An unfortunate reality of being a blogger or SEO is that you’re going to get a lot of rejections. When you try and push your content as guest posts, or when you create articles to help promote your clients, you’re going to find that they often get turned down – by both the sites you’re aiming at and the clients you’re trying to help. This can be a somewhat ego-bruising experience, particularly when you’ve put all your effort into a particular article to really make it shine. This is grade A stuff, your best work… so why is it getting turned down?
Well before you spiral into a pit of self-doubt, consider your topic choices and how they might be seen by clients or bloggers. It may not be that your content isn’t well written, or that the articles don’t provide value; rather it might simply be that it in some way undermines the ethos or the plans of the target site or the client. Read on for some examples of awesome content ideas that may nevertheless get turned down a lot…
How to Create Your Own…
An obvious angle for a web design article would of course be to provide tips on building a website. Likewise, if you were writing for a company selling gift baskets you might want to provide tips on creating your own baskets and flower arrangements. Any of these would be a great fit for the industry but the question you have to ask is whether or not your client is going to want you giving away trade secrets. Might you not be helping readers to do the same things themselves for free?
An article on fixing leaky taps for instance could help readers to maintain their bathrooms rather than renovating them, which might not be good for the plumbing site it’s on. That said though, it’s probably bringing in enough traffic to be worth it seeing as it’s on page three for such a popular search term…
Most Common Mistakes…
While the first idea might tell people how they can get the job done without hiring your client, these kinds of articles could be even worse; by actually helping the competition. Write an article on how to effectively lead a team and you’ve just created a number of new offices with better leadership. Not great for your client’s office if they want to be the most efficient in the area… This article for instance might be well written, but if it was going on the blog of a new start up, would they really want their competition getting those tips?
Anything Negative
Of course if you’re writing an article about homeopathy then you might be tempted to point out that it’s actually a huge massive scam. Of course that’s not going to sit well with your homeopathy-selling client as it will literally drive away sales. This can sometimes put you in a moral quandary, but bear in mind that there are ways around the problem. Write about the ‘importance of health’ for instance, and you can avoid having to discuss the topic of homeopathy’s validity (just for the record though, it is nonsense…).
Sometimes, writing the negatives of what you’re trying to sell can be a great way to persuade as the seaming contradiction makes for an engaging title that draws attention, while the honesty suggests that you’re a trust-worthy source.
Top Ways To…
If your client is a counselling organisation, then an article on the ‘Top Ways to Deal With Emotional Stress’ might seem like a great idea as you can include ‘counselling’ as the top option. That said though, you’ll also be including other options – such as ‘talking to friends’ and ‘calling the Samaritans’, and this could help readers avoid paying for counselling. Of course, you should never mention competitors’ products either.
Anything Opinionated…
The problem when you write for a client is that you are essentially putting word’s in their mouth and speaking for them. People will assume that your views reflect theirs, and thus anything too opinionated should be avoided. More to the point, being too opinionated can turn off potential customers that hold the opposite views. Even if the client isn’t selling homeopathy, you should still avoid slating it just in case the customers are fans…
That said, bloggers running their own site know that controversy can actually be used to great effect. Don’t expect most clients to go for that argument though…
Talking About Salary/Money
This article provides a great infographic on how much social media experts earn across the US. It’s a great article with useful information, but a lot of sites would never run it and a lot of clients wouldn’t want you to write it. Why? Because it could suggest that they’re charging too much, or even just drive away customers before they even get a quote if they think the whole industry is too expensive. There’s a reason that talk of money is usually non-existent until the last possible moment in business…
How to Start Your Career In…
You’re writing for a plumber, so why not create a guide to becoming a plumber? This will be a useful article that will fit on a lot of sites, and it will have a clear link to the niche you’re trying to promote. But wait – if you’re helping people to become plumbers, then doesn’t that mean more competition for your client? Doesn’t it show your client’s customers how they can do their own plumbing and that way completely cut out the middle man?
Of course what you need to remember here is that the client’s concerns aren’t always valid, and the links we’ve looked at throughout show how effective some of these articles can be. You know and I know, that very few people who read your article ‘Why You Should be a Plumber’ would ever actually become a plumber if they weren’t already considering it. And even then, that would have to happen a million times probably before someone set up a business in the same area as your client and began competing for the same market. And in that unlikely scenario as well, a bit of competition could actually be good for the local industry as a whole… These concerns are largely unwarranted and you might roll your eyebrows when your work gets rejected on that basis.
However, next time you’re writing an article for your client, spend a few minutes thinking about how it reflects on them, how it could affect their business, and whether there’s any chance you’re inadvertently going to be upsetting them with that idea. As the old adage goes: “‘the customer is always right”.
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Create,No Mistakes, Negative, Top Ways, Opinion, Money, Career
