Category Archives: Content Strategy

Should you create content or curate content

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.

What makes your content click

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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.

Difference between content writing and content curation

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There are basically 2 ways you can generate quality content for your website or blog:

Content writing/generating fresh content
Curating quality content from other reliable sources

The benefits of creating new content

By constantly creating new content and publishing it on your website or blog you establish your authority on the subject. You get to share your own knowledge, your own experience and your own expertise. Writing and publishing your own content is a very good way of building online intellectual wealth that not only helps your visitors but also helps you.

It also makes you an independent knowledge resource. When you’re generating your own content you don’t need to depend on external links, and to be frank, external links cannot always be relied upon. I remember when there was a big earthquake in Japan a very prominent website published an info-graphic comprehensively explaining how to survive an earthquake. I had linked to that info-graphic from one of my blog posts. Recently when there was a big earthquake in north-eastern India I wanted to share the same link. But when I visited it, it directed me to another, irrelevant (full of affiliate links) URL. The original info-graphic has been removed. Had I had the same info-graphic on my own website at least it would have been still there.

Obviously, the search engines are constantly looking for original content to index and rank and the more original content you publish the more advantage you get in this arena.

Original content writing is also a showcase of your communication skill. You are not simply providing information to your visitors just to gain traffic; you are actually putting in effort to create quality content.

The benefits of content curation or curating quality content

The biggest benefit of content curation is you can share high-quality content with your visitors without having to create it. Normally what people do is, create a quick synopsis of the original link, publish it as a paragraph and in the end append the original link.

Does it help your search engine rankings? Surely it does, provided you stick to the core theme. Suppose I decide to create a blog post solely having quality links on content writing. If there are 10 links in my blog post it means I’m going to write 10-12 paragraphs on the topic of content writing in order to briefly explain every link. So targeted content plus high-quality outgoing links (and in the form of trackbacks you may also get some juicy incoming links) can do wonders to your search engine rankings.

Content curation is a great way to create link bait opportunities because often it is difficult to get high-value content at a single place. If all the 10 links on content writing I’m linking to have great value people are going to link to my blog post as a valuable resource and they are also going to share it using their social media profiles.

What is good, content writing or content curation?

Both are important, I would say. There can be no content curation without original content so somebody has to write and publish original content and only then it can be curated.

The Internet can be chaotic as well as intimidating with millions of webpages and blog posts vying for your attention at a particular instance. So if you can find a single webpage or a blog post that has lots of links collected from different reliable sources it can help you tremendously.

Does content curation help your business?

Whether content curation helps your business or not depends on your business model. There are lots of blogs that simply publish lists gathered from various other blogs and websites (for instance, a web design blog curating web design links from scores of blogs and websites, just dealing with designing the top navigation bar).

As a personal advise I would recommend a 70-30 ratio. If you publish 10 webpages or blog posts every month and you also want to curate content, you should try posting 7 original posts and 3 collected links.contact

How to fire up your web content strategy

What do you want your web content strategy to achieve?

This is a very important question. Don’t simply publish content on your website just because your competitors are doing that. For an effective web content strategy you must need to know what you’re achieving and what are your long-term and short-term goals vis-à-vis publishing content on your website. Do you want to

Improve your search engine rankings by publishing keyword-rich content?
Make your prospective customers and clients more aware of your products and services?
Make your prospective and current customers and clients more aware of the overwhelming benefits of your products and services?
Want to keep your visitors engaged?
Strengthen your brand presence?
Rake up socially relevant issues?
Educate and inform your visitors so that they can make better decisions regarding what they should be buying and investing their money in?

Frankly, there can be 1000s of questions you can ask yourself before publishing content but the basic idea is, you should know precisely why you are publishing. The more clear you are, the better direction you will have.

What sort of audience you want to cater to through your web content strategy?

Last year I partnered with a client who wanted to address an audience who remains at the forefront of technology: people who would buy the first iPhone or the iPad or who would start using a pioneering service without waiting for someone else. For instance, people who started using Facebook and Twitter in their early years. The direction of the content was totally different.

So before going ahead with your web content strategy you must know who you’re talking to on a daily basis and then produce content accordingly.

What format of content your audience prefers?

I am a content writer but this doesn’t mean I always recommend text as the most preferred format of producing and publishing content. Different types of content formats can play a crucial role in your overall web content strategy such as video, audio-visual, audio, graphics, images, presentations, slideshows, and of course, text. The format of your content depends on your audience preference and the devices they use. If your audience prefers reading, by all means provide text. If they are more visual types then provide them images and graphics. If their devices can handle streaming video and they prefer that, then provide it.

Make sure that you stay away from the “me too” approach. Just because an XYZ website uses video doesn’t mean that you should use it too. Maybe it works for them, maybe it will, or maybe it won’t for you, or maybe it doesn’t even work for them but they still use it. It’s important to understand what format actually clicks for you and then produce plenty of it.

What channels you use to spread your content?

No matter how outstanding content you’re producing unless people know about it they are neither going to consume it nor promote it. You need to spread your content using proper channels. It can be your website/blog that enjoys lots of traffic. It can be your social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. It can be Youtube if video is your primary content format. Nurture different channels and then use them to engage your audience and distribute your content.

How do you track the performance of your web content strategy?

Without tracking performance you are simply throwing darts in the darkness. You need to know whether your web content strategy is delivering or not. Although you won’t have enough data to analyze within a couple of weeks, and you need some ground for scientific analysis, once that initial hurdle is crossed, you need to constantly evaluate how your content performs with different parameters.

You can analyze individual webpages/blog posts in terms of

How much traffic they were able to generate
What important keywords and key phrases they were able to attract traffic for
How many people retweeted and shared them
How many people left comments
How many people explored further pages of your website after entering through those particular pages/blog posts
How many back links were they able to generate, etc.

Please note that these webpages and blog posts may also have indirect effects such as getting you more Twitter followers and Facebook likes and there are surely tools to measure even these indirect effects.

In the end, web content strategy is not your backyard activity. It requires lots of effort, understanding of your own market and figuring out a slew of different matrices.

Something to keep in mind when it comes to paying your content writer

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I am writing this blog post for the benefit of those clients who often wonder why they should pay the amount I’m asking for. In more than 90% cases it doesn’t happen, but I think even if 10% clients have some doubt it makes sense to explain to them, what they are paying for.

What is content writing basically?

Content writing is of many forms but what I provide is a service that should help you build your business and put your best foot forward. I’m not in the business of providing $3-articles to improve your search engine rankings (they rarely do, and even if they do, it is a fluke that sometimes work and most of the times doesn’t).

I help you convey your message in a manner that it convinces your customers and clients to put your trust into your product or service (and into you) and consequently, do business with you. What I provide is a mix of content writing and copywriting. I might not be an excellent writer (I am gradually getting there) but when you want to speak your mind and when you want to make the right impact, I can certainly help you.

My content writing is a mix of content writing and copywriting

The fundamental purpose of copywriting is to help you sell, whether it is your product, your service, or your ideology or idea. Content writing on the other hand educates and informs your present and prospective customers and clients and creates a ripe ground for the business to take place.

So the content on your business website must be a balanced cocktail of content writing and copywriting. This is especially true when I’m writing for your homepage. Think of your home page as your front office if you open a brick and mortar business. You would like it to look its best and you won’t decorate it with cheap stuff. Every item in your front office reeks of professionalism.

Your website is your online office and your homepage is your front office. Although unlike a brick and mortar office, there are as many entrances to your website as there are pages and blog posts under your domain, eventually, sooner or later, people reach your homepage and this is where the most critical impact is made. You need to inform your visitors. You need to educate them as laconically as possible. And then you have to turn them into paying customers and clients.

Just like home page, most of the links appearing in your top most navigation are highly critical and in fact, sometimes they are more important than your homepage (because it is not possible to pack every bit of crucial information into your homepage).

So when you’re paying your content writer who is practically creating an entire business presence for you and you are wondering why you are paying what you’re paying, think about how crucial his or her job is. If you’re getting your content written professionally, it means that you understand that it matters to your business what text there is on your website.

I’m not saying pay your content writer through your nose and pay him or her at the cost of your business infrastructure, but don’t go for as cheap content as possible. Believe me, whether you do business with me or not, this doesn’t work. It might cost you your business if just at the outset you try to save on the most crucial aspect of your online presence – your website content.