Category Archives: Content Strategy

Why your website needs unique content

This may sound mercantile coming from a professional content writer but your website definitely needs unique content, and in some cases, lots of it, if you want to have a competitive edge over other businesses, in terms of traction and search engine rankings.

Recently a client wrote to me that he simply wants to copy/paste content from other websites and I was amazed that even in these times people are unaware of the implications of plagiarism and publishing duplicate content on their websites and blogs. Fortunately I was able to convince him that straight copying/pasting content from other sources was a very bad idea and this could decimate his search engine optimization plans at the very least.

Why do you need unique content on your website or blog?

Simply because your business is unique, your voice is unique and so is your presence. If you have same sort of content like other websites and blogs how are people going to distinguish your presence from the others? What is going to be the difference? If you have got nothing unique and different to say about your business it means you have nothing different and unique to offer, and if you have nothing different or unique to offer why should people do business with you and not with someone else? And this can be a minor nag because people coming to your website or blog may not know that you don’t have unique content.

But the search engine algorithms will definitely know because that’s what they do: they rank well well-written and unique content and penalize duplicate and plagiarised content. You may ask why the heck they have a problem with non-unique content? It’s actually very simple. If they allow people to copy/paste each other’s content then all hell will break loose and very soon on every second link people will find the same content. Then what is the use of using a search engine? You use search engines to find relevant and useful content and you feel good when you get lots of choice. If the search engines don’t give preference to unique and relevant content you will stop using them and simply referred to a few odd directories.

Therefore it is in the interest of search engines to rank higher content that is unique and worthy.

The effectiveness of content marketing can be measured in terms of before and after

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It is not often possible to understand exactly how content is impacting your bottom line: are you doing more business due to your content marketing effort? There is no hard and fast rule and it is extremely difficult to track individual pages and blog posts and then make out how much business they are bringing in. So how do you rationalize the implementation of the content marketing strategy or how do you monitor its effect?

There is one established fact that content marketing works; what you have to find out is whether it is working for you or not. Content marketing is not like a traditional marketing campaign where you just create an ad and then use TV, newspapers and magazines, and websites to disseminate that ad and then analyze various metrics. This doesn’t work in the case of content marketing. More than a push marketing it is a pull marketing and it spreads over the long span of time and effort.

So you can have a before and after scenario that is working for many people with tremendous results. What was your overall revenue before you implemented your content marketing strategy, or what is your current revenue when you are just about to implement content strategy. Is there a change, say, during the past four months, ever since you have been paying close attention to your content marketing strategy? This change, if it is there, becomes your metrics that you can use to gauge the success or failure of a particular content marketing plan.

This works in conjunction with shorter, more focused plans. Take for instance user engagement. You know you can increase your sales by encouraging use of engagement on your website/blog and also on your social media profiles. You also know that up till now nothing much has happened. For user engagement you need engaging content. So focus on this. Try to come up with content that encourages your visitors to engage in conversations with you. What drives them? What motivates them? What excites them?

Not getting enough traffic? It must be an SEO issue but it may also be due to the fact that you don’t have the right kind of content. Even if you feel you have got tons of content are you focusing on the right keywords? Even if you feel that you are focusing on the right keywords are you really covering the keywords that your target customers and clients use?

These are smaller issues (not smaller on their own but in terms of the end result: increasing your revenue) and you can begin with them so that you can measure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. When you see more and more people coming to your website and when you see that they are engaging in conversations with you and among each other (talking about your business, or at least its object/topic related to your business) you know that you have an effective content marketing strategy working for you.

Why your business needs a content marketing strategy

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Content marketing fundamentally means spreading your thoughts and messages through targeted content. Strategy comes in when you create content knowing exactly what you want to achieve. Randomly creating articles and blog posts may give you lots of content and it may also get you more traffic but in terms of conversion you won’t see good results because when you don’t know what to do with your content, neither do your visitors. Publishing content without a strategy is like throwing darts in the darkness hoping that one of them will hit the bull’s-eye.

Unless you have a massive advertising and PR budget content marketing is the best tool you have got. It is certainly not a one-week affair. Creating and implementing a content strategy takes time and effort but it is more effective and provides long-lasting results. Your business needs a well-defined content marketing strategy because

It keeps your regular communication focused
It shows your active involvement in your field
It helps you build an attentive community around your business
It turns your website or blog into an information resource
It improves your search engine rankings
It improves your conversion rate
It gets you quality incoming/inbound links
It turns you into an authority figure (authority figures are more trusted)
It gives a reason to your prospective customers and clients to stay longer on your website or blog
It strengthens your brand
It creates new communication channels
It builds a target audience that quickly responds to your questions and business ideas
You get immediate feedback from your clients, customers and visitors
You develop a ready-made product-launch platform

The connection between content, strategy and social media

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These days having targeted content alone doesn’t help you much. You have to approach it from different directions. There was a time when you could attract targeted traffic by simply having good content on your website or blog. Now you need a strategy and while formulating the strategy you have to keep in mind how you want yourself represented on social media and networking websites.

Combine content and strategy and they give you good search engine traffic and add social media and the combination gives you fruitful engagement with your prospective customers and clients. As mentioned in my earlier post the days of one-directional marketing are over. Now you have to engage people in conversations. It is no use having conversations just like any other person because then you become just like any other person. You need to become an authority figure. People should be able to trust you and trust your judgment. You become an authority figure by continuously sharing your knowledge and wisdom with your friends and followers and visitors. You can do this on your blog and through your social media and networking profiles/pages. When you give unconditionally people trust you. This trust is your capital.

So when you are creating your content strategy you also need to simultaneously create your social media strategy because they are interrelated. By the strength of your content you can build your social media presence and through a credible social media presence you can engage your prospective customers and clients and once you are able to engage them positively they do business with you more eagerly and they have no problem recommending your business to their friends, family and colleagues.

Developing a content strategy

In order to develop a content strategy you must realize what you want to achieve through your content. Identify your audience and identify what that audience is actually looking for. You don’t have to provide exactly that but initially you need the traction so be tactful. You have to be attractive enough to your core audience. As a ground work you must

Identify your core audience
Develop a dos and don’ts policy for publishing content
Create a list of your primary, secondary and ancillary keywords
Decide whether you want longer or shorter articles/blog posts/web pages
Decide whether you will be generating content in-house or by outsourcing
Develop metrics to continuously analyze the effectiveness of your content
Develop long-term evaluation policies

A well-defined content strategy helps you focus better and consolidate your content publishing effort. Since you will be investing money and effort into producing content you have to be particular about exactly what sort of content you want on your website or blog. A list of dos and don’ts helps you keep distractions at bay. Keywords will help you increase your search engine rankings, although you should put more stress on the relevancy of your content rather than the keywords but they definitely help you create more targeted content.

The choice of longer and shorter articles may also affect how well your content performs. You will need to decide whether your audience wants longer web pages or shorter. Here is a nice analysis of the benefits of long and short articles by usability expert Jakob Nielsen. It is an old article but it is still relevant.

Routine analysis keeps you on the right path. Before launching your content strategy you must clearly define where you currently are and where you want to go. Analysis helps you gauge whether you are moving towards your destination or not and you can then make changes accordingly.

Content strategy and social media

People are constantly curating content on social media and networking websites and then talking about that. They find an interesting link, post it on their profile and then their friends and followers comment on it. Their friends and followers may also share the posted content with their own friends and followers and this is how your content may go viral. The more relevant and useful your content is the better exposure it gets on social media and networking websites.

But it is more than that. It is not simply about posting your content. Your content gives you an authoritative presence but you have to strike up conversations with people. Seek feedback and provide answers. Express doubts and show disagreement wherever necessary. The underlying idea is keep the conversation going by seeding new thoughts. This is where your content helps. If you just seed thoughts without backing them with authoritative text people soon begin to lose interest. They need something to read and ponder upon.

Your content begins to make an impact when it encourages people to have conversations. When it stimulates it creates impressions. When they also begin to find your content on search engines the bonding strengthens.

Stay tuned, I will write more on this.

10 ways to get regular content for your website or blog

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Continuous writing

To be successful on the Internet you constantly need to communicate with written words. Written words – the content on your website or blog – constantly convey your thoughts to your visitors. They attract new visitors and keep the old visitors hooked to your writing. But this also involves writing regularly. The more regular you are, the greater is the level of interaction and communication. Agreed, networking and interacting on other blogs and online forums do play a vital part, eventually it is your content that wins you the day.

Unless you have ideas of encyclopedic dimensions it is very difficult to come up with new ideas and new matter on a daily basis. You can do this without external help if this is the only thing you do: thinking about and generating content for your blog or website. But if you have only got, say between half-an-hour to one hour, to think about what to write, collect your thoughts and plan them and then write them down, it becomes an uphill task and often gets assigned to the back burner. Here are a few things that can help you get regular content for your website or blog:

Hire a content writer or a team of writers: You can hire writing services according to your budget but this is the best option if you have no time to research and write content for your blog or website. The person that you hire most probably has experience researching online and coming up with fresh and relevant content. This doesn’t mean that you assign the entire responsibility of creating content for your blog a website to your content writer, you will need to constantly keep a vigil and make sure that the content tallies with the fundamental philosophy of your blog or website.
Subscribe to RSS feeds: There can be an information overload when you are subscribed to too many RSS feeds but your RSS feeds subscriptions can prove to be the best resource to get fresh writing ideas. You just need to stick to the most important blogs and content websites while tracking your RSS feeds. Don’t rush while subscribing because this will eventually lead you to around 1000+ subscriptions and the mere number will dissuade you from even opening your RSS reader. Subscribe to RSS feeds judiciously and follow them closely in order to get fresh updates.
Use blog search: Many search engines, including the good old Google let you conduct searches on various blogs. You can use your favorite search term to check what all people are writing on it and then come up with your own content accordingly.
Read about your topic: Reading gives you lots of writing ideas as it fills your mind with your thoughts and wisdom. Whether you agree with what you are reading or not you have something to say, either pro or against. Reading also expands your knowledge-base and the more you know the more comfortable you get writing on your topic. Read books relevant to your field, read blogs and websites that talk about your topic, and interact on online forums. Of course you will need to keep a tab on your time in case you don’t have much time to spare.
Visit content aggregation websites: Content aggregation websites such as popurl.com, alltop.com, digg.com, etc. publish lots of highly relevant and contextual links with great regularity. Make it a point to visit these content and aggregation websites routinely. It is better if you can go to them at least once a day but you can decide your schedule according to your work schedule.
Interact as much as you can: Regular interaction exposes you to newer opinions and varying ideas. Interact with people who are already doing great things in your field. For instance if you want to write about blogging then you should try to regularly interact with people who are successful bloggers. You can use social media networking websites like Twitter and FaceBook to keep track of the ongoing conversations. For these social media networking websites there are many online tools that help you track conversations according to topics and keywords. Actively participate in these forums. But be sure of what you are communicating.
Use your existing content for new ideas: Many of your existing blog posts and articles may carry further topics and subtopics. Sometimes an entire article can be created out of one subheading. For instance, if you wrote a blog post on the benefits of regular blogging you might have written about using blogging as a great blogging tool and you might have written just one paragraph on the topic. Why not write a complete blog post or an article on that?
Invite your visitors to give you ideas: Lots of bloggers ask their visitors what they would like to read on the blog. I think this is a great way of getting new writing ideas because after all the most difficult part of writing regularly is getting writing ideas. Once you have a topic it is much easier to come up with the content. You can ask your visitors to give ideas regarding what they would like to read on your blog or website through the comments section.
Maintain an ideas file: Ideas are like the sparkling fireflies; they happen randomly and unless you have reached Nirvana, you can hardly control them. It is always better to devise a mechanism to preserve them whenever they grace you. You should maintain an ideas file and keep storing ideas whenever they occur so that you can refer to it whenever you need to get some new writing ideas.
Be passionate about your topic: Your mind brims with new and exciting ideas when you are passionate about the theme of your blog or website. Your passion helps you focus and work harder towards collecting your thoughts and expressing them; people can feel the passion in your words and expressions. But can you be passionate about something you are not comfortable with? This dilemma is often faced by professional writers because they have to write on myriad topics with unwavering interest. How do they keep the flame of passion burning all the time? They derive their passion from the fact that they have to write well no matter on what they are writing. In a similar manner you can seek passion in your topic too.

Aside from these activities you can also syndicate content from various organizations that provide regular content to blogs, online magazines, online newspapers and websites.

When you regularly update your website or blog it shows that you are serious about talking to your visitors. It doesn’t always have to be prim and proper and you can be especially yourself on your blog provided you are not discussing your pyjama parties and doggy excursions all the time on your Internet marketing blog; the content should always be relevant to your theme and must always have a target audience.