What matters? Content quality or content quantity?

Sep 09, 2008 36 Comments »

These days I get lots of queries from clients requiring bulk content on various topics, for instance, real estate market or car rental service. They want cheap content, mostly centered around their keywords and key phrases and they aren’t bothered much about the quality. They want plenty of pages having their keywords, and they don’t want to seem spammy to search engine crawlers. They want traffic from search engines, and they’re often sure that once they get lots of traffic, they’ll generate business too.

Why you need content for you website?

You need content on your website to convey ideas, to convince your visitors to buy from you or do business with you, or to describe your products and services. Your website needs to communicate to your visitors. You can use videos, graphics, images or text to convey your message. Since on this blog we mostly deal with written content I would like to talk in terms of textual content on your website.

Why quantity matters sometimes

Quantity does not mean putting all sorts of junk on your website. Even when you talk in terms of quantity content has to be there; maybe the quality is not that good. When you have lots of content talking about your topic it makes your website into a resource – okay, maybe not a quality resource but still there is lots of information on your website that can be derived from the massive quantity of content you publish. Quantity, as long as it is not out and out trash, is also good for your search engine rankings. It gives plenty of pages to the search engine crawlers to crawl and index with a wide selection of keywords and important key phrases.

Why quality always matters

Some top blogs on the Internet have merely 500 blog posts but they still have thousands of comments and great traffic. This could have only been achieved by high quality content. Quantity rarely attracts genuine traffic, but quality does. Quality traffic makes your blog or website into quality resource that people like to visit again and again. Quality content also gets linked to from other websites a lot; this way you get lots of inbound links and this is good for your search engine rankings.

A combination of both is good

Personally I always suggest that one should focus on quality and a little bit of promotion. Junk content is available all over the Internet and it hardly matters how much of it you have on your website. On the other hand quality content is rare to be found and therefore people really like it and treasure it. Quality content, and lots of it, is a killer combination. Add a little bit of promotion and you don’t have to spend on some other kind of promotion.

Given a choice you should always prefer quality over quantity when it comes to your website or blog content. This is not some idealistic sentiment; it really does work.

Social Media Marketing Best Practices

Aug 28, 2008 5 Comments »

A few years ago I came across an Amway couple… those sorts who befriend you in order to encourage you to sign up under them or buy their merchandise. The sole purpose for them behind making new contacts and acquaintances was to generate leads. Even when they organized a social occasion it was mainly to showcase their products and again, to sign up new members under them. This was when I came across this expression “networking”. People network to further their careers and grow their businesses. There is nothing wrong in that as long as you don’t pester people with your never-ending ideas and product offers. For a long time the expression “networking” carried a negative connotation for me.

When I started reading about social media marketing I equated with networking. People were basically networking to get new friends and generate more leads. It took me some time to realize that social networking is not just mercantile; you establish many rewarding relationships with people from all over the world coming from different fields and professions. You make friends, sometimes great friends, and in the process there is nothing wrong if those friends want to work with you on professional assignments or if they want to recommend you to their friends and colleagues. I think one of the greatest benefits of actively participating in the process of social media marketing is that it is not blind marketing; you learn so much and you share so much.

Keeping this in mind, a few months ago I started using Twitter on a regular basis. Compared to other people there, my “regular” means quite an overstatement, but at least I have started visiting the website on a daily basis. I’m getting some great links and messages from highly experienced and socially active experts. So much good information is available provided you have access to it; otherwise it is all-encompassing wilderness.

Mitch Joel has started a thread on the best practices of social media marketing. Here is the post where he has as initiated the idea. Although I’m not experienced in social media marketing my personal experience has shown that it helps you a lot to carefully listen to the conversations going around. This way you get to assimilate lots of wisdom. Listening also helps you gauge the general trend in your field. For instance I am trying to follow conversations of people involved with social media marketing, online copywriting and content writing, search engine optimization, creative writing, blogging and Internet technology. So far I don’t feel like sharing my own thoughts because although I read a lot and I’m pretty much comfortable supplying content to my clients there is still a lot to learn before I can contribute. So I think listening and understanding the conversations going on in the social media marketing seen can be a worthy component of social media marketing best practices.

Getting new content writing ideas

Aug 25, 2008 22 Comments »

It doesn’t matter whether you publish a regular website or a blog; in order to get traffic you need to generate content on a regular basis. Generating valuable, regular content for your website or your blog achieves the following for you:

• Bring targeted and qualified traffic from search engines
• Bring repeat visitors on an ongoing basis
• Develop an interactive community around your product or service
• Encourage people to link to your website or blog from their own websites and blogs
• Facilitate social media marketing
• Develop your expertise and consequently, your brand
• Create lasting loyalty and fan following

All these are overwhelming benefits and very hard to ignore especially when almost all your competitors are leveraging them. But as a small business generating valuable content again and again can turn out to be a real challenge especially when you run out of ideas after a few weeks or a few months. I am an online copywriter and I still run out of ideas for a couple of blogs I manage, and of courses I need to keep the content on my copywriting and content writing website fresh and relevant too. Here are a few things you can do to get fresh ideas for your blog or website:

Hire a professional writer

This is the easiest way if you can afford it; once you have hired a writer for your blog or website then it becomes his or her headache to come up with new ideas for your blog or website or both. I take up this headache for many of my clients but ironically I lack the effort when it comes to writing for myself. I know the best writer for your business would be you but if you can better utilize that time doing something else then it is prudent to hire a professional writer for your content needs. Here is a detailed article on how to hire an online copywriter for your blog or website.

Take ideas from whatever you have already written

If you have been publishing web pages and blogs then by merely going through them you can get lots of writing ideas. Pick up a sub topic and expand upon it. Randomly pick up an expression and see what you can write around it. This will not only be great fun it will also give you plenty of new ideas. Also go through the comment section of your previous blogs; plenty of times people ask questions through comment sections and those questions can be easily answered as full-blown blog post or web pages.

Visit other blogs and websites

As a busy person this is perhaps the hardest task. You can assign a particular day for this task. Create a compact list of websites and blogs that you would like to keep a tab on to get new writing ideas. Either bookmark them or subscribe to their RSS feeds. The benefit of subscribing to their RSS feeds is that you don’t even have to visit them and you will be notified the moment something new is posted there. Instead of simply visiting other blogs and websites you can also try to interact with the publishers or other visitors because this also stimulates your mind and gives you knew writing ideas. Online forums and social media and networking websites too are a great source of new writing ideas.

Become knowledgeable in your field

The more you know the more you have to write. Becoming knowledgeable not only helps you write better it also improves your professional prospects. Continuously try to learn new things and devise ways to do existing things in a better manner and then share your experiences through your website or blog.

How do you become an expert?

Aug 22, 2008 11 Comments »

Being an expert helps you in a big way whether you seek a job opportunity, aspire to climb up the corporate ladder or simply want to be a successful solo entrepreneur. When you become an expert people refer to you, listen to you intently and take your word seriously. Even if they haven’t personally consumed your services they are prone to recommending you to their friends and colleagues if they are convinced that you are an expert in your field.

But how do you become an “expert”? There is no short way; being an expert actually means becoming an expert and you can only become an expert by gleaning valuable knowledge and experience and then using that experience and knowledge for the benefit of the others; it is not necessary whether you charge for your expertise or not. Take for instance writing professional content for the websites and blogs.

There must be hundreds of thousands of “writers” offering their excellent content writing and online copywriting services; and I am sure many of them do provide excellent services. But why do some writers get plenty of work and some just survive on the fringes? There are two factors, in fact three factors if you count the ability to write well too: your ability to portray yourself as an expert and the effort you put in promoting yourself.

The act of promotion requires a separate discussion but here we will focus on the process of becoming an expert. Personally I believe you are always on your way to becoming an expert – nobody can claim to be a through and through expert, but I am being rhetorical here. Here are a few points that can help you become an expert in a field like content writing and online copywriting:

Learn constantly

Well, this is a given; in order to become an expert you need to carry on learning no matter how much you think you know. There are always new things happening; perceptions are always changing; technologies are perpetually evolving and social and demographic transformations are always in the process of taking place. You need to learn how different people react to different types of writings. There are different words that elicit different responses under different contexts.

Recently I had to refund an advance because the writer to whom I had outsourced the writing gig kept extending the deadline and eventually the client, understandably, got fed up. After sending the refund I sent an SMS to the writer informing her to stop all further work on the project. Her SMS response was, “Wow! Do what you think is the best.” I’m not going to talk about the way she didn’t deem it fit to apologize even once, but just notice how she has used the expression “Wow!”. Do you say wow! when something bad happens? So you need to be very careful how to use appropriate expressions when writing.

Be socially active on the Internet

You will notice that most experts are also expert in the art of networking and communicating. They don’t shrug away from discussions, debates and even controversies; they are always more than ready to talk, even to total strangers. The more you interact with people the more you highlight your expertise and knowledge. Use various social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook to keep in touch with people. Interact on blogs and online forums and leave useful and productive comments there so that people are encouraged to reach out to you for further exchange of ideas and information. Without being a bug network with the existing experts and reputed people.

Give your best

When you’re taking up projects and working on them give your best to them because giving your best forces you to stretch your limits and go beyond the usual. Think how you can deliver more than what is expected. Give your special touch to the project. Don’t hold back your knowledge; use it if it can benefit your client. In fact delivering more than what is expected of you shows that you have great knowledge and you are not scared of using it for the benefit of your clients even if you’re not directly being paid for it. Most experts have this tendency to share their knowledge without expecting immediate returns.

Maintain a blog

Share your ideas and wisdom through your blog; your blog is a great platform to express yourself and establish yourself as an expert. Sharing knowledge does not mean you are losing money; if there are thousand people who will use your advice for free to further their business gains there will be 50 or 100 people who would like to hire you as an expert, that otherwise wouldn’t have known about you or your ability. The biggest advantage of maintaining a blog is that you can showcase your expertise openly and at the same time build highly targeted traffic for your business website. In fact there are many people who don’t have a business website and solely run their businesses and consulting services through their blogs.

Being an expert surely takes an extra effort. Projecting yourself as an expert is a lot different from actually being an expert. There might be short-term gains in projecting yourself as an expert but a long-term job security can only be ensured when you truly become an expert of your field.

The content of your website is far more important than you think

Aug 19, 2008 3 Comments »

Mitch Joel on his blog explains why your business website is as important as your retail store and it is as much a part of your company as any other crucial component needed to run your company. I would like to add, so is the content on your website.

Your business website is there to help your customers and clients do business with you, it’s not merely a piece of decoration hanging from the wall of your lobby. It contains information that educates, informs and assists your customers. This information can exist in the form of informative textual content, or product listings extracted from your inventory database. Mitch refers to the product listing sort of content when he discovers that the information on the website does not match with the ground reality at the product store. My usual focus is on the textual content; content that doesn’t merely throw numbers and facts at your visitors, but establishes a rapport with them.

Although it depends on your market, it could easily be the case that most of your exposure happens through your website, that means, more and more people do business with you after reading what’s there on your website. Even if you are not doing online selling, people might be visiting your office or store after gleaning information from your website. The content on your website has the ability to send your visitors away, or draw them closer to making a purchase.

Why is content so crucial for your website? The answer is quite simple; in the absence of a human, it’s your content that welcomes your visitors. It’s your content that helps your visitors perceive a voice amidst an avalanche of cacophonic sounds. Even the first line of your content can decide whether your visitor stays on your website or moves on to the next link.