Over the past 7 months I have written much about car insurance and I have read many blog posts and commentary by other writers on car insurance! It is always a good idea to do a bit of self –analysis and ask questions about whether these written contributions can in fact be regarded as “making a contribution?
But who are all these people writing about insurance – and to be more specific – car insurance? Are we all passionate about this rather less than glamorous topic –or is there some method behind the madness?
I have decided to attempt something rather unique -write something about those who write something about car insurance. I believe we can identify a few categories of writers and would like to share this with the 20 readers [hoping..!] of this blog post!
The Journalist / Financial reporter
These are those writers employed by the bigger media companies and newspapers. They might not have a passion for car insurance – but are employed and paid to follow and write about the financial markets. This includes writing about the financial reports and results from the big insurers and the effect that car accident claims could have on these numbers.
The “Sherlock Homes” writers
We will always find those who regard themselves as the criminologists or detectives. These are those people following the criminal investigative series on television and who spend hours seeking fraudsters around every corner. They will blog and write about the insurance fraudsters and the “hijacked” vehicle found neatly stored away for shipment to some cross-border destination.
The Experts / Financial reporter at the top of the corporate ladder
There are a few writers who are not merely journalists – but business owners in their own right who have created a specific niche for themselves in the financial sector. They are perceived as having a specialized knowledge in a specific field – such as insurance. They are highly sought after by the big financial websites and are often approached to appear as speakers at conferences. They will write to maintain and further their standing amongst specialists in the financial industry.
The “in-house” writer about car insurance
Some companies will require that a specific employee do some writing for the company. They are often the younger financial advisers or the certified financial planners. They are required to write for the company website or company newsletter with the objective of furthering the credibility of the company amongst existing clients and possible impress a few potential clients!
There are also employees working for the bigger insurance companies who will write for the website of the car insurer or the corporate circular or newsletter.
The “hired gun” or independent contractor
There are many writers who are not passionate about car insurance as such – but who are seduced by the allure of good remuneration offered by the big corporate institutions for articles on car insurance. Their main objective is to assist these insurers to achieve greater search engine optimization of “search-ability” on the internet and provide them with articles to be placed on the website of the car insurer.
The insurance aggregators are reliant on being found easily on the internet and gaining good search rankings. They will pay much to have good “in-bound links” from written contributions on the premier financial websites.
A new breed of “Media on demand” writers
The ability to make money online through written contributions on premier websites has created a new breed of writers. These are those benefitting from payment via Google Adsense and other reward systems. They might not have the required expertise in the specific field but are masters in search engine optimization and writing “keyword rich” pieces of content. They might even risk using the so called ‘black hat techniques” to ensure that blog posts are easily found via search engines.
They will analyze which keywords are worth the most in monetary terms and write to concentrate on getting those keywords across on their writing. These writers pose a risk to those searching for quality content – as the internet market is flooded by written contributions lacking depth – but rather focused on small bits and pieces with regular repetition of phrases such as “cheapest”, “affordable”, “best” coupled with car insurance.
Internet users will continue to search the internet for advice and guidance on finding car insurance. Search engines will continue to refine the way that they rank pages and content on the internet. We can only hope that quality content will be rewarded and that users find the correct information with ease.
It is our objective on the car insurance blog to assist these users, to concentrate on the key phrases used – and to use this to provide quality content in the specialized field of car insurance.