Your Business Right Now

Written content is one of the strongest and most organic means of driving traffic to your business.

In terms of online visibility, what your customers search in their browsers, computers, and smartphones is the written content you’ve created or hired someone to create. It has to be strong.

Hiring someone with experience in freelance technical writing is the smartest and most cost-efficient ways to do that.

A freelance technical writer is someone who can take your business ideas, goals, and information, and create something user-friendly and readable. This is essential to growing your business, reaching your target customers, and hopefully turning views to sales!

By boosting the writing on your web pages, social media, sites, blogs, etc. you can make the difference for your business’ future, as well as the trust and engagement of your customers.

For other ideas on how to start your company’s blog, what to write about, and to even sharpen your personal writing skills by taking an online writing course, click here.

Communication is a very important skill that should be learned otherwise we would not be able to achieve most of the things we need to do.

Every living thing has a communication ability, some plants, for example, react to certain weather and atmospheric conditions.

It is through this communication medium that we are able to know certain things about the subject or object that is being communicated to.

It is safe to say that communication is an important fuel that drives the universe.

Continue reading to find out how the FANBOYS acronym can help improve your writing.

Communication

Since it has already been established that communication is very important, it is, therefore, necessary that we know how to communicate in the right way otherwise communicating in the wrong way is almost the same thing with not communicating at all.

In fact, sometimes not communicating in the right way creates more confusion. Check out our article on how to write good blog content here.

The communication can be in two ways which are either written or spoken word. But for this article, we will be looking at our written English.

This is so important because some common mistakes are made when writing or reading. Such common mistakes are with the use of our punctuation marks, especially the comma punctuation mark.

It is one of the most punctuation marks that is not properly used when writing and even most educated writers and editors still make mistakes when using it.

When it is wrongly used it changes the context of the written word and sometimes even cause confusion. But the days of wrongly using commas is about to end for you.

In this article, we will be writing about a popular acronym that will help you to stop using commas in the wrong way. And this acronym is called FANBOYS with the full meaning being (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).

When you understand the usage of FANBOYS acronym, you can get a well-written article with proper use of punctuation when you sign up to iWriter.

How FANBOY Made its Way Into Writing

Technology help brands, and other issues that trend very well online and the thing is when people like a particular thing trending online, they most assuredly like it very well.

In fact, there are some tech lovers that feel that other people that like something different or promote something different from their own are weird. Especially when these people promote the brand online.

FANBOYS is one of such brands that has sometimes be used to mock people that really promote it, in fact, some are even subtly insulted with the word.

You can read more on the origin of FANBOYS here.

While some people use it as a word to tease people, some use it fantastically well and are even very proud to use it and be recognized with it.

The etymology of fanboy spans as far back as 1919 when it was first used. Merriam Webster dictionary even defines fanboy as “a boy or man who is an extremely or overly enthusiastic fan or something”.

But irrespective of the usage of the word what is most important in this article is how the word can be used to help avoid one of the most misused punctuation marks in the English language grammar structure.

The Amazing Usage of FANBOYS to Help Understand Comma Usage

There are some words that prefer to be alone, they do not want to share their time with others, they so much like their privacy while some other words are not like that, they are just like the people that have the sanguine type of temperament always lively when they are in the midst of two or more people.

So are the words that conjunct, to put it out in a more better way conjunction which is among the parts of speech. A conjunction is a part of speech that joins, just like when a priest is conducting a church wedding ceremony joining a man and a woman together to become husband and wife.

So, the work of conjunction is not different from that of a priest at all because it joins, connects a word or some parts of a phrase, clause and even two complete sentences together.

Wow! What a wonderful priest named Conjunction. And under conjunction, there are some words that coordinate and conjoins two things together. And these coordinating conjunctions are:

For, And, Or, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So, when you pick the first alphabet of each word you arrive at the popular buzzword which is FANBOYS. Sometimes people tend to think that the word “then” and “now” are coordinating words, make no mistake they are not.

So now let’s look at this coordinating conjunctions and see how they can help to get our comma punctuations right.

The Use of FANBOYS Acronym

Just has it has been said above that these are coordinating conjunction that connects words, phrases, and clauses together.

One of the best ways to get your comma usage rightly is to ensure that you use a comma before FANBOYS that conjoins two separate clauses together.

A clause usually has a subject and a verb in it.

Here is an example: I run, Victor speaks eloquently.

To explicitly understand the usage of FANBOYS with a clause, Take a look at this:

• You were running well at the beginning, but you didn’t finish well at the end.
• I like eating bananas, so I told Jane to buy some for me.

Take note of how a comma is used before the FANBOYS coordinating conjunction. You probably do not need a comma if there are no two subjects and two verbs separated by the FANBOYS. This means that if the second sentence does not make a meaningful sentence you do not need a comma.

No Conjunction

Another usage to take note is that when there is no FANBOYS conjunction between two complete and different sentence that makes sense. Using a comma often results in an error called "fused sentence" or "comma splice".

• Wrong: You were running well at the beginning, you didn’t finish well at the end.
• Wrong: Jude wore a pair of nice shoes, that was the only good thing he wore.

To correct this comma punctuation errors, here are some of the things you can do:

• Right: You were running well at the beginning though you didn’t finish well at the end.
• Right: Jude wore a pair of nice shoes; that was the only good thing he wore.

Use commas when you have three or more items that follow each other in a series. Your comma punctuation should always come before the FANBOYS coordinating conjunction. Here are some examples:

• Cassandra said she needs a drawing book, a pencil, a board, a lamp, and a ruler for her new project.
• Aisha thinks Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea FC, and Tottenham Hotspur are not title contenders in the English Premier League.

Below is How You Can Use Each FANBOYS Word

FOR: Often used to explain a cause.

Example: She wants to see Lilian again, for she is pleasurable to be with.

• AND: Used to add additional meaning to an existing sentence.

Example: I like watching football and playing video games.

• NOR: This is usually used to negate an idea with a contrast.

Example: She cannot play volleyball, nor does she drive.

• BUT: Mostly used to connect sentences that are not in agreement with each other.

Example: Food is very small but I can still manage it.

• OR: This is used you indicate or show that there is an option available between two or more things.

Example: You can buy trousers or a T-shirt.

• YET: This is used to say the opposite of an initial statement.

Example: He trained well enough, yet he did not win

• SO: This is often used to explain the result of something that happened before.

Example: Mark noticed his son like football, so he bought a ball for him.

To get more knowledge on how to use a comma before or after 'but', you can read more here.

Get to Practice

Now you know how to properly use the comma and also how to use the FANBOYS acronym and what each letter stands for. Along with reading this article, you'll need lots of practice.

To be good at this do some practice. Perhaps you can go over your writing again and apply some of the rules to where you did not use the comma punctuation properly.

If you're wondering what you should write about, check out this article.

Contact us for more information on writing services or becoming a writer.

Happy writing!

Content manager sounds like one of those modern titles no one understands. In today’s market though, this position has become extremely valuable. If you’re running an online business that shares information of any kind, you need to have a content expert working for you.

Why is it important to find an experienced, competent individual who is familiar with your field? Their knowledge of how to run things behind the scenes can make or break your online success. Read on to learn more!

Manage the Quality of the Content

Writing an article requires skill, focus and an understanding of what the bottom line goal is. Every word, every sentence, and even the tone works together to create a picture of who your company is.

Hire someone to throw a few, low-quality words on the page, and this is the impression readers will have of your business. However, hire someone who carefully monitors the quality of the produced articles and your readers and site visitors will see the difference.

This is why you need someone in charge who understands your field. They need the knowledge to read through an article and make sure it meets all the basic benchmarks. Once they start improving the material already on your site, an increase in new site visits is much more likely. Readers will connect with the information and share it more often with groups and friends.

The content management position is a safeguard against low-quality content. It's their job to protect your online company and always present the best side of the right information.

Effective Timeline for Content Production

What your company shares online is as important as how often you share. If you want to stay relevant in the search engines, then you need to publish on a consistent basis.

Readers who subscribe to your site want to see regular updates. It's up to you whether that is weekly, biweekly or even monthly. As long as they learn when to expect new material, they will return to your site and learn from what you’re sharing.

On the flip side, if you fail to stay on track with your schedule, your search results will be more sporadic. You may or may not come up when an online reader searches for various terms. There is enough competition out there fighting for attention. You don’t want to take yourself out of the running by not posting.

There are plenty of online writers who are willing to help with this task. Explain your goals and let them assist by creating a piece of quality content. In turn, that content informs your readers and motivates them to return.

Stay Current with the Trends

The Internet is a fickle audience and gets distracted easily. Your business has a core message that it focuses on, but there can be variations of this based on the trending topics.

A knowledgeable content expert understands how to meld these trends with the message you want to share. Their writing skills and those of your team combine to create content that offers new perspectives and keeps readers interested. Help like this is helpful because as the company owner, you’re only one person. You need multiple points of view to make compelling content.

You need the fresh eyes of an expert so they can present more angles to consider. Sometimes, the focus will be on the old school way of doing things. Other times, the modern approach will be the best way to move forward.

Hire someone to keep up with what is trending. Your readers will then see your company as one that is progressive and competitive.

What are Your Competitors Sharing?

The posts of your competitors are not your sole source of information for where the trends are or what readers are looking for. But, they are excellent for helping you understand what you’re up against.

Every business tries to align their message with topics they view as front-and-center for their target market. View the sites of your competitors to get a feel for the direction they’re heading. Arm your information manager with this material to fine tune your efforts and present a different perspective.

Research like this is part of a content manager's position since they use this type of data every day. As they track the competition, their finger will be on the pulse of what is happening in the digital world. This is information that other businesses have to pay for, especially if they don't have an expert like this on their team.

Share your goals with your content professional. Their efforts will be more productive and they will stay aware of what online competitors are doing.

Feedback from Your Audience

You can produce the greatest content ever, but if readers aren’t interacting with it, it’s not effective. Ask your site visitors what they think using surveys and short questionnaires. Your manager should send them out along with welcome emails to new subscribers.

Get their opinions about the articles, the length of the posts, and the frequency of posting new material. This is data other companies need to mine if they can’t get it directly from their readers. Hire someone who understands the value of this information, and they will make obtaining it a priority.

As they gather this information together each week or month, a trend will start to reveal itself for your company. You can only grow and become more successful if you understand what created your current circumstances. Learn from the target audience you’re trying to reach. This is the most helpful feedback your content professional can get their hands on.

Manage the Back Office of Your Site

Speaking to readers directly is great. Even so, you need to review the data from the back end of your online site. Here is where statistics get stored about which posts get the most attention. It also reveals how long people stay on the page and how often they share that content.

Information like this helps your manager identify the most productive pieces and create more like them. Once a trend emerges that shows what visitors are looking for, they can lead the team of writers to write similar posts. Other available data in your back office includes what time of day people visit your page and whether they visit the same posts more than once.

These statistics help content professionals produce what readers are looking for. They make your online investment much more profitable. Get a report each month from the manager and let them explain what is happening and why. Then, compare notes on how to make it even better.

Guide the Content Team

A content manager’s job is to inspire a creative atmosphere that lines up with the company goals. An individual who does this has a more productive team and a motivated group of individuals working for them. If you hire someone who understands this, they are going to work towards your company’s success all the time.

Shows writers how to understand what the content pieces should focus on. Explain what the parameters are, and then allow them to share using their own passion. By doing this, you gain access to their love of writing, which translates into great articles and advertises passion for your business.

A writer who feels passionate about their topic is going to share that enthusiasm in the tone of their post. Give writers creative license to explore how to share information about your business. However, guide them on principles and the main message you’d like to share.

Manage the Digital Face of the Business

The face of your website and blog are like the first impression someone has when they initially visit your brick and mortar location. Interactions they have with various posts, the messages they receive from customer service representatives, even the design of the page—all this determines how they feel about your company.

Hire someone who knows how this works because they determine why someone stays or goes after they see your business page. If you start to see a lot of quick visits and exits of your company site, something is not working right. Inversely, if they stick around longer and read through full posts while exploring other pages, you’re on the right track.

Think of your site as a digital employee welcoming them with a smile and an offer to help. Your posts convey this same message, and the right manager makes this happen.

It’s not guesswork. It’s a timely skill due to working on different projects and learning what works versus what doesn’t.

Find Your Content Manager Expert

Ensure the future success of the online business you’ve built and find a content manager who has the above qualities. Their position is pivotal not only for your company but for the team they work with. The right person can bring everyone’s ideas together and make them feel valued.

The wrong person can divide, conquer and ruin whatever progress you’ve made so far. Find writers who are willing to work for your goals. Let them share their skills and see how far it moves you forward with online success!

You want to be amongst the select few that make money writing a blog. It's the life after all, right?

Days on the beach typing away while you listen to the waves crashing on the beach.

Sounds good to me. But how long does it take to start earning an income? And what do you have to do to get there?

Want to learn how long it is going to take to make money from your blogging efforts? Continue reading this article to find out.

What You Need to Know About How to Make Money Writing Your Blog

We all want to get to the juicy bits about how long it takes to make money, but there are many things to know before you can even start thinking about making money.

The truth is that depending on your prior experience you could start making money right away. This also depends on how much work you're going to put into your site and other factors such as what you're selling.

What Is Your Blog About?

Before you start counting your money, you need to figure out what you're going to be blogging about. What your blog is about is going to have a great deal to do with how you'll brand yourself and your business.

Some people will tell you to go after a topic because you love it. While it is great if you can blog about something that you love, that's not always going to be the best way to go about things.

If you love something very unique that no one cares to read about, you're not going to have much success with your blog. You need to figure out what you can both write about for a long time and something where you can make good money.

Some of the top niches are fitness, beauty, mommy blogs, lifestyle, and cooking. These are just to give you some ideas but you need to create a blog that is going to provide value to your reader.

Decide what your niche is going to be but don't pigeon hole yourself with one topic. An even better idea is to figure out the person you're trying to serve.

When you know who your target client is, you can figure out what subjects they are interested in and then develop content that is going to help them. When you do this you'll be able to help your reader for the long-term.

How Often Will You Be Blogging?

Another thing that plays into how soon you'll make money is how much you're going to be blogging. If you only blog every now and then, you're not going to get much traction.

If you get raving fans they are going to stick around and want to keep consuming your content. While this is great - if you don't give them anything new to consume, they are going to go looking elsewhere.

Establish a posting schedule and stick to it so your readers know when and what to expect from you. If you miss a day on your schedule, it isn't the end of the world but it definitely isn't going to help things.

Just get back on the blogging horse and keep going.

How Are You Going to Monetize?

Another big factor of how long it takes to make money is how you're going to monetize your blog. If you have a great blog that people are reading and you have no way to make money off it - that's no good.

The more popular ways to make money through blogging are display ads such as Google Adsense, sponsored posts and affiliate marketing. There are other ways to make money but these are a good start.

If you only have ads on your blog, you're going to need a lot of visitors to start seeing any real income. While every little bit counts, you're not going to be able to quit your job off 100 visitors a month or even 10,000.

Figure out what your long-term goals and strategies are for your monetizing and then you'll have an easier time figuring out how long it is going to take you to start earning income.

Some bloggers choose to use a mix of strategies and that usually works well. Some choose to only focus on one area and get really good at that. You have to figure out which way is going to work best for you.

The one thing you do need is traffic and lots of it. You need targeted traffic and one of the best ways to get that is through creating more high-quality blog content.

How to Speed Up the Earning Process

If you're getting impatient with waiting for your blog to start making money - no worries. We've all been there. There are some things you can do to boost your business and get it off the ground faster.

Blog More

I know. I felt you wince a little bit. You already know you need to blog more - BUT.

"It's hard to blog once or twice a month, but now you're saying that I need to blog MORE?"

The more you blog, the more opportunity people have of finding your content. The more you blog, the more likely it is that you're going to hit on a viral topic.

Think about blog posts are fishing poles. The more fishing poles you have out, the more likely it is that you're going to catch that big fish.

Long Form Content

When you do write your blog posts, make sure you're writing very meaty content. You want people to stay on your website for as long as possible.

Not only does people staying on your website mean they are likely to check out more of your writing and information, but it also means that they are sending good signals to the search engines.

If people are spending long amounts of time on your website, that makes Google and other search engines see people are enjoying your blog.

Focus on SEO

If you want to see long-term results in your blogging business, you need to think about SEO every time that you publish a blog post. You need to remember to include your target keyword in the title, at least one header and in the conclusion of the blog post.

Besides for writing the blog post and ensuring it is SEO-friendly, you also need to make sure that you promote it to get people to read it. Linking back to the article from your various social media channels can help you get the first few views and initial boost.

Make Your Blog Post Memorable

If you want people to come back to your blog again (you do), you need to make sure your blog post is memorable. If your post sounds like everything else that is online, they won't remember your blog.

You can incorporate some of your personal stories and experiences or use a lot of great stats so they'll want to bookmark it for later. While one-off visitors are great, you want to create readers that keep coming back to hear what you have to say.

Add infographics, gifs, great photos and other great elements that will make people want to keep reading your blog.

Ask People to Share

When people share your content you can reach a whole new audience that would have never known you otherwise.

Make sure you're asking people to share your content with their friends. If you don't ask - they aren't likely to think about it.

You can ask at the end of your content but asking in the middle of your content is another great place since they are immersed in what you're saying. If they think of someone the post will resonate with - they are likely to give it a share.

You can also ask your friends and family to share your post when you publish it to get some more eyes on it ASAP. How your post performs at the beginning of its life is important for virality and SEO. People like NEW!

Stop Running Out of Things to Write

Are you already feeling like you'll be tired after you learn how to make money writing your blog?

That's ok.

A lot of people pull the plug on their blog before they can even get started because they are too tired to even think up another idea for their blog let alone write it.

Instead of burning yourself out - why not let our amazing writers take the load off? Check out our pricing today and see just how affordable our high-quality articles can be.

Imagine - no more stressing about writing your next blog post!