I’m not writing this to dispute anybody’s claim whether content is king or not because it is just a way of telling someone how important it is. I may have mentioned it in the passing that yes, content is king, that is, marketing doesn’t exist without content, but it isn’t just content that gets things going.
Content is like fuel. Without this fuel, you cannot run the engine of your business, that’s an established fact. Now, it is up to you what sort of fuel you want to use. You can use low quality or high-quality fuel. You can use fuel that wears your machinery down or creates lots of pollution. Or you can use good quality fuel that gives you better mileage.
Are you wondering why I’m comparing content with fuel rather than with King? No reason at all actually, I could have compared it to anything, as long as it is important. The whole point is, it’s not just content that matters. Your content needs to be backed up with:
- High-quality
- Regularity
- Relevance
- Distribution
- Engagement
- Publishing platform
The old saying, “build it and they will come” no longer works because there is so much of everything. So after building it, you need to get people to it. “It” in this case is your content. It is given that you need to write and publish high-quality content. Low quality content neither works with search engines nor with human readers.
Regularity is very important because millions of pages are being created everyday and and some of them are exceptionally well-written. You are constantly getting competition. Besides, search engines as well as people love new content. For instance, if I want to know what’s the latest happening in the field of content writing, I would rather check out something that is a few months old rather than something that was written back in 2011 (this is February 2014). When you post regularly it gives people a reason to visit your website or blog repeatedly (even the search engine crawlers visit your website with greater frequency if it is constantly updated).
Relevance in the context of content writing means you need to offer something people can actually use and benefit from. There is no use creating content that exists just for the sake of existence. It needs to solve a purpose.
How do people access your content? If your content exists in isolation then again, you’re just wasting your time. Content is published to make an impact and that impact can only be made if people actually make contact with your content. So you need to distribute your content. You need to use all available channels to you including social networking websites, blogs and online forums.
Engagement, although is a new buzzword, it has existed since the time immemorial. Engagement basically means two-way communication. You talk to people, and then people talk back to you, and then you talk back to people and engagement begins to happen. Without constant engagement it is difficult for people to remember you, and remember you for the right reasons.
You need to choose your publishing platform carefully because once you have chosen it, you will be spending lots of time writing and publishing content for it. For instance, it is a critical choice whether you publish a blog under your own domain name or you decide to use a third-party platforms such as Tumblr. Businesses these days are also using LinkedIn as well as Google Plus to publish long blog posts and articles. The only problem with choosing third-party platforms is that your content doesn’t belong to you. It will be sending all the traffic to those websites and then some of the traffic will come to your website. On the other hand, if you publish your blog under your own domain name than all the traffic will come to you. The benefit of using a third-party platform that is well established is that you can start getting traffic to your content from day one. Finally, the decision is yours.
These qualities and attributes collectively make your content the King. Without these attributes your content is just another piece of information aimlessly lolling around in the limitless wilderness of the Internet.