Author Archives: Amrit Hallan

About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

Should you create content or curate content

3 Replies

The fundamental strength of your online marketing and promotion heavily relies upon the quality of your content, whether it is on your blog, your website or your social media profile. Generating quality content can be a bit difficult if you don’t have sufficient budget and resources. Mindlessly publishing at low cost doesn’t do any good. It may, by hook or by crook, increase your search engine rankings for particular keywords and expressions, beyond that nothing much can be achieved, because eventually it is the quality that converts visitors into paying customers and clients.

Quality content can be generated using two methods

Creating new
Curating existing from other sources

The basic idea is providing quality information to your visitors. When they come to your website they must go back enriched and informed. So before deciding whether you want to create or curate you need to decide

Why you need quality content on your website?

The content on your website solves the following purposes

Informs and educates your visitors
Helps them make better purchasing decisions
Conveys to your visitors that you have authority over your subject
Encourages your visitors to come back to your website for updates and more information
Engages your visitors and creates opportunities for interactive experiences
Increases your search engine rankings
Helps you maintain a vibrant presence over your social media and social networking profiles
Encourages other website and blog publishers to link to your website resulting in more diverse traffic
Helps your present and prospective customers and clients look beyond the corporate wall and experience the human side of your business

All these objectives can be achieved either by creating new or curating existing content.

Why create new content?

For the obvious reason that if everybody started curating we won’t have anything original to link to. Other than this, creating your own content generates more trust and a sense of authority. It gives you an opportunity to share your knowledge. It also makes your website a unique source of valuable information. It increases the intellectual value of your online presence. If you just curate you are simply referring to external sources with your own comments in the and perhaps. You are always sending traffic to other websites and there are very few websites that send traffic to your website.

Why curate existing content?

Content curated from external sources introduces variety and some different perspective. When you need to provide value to your visitors you shouldn’t discriminate against other publishers. Since your primary concern is providing good information, and if that information already exists and it exists in a better manner than what you can produce, then there is no harm in linking to it with your own opinion. Content creation also helps you when you want to present in-depth information from different sources. For instance, on a single page you want to compile the best content writing tutorials from different websites. Along with your own opinion, you can also introduce opinions from other content writers of repute.

Creating the perfect balance between original and curated content

So you can create a good balance between original and curated content. I would prefer a ratio of 60:40 – 60% original and 40% curated.

Of course you can use any ratio and even in the reverse order (40:60) – it depends on your audience, the familiarity that you enjoy with your audience, and your true intentions. If you curate simply to increase your search engine rankings, people can easily see through it. But if you really want to provide valuable, high-quality content without bothering whether that content comes from your own website or from other websites (just make sure you are not plagiarising and simply linking with your own comments), this can be a good strategy.

Why content marketing is important for your business

9 Replies

Content marketing is a misunderstood terminology. It has got nothing to do with conventional marketing where you keep on pushing your messages and then wait for response.

There is often some confusion regarding why you need content regularly and why it needs to be marketed through proper channels. Unlike your brick and mortar business, the game is totally different on the web. You cannot compete on the Internet on the strength of your money, market reach and off-line reputation. You need to have a presence, and you need to have a convincing presence, and only high-quality content gives you that presence.

On your website or your blog, you cannot directly communicate with your visitors unless you are constantly online and are using a webcam or a chat interface to talk to individual visitors (this is feasible, but only up to a certain point). Your web pages, and what they contain, become your representatives, your voice on your online presence. So your content helps you communicate.

But this is not the only reason you require ongoing content and subsequent content marketing. You also require content to

Strengthen and establish your brand
Generate traffic from social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook
Improve your search engine rankings
Establish yourself as an authority
Keep your visitors/customers/clients informed
Provide answers to the most common questions regarding your business
Keep on communicating with your prospective and present customers and clients so that they remember you when they need the product or the service you provide
Give your visitors a reason to visit your website or blog regularly

Why content marketing

After you start publishing on your website, people need to know about it. Since there are zillions of pages and blog posts on the Internet it is practically impossible to publish 50-60 odd web pages or blog posts and then expect the traffic to pour down from all over the Internet. Some people may have 500-600 web pages or blog posts, and some may even have thousands of them. So in terms of quantity and quality, you are in a constant competition on the Internet, and the good thing is you need to compete constantly. Why I say this is a good thing is because then everybody gets a chance to compete on the strength of his or her ability to produce and market high-quality content. This way, even while working from your basement, in your undergarments, you can compete with as big a company as Forbes by producing better content and marketing it properly.

In order to compete, along with publishing relevant information you also need to market it. You need to highlight it and promote it where people can see it. Here are a few things you can do in the effort of content marketing without spending much money:

Search engine optimize your content: Although this comes under search marketing, basically it is content marketing. With the help of your content you are trying to promote your business on various search engines. If you are able to optimize your content, it is going to rank well on major and minor search engines and this can bring you tons of traffic. Choose the right keywords, pack your articles and blog posts with as much information as possible, and make them as helpful as possible.
Write for other websites and blog posts: You can publish articles on article directories (although they are losing their charm over search engine rankings because there are 100s of such article directories). A better thing to do is write blog posts as guest blogger for reputed blogs. This might not be easy so first you will have to interact on the blogs and let the blog publishers become familiar with you. Many start-up companies use this content marketing tactic with great success by publishing blog posts on tech blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch.
Maintain an active social media presence: This may include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or YouTube. These days your website may get traffic from multiple sources and you need to maintain a vibrant presence over these places. Regularly interact with your friends and followers on social networking websites and generate content for social media websites like YouTube and Tumblr. Lots of content is shared and passed around using these platforms and you never know which of your links might go viral.

These are but a few ways you can carry out your content marketing effort. As mentioned above, content marketing is important for your business because first of all content is important for your business, and second, you need to make as many people aware of the existence of your content as possible.

What makes your content click

5 Replies

Content writing is not as challenging as it seems sometimes. With little bit of dedication you can create 3-4 blog posts or webpages for your business, and you can also get an unending stream of topics and ideas by visiting other blogs and subscribing to their RSS feeds (you can also search Twitter and Facebook and stumble upon some really good stuff).

The real challenge is to make your content click. What does that mean? Your content publishing and content strategy has an objective or an agenda, right? Why are you spending so much time on creating and publishing content for your website? Fine, the quick answer would be to increase your search engine rankings. But are you really achieving that?

Very few people actually sit down and think about what they are doing when it comes to writing content and implementing a solid content strategy. Your content clicks when it has the desired effect. When you are publishing content you are trying to achieve the following (you may have different priorities though):

You want to increase your search engine rankings
You want to provide great and valuable content to your visitors so that they keep coming to your website
You want to maintain a lively buzz around your online presence
You want to educate and inform your prospective customers and clients so they are not in double mind when it comes to doing business with you
You want to establish yourself as an authority so that people trust your judgement, respect your knowledge and believe in you when you ask them to do something

These are but a few things you want to achieve through content publishing.

Here I am not talking about the base content on your website: your home page and other business pages. I’m talking about all the extra content that you continuously publish because eventually it is that content that increases your search engine visibility and keeps people hooked on to your website.

So how do you achieve the objectives mentioned above (and many more that you may have in mind)? Here are a few things you can do:

Have a consistent theme

Your visitors must know what they are in for when they visit your website or blog. Then they already have receptive by the time they start reading your content (or watching/viewing in the case of images or video). For instance, if you have a content writing and content strategy business, and if you want to publish a business blog then most of your blog posts must be centered around content writing and content strategy. This way people who are interested in your topic can relate to your blog or website.

Having a consistent theme also shows that you have a lot to say about your business and your expertise. In fact, you have got so much knowledge, that you can constantly share it with your visitors for a long time. Always remember that having a niche is always better than writing for a highly broad audience.

But having a theme doesn’t mean you cannot write on something else. For instance, some of my blog posts talk about SEO, social media and social networking, blogging and even web design and web structuring. I write these posts because I believe that they can help my business as well as my clients.

Provide solution-oriented content

Does your content solve a problem and makes life easier for your visitors? Does it give them what they are looking for? For instance, what do people look for when they come to my website or when they read my blog? They are either looking for a content writer or trying to figure out how they can write content on their own in a better and effective manner. They might also be interested in reading about content strategy – how to formulate it, how to establish it, and then how to implement it.

Provide content people can share

Eventually everything boils down to how much of your content is shared. You might be getting lots of traffic directly from search engines and that is really great, but if you don’t want to solely depend on search engines, then you have to focus a big part of your energies on to encouraging people to share your content through their social media and social networking profiles like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube. But they are not going to share your content simply because you have published it. It should be of great value whether it informs or entertains. People share content mostly for the following reasons:

They want to pass some relevant piece of information onto their followers and friends
They are curating quality content for later use
They want to entertain or make their followers and friends laugh by sharing something funny and amusing
They want to trigger a debate or discussion while using your content as a platform and as a central point
They want to associate themselves with the standards represented by your content
They want to show you that they agree with what you’re saying or disagree with what you’re saying
They want to highlight their online presence through the niche you represent and write about
They are your parents, siblings or friends who would share anything you post just because they love you and cannot resist that

So if you provide any of the above mentioned reasons people are definitely going to share and promote your content (although the last point may not have much business value but it doesn’t mean it is not important) and be affected by that.

How to make your headlines social media friendly

6 Replies

Since lots of your traffic may come from social media and social networking websites through plenty of sharing and re-tweeting you need to create your web page and blog post headlines/titles keeping that in mind. Here is a nice post on Making your web content headlines more shareable.

Of course in order to create enough incentive for sharing your content you need to deliver some value.

With that out of the way, the blog post linked above rightly says that keep the number of characters in your headline to the minimum because re-tweeting adds more characters to the update and considering there are just 140 characters you can post on Twitter at a time, the real estate is quite precious. Nick has recommended 80 characters but it depends on the underlying message you want to deliver through your headline. Sometimes I pay special attention to creating smaller and succinct headlines/titles and sometimes I don’t care much. It’s not that I want to make things difficult for people who want to share my content via Twitter, it’s just that when they really want to share the content, they can come up with their own ingenious ways (even to the extent of creating their own shorter headlines – I do that sometimes with other people’s content). The objective here is not creating headlines to facilitate easier sharing, it is making your overall content shareable enough.

Another important topic touched upon in the blog post is the relevancy and topical significance of your headline. How relevant is the headline to the current and ongoing mood among your followers? It must satisfy a need and preferably some pressing, current requirement. It also depends on your audience and basically what it is looking for.

For instance, most of the content appearing on my blog deals with content writing, content marketing and content strategy. This is an ongoing topic and it doesn’t deliver instant results (although in many cases it might). It is an ongoing education. It is reference material that you can use again and again or as you need. People share it if they find it useful, rather than compelling. They also share it/re-tweet it when they agree with it or don’t agree with it.

So shareability of your headline depends

The convenience of sharing it (it’s size)
Its relevance
Its topical significance
The manner in which it imparts a message (short, succinct and compelling)
Your social media presence

The last point is also important. Simply creating great content and compelling headlines isn’t going to make people share your content with their friends and followers. They need to be familiar with you, they need to be comfortable with your presence and they should know that in more than 70% posts you deliver quality content.

The benefits of having a Google +1 button on your website

2 Replies

Although this has got nothing directly to do with content writing and content marketing, since it can help my clients I have decided to write on this topic. Frankly, I haven’t really started using Google Plus as regularly as I use Facebook and Twitter, but the Google +1 button is slightly different from the social networking platform Google is trying to promote.

What is the Google +1 button?

You can see the Google +1 button on the top of this blog post (most probably on the right hand side at the top).

It can be used like a “thumbs up” act by your visitors. If you’re familiar with how the Digg button works, with every click, the number of people who have “plussed” your link increases. On Digg, the more diggs you have, the better is your chance of getting on Digg.com homepage and all of sudden increasing traffic to your website by hundreds of thousands. I am personally not very impressed with the sort of traffic you get from Digg.com but that is just a difference of opinion I guess.

The Google +1 button achieves almost the same thing, but instead of helping you get to the homepage of Digg.com, it helps you improve your search engine rankings. It is something like page rank: the more “trusted” websites and blogs link to you, the better your search engine rankings get.

The Google +1 button is a step closer to “humanizing” search engine results. So far, almost all the search engines have depended on ranking algorithms to rank various links. Although these algorithms are mathematically sound, after all they are algorithms, and whenever you have algorithms, people can devise workarounds.

But if actual human beings start recommending web pages and blog posts by clicking on the Google +1 button it increases their relevance in the real sense. Then Google doesn’t have to depend much on its algorithms and its search engine results are more validated and relevant. So if you have a Google +1 button on your website, you are allowing your visitors to help you improve your search engine rankings. When they click on your Google +1 button they recommend your link to Google.com – “Rank this link well, it is definitely good!”

It is like “social search”. This concept has been introduced by many newcomer search engines.

Some even say Google.com immediately crawls your web page and indexes it the moment you install the Google +1 button on it. I’m not particularly sure of that. Anyway, if you regularly publish content on your website or blog, your content gets indexed within a few seconds or a few minutes of the new content appearing on your website or blog.

Another benefit of having a Google +1 button on your website or blog

The Google +1 button also allows you to post the link you are presently on directly to your Google Plus profile. It is like, Facebook or Twitter plug-in that allows you to straightaway post the link under your profile.

How to install a Google +1 button on your website or blog

The direct way to install the Google +1 button is by heading to the official Google webpage dedicated to the button. This page has code snippets that you need to insert into your website. The first code snippet is for the button to appear wherever you want it to appear, and the second code snippet is the required JavaScript that you will be putting within the <head></head> section of your website.

If you manage your blog or website with WordPress (as I do) you can simply install a plug-in to display the Google +1 button. This is not the only recommended plug-in – you can use whatever you prefer. If you’re using a social media plug-in as you can see on the left hand side of this blog post, it might already be coming up preloaded with the Google +1 one button feature.

Here is a small video on the Google +1 one button (from Google.com):