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Technology has created a new era in marketing. With this, the most recent buzz among marketing professionals is “content marketing”. It has long been said that “content is king” but, if you’re looking to start or improve an existing online marketing push, what does it all mean?

As with any product or service, the best place to begin with content marketing is to simply understand exactly what it is. Search engine marketing has become a very strong niche, and the cornerstone of this niche is content.

Your web content will be defined as being any text, images, videos, animations or sounds that you use to expand your business presence online. Content marketing would be essentially the catch-all that covers any marketing format associated with those things. Its benefits are that with it, comes greater authenticity and trust building for your brand by way of delivering relevant, high quality information.

At heart, sharing content is a way to influence the decision-making-process of your target audience. This high growth area is ever evolving and what was once simply the text on a web page has grown to encompass print and online newsletters, microsites, informative white papers, webinars and webcasts, podcasts, email marketing, and other interactive online medias.

Why is Content Marketing Important For My Business?

Content marketing is especially important now, because social media has become a vast platform where consumers share information. The key is, creating information that either informs or entertains your target audience. It is a platform on which your business can present itself as a knowledgeable industry leader, no matter what niche. What goes hand in hand with that is often lead generation, an increase in sales by way of brand exposure, and the ability to improve customer retention.

Effective content marketing makes use of high quality content that is of interest to people. It thrives on the old principle of “If you build it, they will come” by creating something that not only grabs the attention of your target audience, but is something they feel is relevant enough to share. An investment in a content marketing campaign can essentially become something that not only builds a brand’s image, but then spreads it far and wide.

The basics of content marketing all revolve around one thing: keeping it simple, focused, and actionable. Your business does not have to worry about any search algorithm changes if you are in fact, publishing something that is unique and what the people want. In content marketing, it’s important to remember that the methods you choose are going to tell your brand’s story. If you cut corners by publishing duplicate content or attempt article-spinning methods that will only annoy your client base, they will notice and it will reflect badly on your brand.

A few starters:

The content that your brand produces must be of high quality, unique and useful to your target audience. This is important because not only users are becoming much more picky about what content they read, but also because of the reason illustrated above.

Lower priced content is almost always of lesser quality. Again, remembering that content marketing is an advertising and marketing investment. Plan accordingly. Many content producers have very attractive rock-bottom prices, but before you get excited about that “great 5-dollar deal”: refer to tip one.

Great content needs to be more than just keyword friendly. This one is important, because while the content may meet the optimized keyword criteria, if it’s not interesting, it’s almost pointless. Read the content and ask yourself: “would I share this? Would my customers share this?” If the answer is no, you may need to review that piece of content.

Content marketing has changed a great deal in the past six months and it will continue to change. However, understanding exactly what content needs to be is as simple as remembering the following words. It needs to be: focused, actionable, of high quality and above all, relevant.

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Full Disclosure: This article has been written by a ghost blogger from GhostBloggers.net and we purchased this article for $ 32.75 USD.

Do you want to publish more unique content without the hassle that usually comes with hiring writers? Do you want to invest in your online empire?
Check out GhostBloggers and buy unique articles right off the shelf!

This article sheds light on this wrongful publishing practice, explaining how and why it can harm your website.

What is PLR content?

PLR stands for “Private Label Rights”. This term is well known in offline businesses such as supermarkets, where multiple stores purchase unbranded products from the same factory, slap their own brand on it, and sell it as their own.

Online PLR content are usually packages of a specific number of niche-related articles that are written by ghost writers and sold at very cheap rates to online publishers. It is not uncommon that the same PLR package is sold to hundreds of buyers.

Why do people buy PLR content?

Website and blog owners who don’t have the time or skills to write unique, niche-driven content from scratch are often tempted to take the easy route of buying  PLR packages. At a first glance, they may sound like the perfect solution because:

• They are cheap
• They can be purchased and published within a few minutes
• They help you to publish new content
• Are often claimed to be written by experts within the article’s niche

Pay a very little amount of money to quickly publish relevant content of high quality on your website, get more traffic, potential clients and extra conversions or sales.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Well, it is…

Although we can’t generalize the following statement for every PLR-content provider, we can safely say that, most often, the quality of the articles is very low. PLR-content providers have the reputation of hiring cheap writers who are mostly non-native English speakers. To make matters worse, these writers are mostly not knowledgeable on the topics they write about. The content is bundled and sold to hundreds of buyers online, in an effort to make a good profit.

The second, and most important reason why PLR-content is a bad idea, is the recent change in Google’s algorithm , known as the “farmer” or “panda”update.

Since the new update, websites that publish duplicate content were heavily penalized and their search engine traffic has plummeted. Huge “content farms” such as Demand Media, Associated Content, Answers.com and Suite101 were struck by the panda update. Some of these sites lost a staggering 50+% of their monthly traffic!

What is the better solution?

At GhostBloggers™, we believe that businesses worldwide should be able to buy unique, high-quality, niche-content easily and effortlessly.

We asked ourselves a simple question: “How can we create a system that will allow someone to buy unique, niche-content within minutes without compromising quality?”

Well, let’s break it up in a few parts;

Unique content

This is obvious. We needed to create a platform that would only allow writers to sell their content once. It would also have to use all means available to ensure that articles are, in fact, unique and aren’t published elsewhere on the internet.

Quality, niche-content

When is a writer most capable of writing a high-quality article on a niche topic?

Well, there are thousands of writers worldwide who have different interests, hobbies and experiences. What if we  allowed our ghost writers, unlike freelance writers, to choose the topics they write about based on their passions and expertise? Wouldn’t that raise the bar and give buyers assurance that they will be getting high-quality content?

On top of that, we’ll have a “real human” who manually proof-reads the submitted material to make sure that only top articles get through. And if the content doesn’t meet our writing standards, we’ll give writers constructive feedback on how to improve their work.

Unique content within minutes

We’re almost there! We simply have to allow writers to submit articles at will, and use the centuries-old idea of a marketplace that sells products off the shelves.

Eureka!

Approximately 3 months ago, we launched GhostBloggers™!

GhostBloggers™ is a marketplace for unique content where publishers can buy high-quality articles from writers worldwide, who chose their articles topics based on their personal interests, passions and knowledge, curated by a team of proof-readers.

We’d like to encourage you to try out our system. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Also, check out this explanatory video about GhostBloggers™!

Have a great day!

Our marketplace, Ghost Bloggers, has reached the tipping point where our user-base is growing exponentially. Writers worldwide, who are interested in turning their skills into a full-time ghostblogging career, are seeing the great value of our platform and signing up in massive numbers.

With more writers joining our community, we are receiving loads of new articles every day. Sadly, however, out of every three articles we receive, at least one ends up being denied for various reasons!

As we are noticing repetitive patterns amongst the denied articles,  we decided to help out our ghost writers by giving general guidelines and detailing Ghost Bloggers writing standards. Let’s get started…

Write Evergreen content

When you are writing an article, keep in mind that the goal of your article is to drive traffic to the buyer’s website over a very long period of time.

For example, an article about 5 different ways to tie your shoe laces will deliver traffic as long as people keep wearing laced shoes. As a result, the value of this article and its readership rate will remain the same over many years.

On the other hand,  articles about a specific one-time event, a fad or a trend will be outdated overtime and readers will lose interest in it.

Think about it: news is only “news” for a short time and we want to create ongoing traffic and readership value for our clients.

For this important reason, we do not accept submitting news-articles via Ghost Bloggers .

Make sure your content is unique and has never been published before

There is a huge difference between unique content and unique text.

Unique content has never been published before, should be written from scratch without using external sources, and often provides new insights. Unique content always contains unique text.

Unique text, however, isn’t always unique content.

When you submit text that has been taken from the web and rewritten into a new, unique piece, then this is not unique content. This method is known as spinning and is a form of plagiarism. If we catch you doing this, your account will be suspended immediately.

Plagiarism also includes rewriting or partly rewriting published articles, and using text taken directly from other sources.

Do not write in first person POV

There are a few reasons why we no longer allow articles that are written in first person Point-of-View;

Companies and publishers who are looking for content at Ghost Bloggers do so because they want to publish articles that are relevant to their business, product or website. Their goal is to attract potential clients to their website by publishing single informative articles.

You are selling multiple articles and most likely, they will all be sold to different buyers. Chances are very slim that all your articles will be purchased by the same publisher.

Most often, writers publish articles in first person POV because they want to establish a personal relationship with their readers. But since you’re ghost blogging, we highly recommend maintaining a professional level and writing in a rather formal tone.

For example, ‘I’ is personal and informal and is still not appropriate in a lot of business and marketing writing.

Proofread, Spell check and don’t forget proper punctuation

GhostBloggers’ editors are actual human beings who will read your articles. If an article is rejected for one or more spelling errors, it is highly possible that the editors saw errors or mistakes that  standard spell-checkers miss out on.

Frequently, we have to reject an article because the sentences are too long, commas are missing or writers even forget to start their sentences with a capital.

If an article is grammatically incorrect or not punctuated properly, it will be rejected.

Watch out for the summary

The summary is the field where you quickly go through your article and explain to potential buyers what the article is all about and who your target audience are. On top of that, you want to give potential buyers a compelling reason to purchase your article.

Do NOT copy and paste parts of your article directly into your summary. If you do, the article will be denied.

Instead, make sure your summary reflects the value of your article so that buyers feel excited about purchasing it. Also, make sure your article body delivers what’s promised in the title and summary. For example, if your article title said “5 Twitter Marketing Tips”, the article itself should precisely cover  this information – nothing more and nothing less.

Don’t be vague

Please avoid vague terms such as “things”, “someone”, “something”, …

In addition, you must avoid  writing about “stuff”. Instead, discuss politics, mention art, whisper stories etc.

Also including words like “great”, “bad”, “little”, “much” to describe products, activities, situations and similar topics wouldn’t add any value to your article. Try to use specific words that will accurately describe and explain what you are writing about.

How to choose your topics? What to write about?

Start with your passions and hobbies. Write about topics you enjoy talking about…

The main idea of GhostBloggers is that writers are now able to write about what they are personally interested in rather than what a client tells them to write about.

When you are able to write about your personal interests, you’ll be able to write easier and faster. Moreover, the final outcome will reflect your unique insights.

However, do understand that you are still writing articles that will be purchased and placed on corporate websites and blogs. Always ask yourself when you’re writing about a specific topic, if you see the leading business within that topic publish your article. If you answered  yes, you’re most likely heading the right direction.

Please Do NOT submit poetry, personal experiences, promotional content, press releases, plagiarism and so forth.

 Be unbiased, or let the buyer know about it

Preferably, all articles need to be unbiased because anyone could potentially purchase your article. If you must write an opinionated piece or biased article, make that crystal clear in your article’s summary.

Practical example: You wrote an article about soft drinks in which you concluded that Pepsi tastes better than Coca-Cola. The communications manager of Coca-Cola is looking for an article about soft drinks to publish on their blog. Imagine their surprise and disappointment when they read your article’s conclusion after purchasing the article.

That client will never come back!

Formatting

Use short sentences and paragraphs, highlight specific important keywords, add subtitles and use lists when needed. The tools to format your article are available when writing an article.

 Also, uppercase-titles are not allowed.

How long should my article be?

We suggest you to write articles that are between 500 and 1,000 words in length. Once an article starts getting over 1,600 words, it will become difficult for your article to be marketable.

Should you still have any questions, please don’t hesitate to direct them to GhostBloggers’ support team!