I wonder how many small businesses regard their business content as an asset?

That differentiation has a lot to do with the pride we take in our business writing, conforming to standards that bring professionalism back to the playing field.

Medical, industrial, and technical arenas require a basic understanding of the industry to accurately use their respective terminologies, and those types of papers and guides have typically been authored in-house by their experts. Now content demand is through the roof, and much is outsourced or purchased content.

With online content in such high demand everywhere, mass-production of it has actually resulted in lower standards. Online content is often sloppy and irreverent due to creative license that may be over-valued. While a more relaxed, conversational approach may be fine for a blog, business writing must be internationally standard compliant to protect a business from lawsuits and content issues that can be very expensive to fix. Businesses need to consider that regulatory actions can affect their content rights.

Your mother told you not to believe everything you read, and she’s still right – if not more so in our age of content delivery. The demand is certainly there. As long as demand is high and content is largely inexpensive, content providers will continue to produce mass amounts of it. You need to be especially vigilant, ensuring that information from your company is accurate and effectively written.

As a business writer, I see those issues everyday. We approach industry language scrutinously. It’s not uncommon for us to debate the use of terms for extended periods of time. Shari and I often discuss how writing, especially for small businesses, is approached with far too little respect when it comes to language use – and in general we’re only referring to the foul language and poor punctuation that appears to be accepted, even applauded, within our community.

It’s a much larger scenario to consider that not all synonyms can be translated into 30-60 different languages – as is common practice among small businesses operating globally. Inaccurate translations completely change the narrative, and can result in everything from misinformation that can seriously hurt a business, to litigation.

Enforce vocabulary standards and writing rules with the content you accept for publication. Don’t let your material be a free-for-all from various sources that could get you into trouble. Tools are available that help, but if your content is widely distributed internationally, you need the advice of an independent consultant to audit your content life cycle and production process.

Scott Abel has built a strong reputation as a content management strategist, trusted within the industry to do just that. He recommends HyperSTE from Tedopres International  to enforce vocabulary standards and writing rules within your organization, but cautions not to rely too heavily on software vendors who may not be current with international standards outside of their own product knowledge.

Gain more valuable insight from his article, Vocab Lessons, here: EContent.com

We wonder how many of our readers operate businesses with a global market, let us know. Was this helpful information? We love to hear from you, leave your comments below.

Content marketing is first and foremost about providing valuable content. It can take the shape of words, images, video, audio … your only limit is your own imagination. “Valuable” is the operative word here. Shouting “buy my stuff” across every available media is not content marketing. No, most of us consider that tactic to be “spam.”

On the other hand, when a company or an individual provides me with the information I’m looking for, I take notice. If they do so repeatedly, they become a trusted information source. If that trusted source, later on, offers me a relevant product that meets my needs, they’ll likely make the sale. This is the heart of content marketing.

Joe Pulizzi of Junta42.com defines it like this:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Your blog and/or newsletter, your comments on other blogs, profiles on social media sites, involvement in social networking, articles published off-site, even the articles you bookmark … all of these activities are pieces to the content marketing puzzle. Each activity contributes toward the end goal of driving interested visitors to your site. None of the pieces are highly effective standing alone. But used together, they form a picture of your company (otherwise known as your brand) while providing useful, relevant information to your target audience.

For the micro-business owner, content marketing helps you establish credibility in the eyes of your customers and prospects, while driving sales of your product or service. For the organization, content marketing helps spread awareness of your cause. And for the larger business, well, many are already aware of the benefits. Put simply, it works.

So what’s holding you back? A lack of time to do it yourself? Don’t know what to write about? Don’t know how to go about it? Or are you already engaged in content marketing? (We’d love to hear your success story!

A standard length article is 300-750 words, and should be geared to some aspect of interest to your specific market. When your articles appear frequently on submission sites with a clear message and content value, your readers begin to view you as one to be referred to, or the expert on a given topic.

Article writing through sites such as Ezines.com (our pick), Ask.com, About.com, and others, offer free content to marketers and small to large size businesses as a way to easily provide informative documentation to their specific readership, which includes your audience. The stipulation to them is that your personal information, which you provide in a bio box, is distributed with it.

A carefully thought out bio box should include a brief, professional description of your company, a picture of yourself, and a direct link back to your website. As your work is picked up by viewers and published, your name and company develop a much larger audience than you could have achieved approaching these viewers independently. In this way they are in effect, screened, because they are searching the sites specifically for the information on your topic. Instead of authoring their own work, with all the research and time that implies, one expert will use another’s work and give him/her credit for doing so. This is a major time convenience for a news magazine or niche writer, and a win-win for everybody.

The trick is to update regularly and keep the content relevant and valuable to your readers. Make sure you’re writing beneficial insights that will make them want to come back for more, and find out more about your service or product offerings.

What’s your favorite article submission site?

Related Articles: What Is Content Marketing?

Related off-site posts: Five Steps To Success With Article Marketing

The following animation from VizEdu provides a visual explanation of content marketing, otherwise known as inbound marketing. Enjoy!