Good content puhleeese!

What does it take to get good content?

Okay by now you've heard it all. Content is king, content marketing is the way to high search rankings . . . content, content, content.  But what really makes good content?

With the rise of social media I spend a lot of time looking at and developing content.  It's a balance between providing content for clients on their websites (because you want to bring visits to the website itself) and finding content to post about (because you want to be a resource for other good sources of content).  What I find on a regular basis is bad because:

1. It's a copy of what everyone else is saying - argh! If I only had something new and different!
2. It has no photos - which are essential when using Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest social channels.
3. The site itself is ancient, circa 1995.  This includes hideous backgrounds with text that is hard to read.
4. The content is rife with grammatical errors, spelling errors and just general bad internet form.

What I would like to find is, obviously, quite the opposite.  This is what I strive for when providing customized content for my clients:

1. Good, solid writing style. Must read well grammatically, no misspellings, and be easily scan-able with bullets,bold fonts and block quotes.
2. Images that compliment the content.  This is important because, as stated above, certain social channels post a photo with the article blurb.  Since 90% of our perception begins with vision, having an appropriate image is important to good content.
3. Page design that is conducive to reading.  No gray on gray or red on blue.  I want the page to give the reader's eyes a break.  
4. Original thoughts, ideas and titles.  Sure the topic may not be new but find a new way to present it with a title that surprises and invites the reader. 

Is this all too much to ask? I don't think so but after spending hours a day providing quality content for my social clients I find it's more rare than it should be to find such gems.  

Need help with your content? Contact us! We're happy to help.

Fed Up with "Content Marketing"

Is content marketing really new?

Everyday there are at least a handful of articles talking about how you have to be involved with content marketing. And everyday I look at those headlines and think, why do people think this is news? Seriously, if you've been involved in internet marketing at all in the last decade you would know that this is nothing new at all. In fact, if you are an internet marketing professional, you should have been practicing "content marketing" all along. It's the backbone to all other online marketing efforts.  Whatever you are trying to accomplish online it should begin with the content.

Example: You want to set up a lead generation campaign.  You need to have something that people want in an easy to access format that will be worth a prospect giving you an email address.  What do you do? You develop content in the form of a white paper.

Example: You want to send out a newsletter that includes the blurb of an expert article on your website. That expert article is content you've got to develop to give value to the newsletter.

Example: You're running a social media campaign that needs to bring traffic to the website.  You can't just keep sending the same old content over the social channels so you develop new content on the website to give a new life to the website and an new reason for return visits.

These examples don't even touch the content you've probably developed over the years to address key questions about your products / services - you know those articles about how to choose, how to use, what to choose, and etc.

Developing unique, quality content isn't a new marketing scheme.  You should have been developing content all along to help promote the website through all of the many online marketing channels. Good content isn't a strategy itself, it's the backbone to every online marketing strategy.

So the next time you see a groundbreaking article about content marketing you can skip the hype and use the time to learn about the last Panda update.

Questions? Comments? I invite your feedback :)

Why text content is king

I saw an interesting post in Twitter today so I took a closer look. Steve Rubel had written an excellent post regarding the value of true text on the internet and why it is still the king.

Here are the reasons as he listed them and a couple of my own:

• It's scannable - according to Jakob Nielsen users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visit and 20% is more likely

• Three letters: SEO - For all that Google Universal Search has done to elevate video, search results are still largely made up of text and everyone wants better SEO

• The workplace - It's much easier for cube-based workers to read text on the screen and get away with it vs. watching long videos. Watching videos (even work related vids) screams "slacker"

• Mobile Devices - Yes, of course you can put a video on an iPhone and iPad. But it's work and requires planning. Text is easier to pull up in a nanosecond

• Distribution - Nothing flies like text. It's so easy to cut and paste it and send it somewhere or to clip and re-syndicate it via email, RSS or social networks
• Content is a core component to social marketing campaigns.  And having unique content on your own website gives people a reason to come back to your website over and over - great ongoing exposure for your business.

Although text is the best, the major search engines are always seeking ways to index alternative web content like videos. While we are seeing that videos are gaining momentum as quality content because, fundamentally, we are all visual people.  The fact is that people want to be able to have something tangible when they are comparison shopping, learning new information and etc. Text content is the best way to "hold on to" that information in a way that allows your brain to digest and your computer to store information.

So if you want to attract attention, get rid of the splash page and add some solid searchable, scannable content.  And remember to add images for distribution across social media like Facebook, Pinterest and Google plus!