So what exactly is content strategy?
Feb 03, 2010 Comments
The dictionary defines strategy as “a series of maneuvers or executions performed in order to obtain a specific result or goal.” This pretty much explains what content strategy is, nonetheless, lets define it in the context of achieving your business goals.
Strategy basically involves:
- Where you’re coming from
- Where you’re going
- How you’re going
Most of us know (I’m talking about averagely intelligent and intelligent individuals) where we are coming from and where we want to go. How we are going to go is the tricky part, the core of your strategy.
Assessing the need for strategic content writing
Why do you need to publish content in the first place?
- To create buzz
- To build a community
- To inform
Both are very important. Buzz doesn’t just mean creating noise. It means generating traffic that eventually earns you revenue. Then, your content needs to convert and for this you need to impart the right information. If you want to hire my content writing and online copywriting services, I must inform you why it’s profitable to associate with me. With my content writing and copywriting skills I must be able to inform you and enable you to make an educated decision (in my favor, preferably).
What do you want to achieve through your content?
As mentioned above, you need content to generate traffic that converts. You can get this traffic directly through referrals and social networking websites or from search engines. Ideally, your content should
- Increase referral traffic to your website or blog
- Improve your search engine rankings
- Convert your visitors into business partners, customers, clients or subscribers
- Increase your brand awareness
Hence, content strategy means publishing and promoting your content in such a manner that it achieves the intended result for you. This may involve brainstorming on
- What sort of content you should publish?
- What medium must be used to publish the content?
- What keywords and key phrases you should focus on?
- What should be the publishing frequency?
- How should the visitors be engaged?
- How the content should be promoted?
- How to increase your conversion rate?
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Content Strategy, content marketing
Overcoming the “So What?” problem while writing content
Jan 29, 2010 Comments
Don’t know what’s “So what?” problem? It’s when you write something seemingly great and your reader thinks, “So what, big deal!” Alright, there are some readers who have an insatiable penchant for being critical and they will criticize you no matter what, but you can drastically decrease the number of such reactions by devoting enough thought to what you are writing/publishing.
Why do readers reject outright what you have written?
- The information you have provided is of no real use
- The same information is available on hundreds of other websites and blogs
- People have been sharing the same “secret” since 1998, or may be since 1500 BC
- You are drawing wrong visitors to your website or blog (you are not creating optimized, seo-focused content)
What sort of content creates the “now this is something really great” effect?
- Your content reaches the target audience (or vice versa)
- You pack lots of information that can be used in the real world
- You are providing valuable information that is not easily available
- You are offering easily available information with an interesting twist
Is it always about informing and educating your readers?
Not always, but most of the times. You have to make sure your content solves your readers’ problem, that it provides a solution, that it delivers what your readers want. So what about content writing for businesses and corporate websites?
The same thing applies. If you are providing online copywriting services then you must (ideally) be attracting visitors that are looking for (or may need in the future) a competent copywriter. So if you say you’re a great online copywriter it’s not going to make much of an impact because there are thousands of “great” online copywriters on the Internet; in fact these days anybody who can type starts calling himself or herself a content writer or an online copywriter. Rather, you should immediately address your visitor’s problem (that’s why it’s advised you should have targeted pages) and offer the most apt solution.
Here’s a good blog post by Chris I cam across that talks about solving the “so what?” problem while publishing your content.
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Content Strategy, Content Writing, content marketing
Keep your SEO goals in mind while creating your content writing strategy
Jan 28, 2010 Comments
It doesn’t help if you already have lots of content and then you realize that you are not targeting the right keywords. Although no situation is hopeless you can save yourself lots of time, and money, if you define your SEO goals properly. Make a list of keywords and keyword phrases you’d like to incorporate and then start generating your content around them.
There is also a business benefit of clearly defining your SEO goals — it keeps you focused. You know what sort of content you require for your website and blog and what you should avoid; yes, misplaced content is bad for SEO.
How do you keep your content SEO-focused?
- Create titles with your keywords. Your page titles are very important. They appear in the search engine result pages as hyperlinks when people search for the relevant terms. People click more on the links that carry the search terms they’ve just used. Even when people promote your content on social networking websites or link your your pages and blog posts they normally copy/paste your title — this associates these keywords with your brand.
- Use your keywords and key phrases when communicating your ideas. This tells the search engines that you have lots of content associated with the search term being currently used. If you provide content writing services then you should be talking about this subject a lot on your blog or website. But do it naturally; there is no need to use your relevant keywords excessively — this gets you penalized by almost all search engines.
- Link to your other pages not just the home page. Your different pages contain different bits of information and whenever you feel a particular phrase can be linked to a page giving more information about that phrase, create a link. It makes it easier for the search engine crawlers to reach other pages and it also creases the relevancy of your less prominent pages.
The basic idea of creating SEO-focused content strategy is keeping you focused and help you focus on the right search terms.
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Content Strategy, SEO, Web Content, content marketing
The importance and benefit of guest blog posting
Jan 03, 2010 Comments
Some bloggers have been able to generate massive amounts of traffic by regularly writing guest blog posts for other blogs. Have no idea what’s guest blog posting? It means writing blog posts for other blog publishers rather than for your own blog. It doesn’t mean you stop posting on your blog and just write for other blogs (it’s another matter if you get paid for this). A good mix can be, if you write 5 blog posts every week and you cannot simply squeeze in more time, you can use to blog posts as guest posts and remaining three for your own.
Besides creating diversity, as mentioned by Chris in this guest blog post, guest blogging also gets you high-quality in-coming links. More people begin to know you because your profile routinely appears at various places. Once people know you and recognize you and value your writing they also start promoting your links on various social networking websites like FaceBook and Twitter: it becomes sort of a cascading effect.
Another benefit of guest posting is that people start showing interest in guest posting for your own blog. This way you can devote more time on promotion.
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Blog Publishing, content marketing
Engaging your visitors with good content
Dec 17, 2009 Comments
Just came across this blog post titled Five Ways To Better Engage Readers on Your Blog and being a professional content writer I totally realize the importance of engaging visitors with well-written content. Not only your blog, you also need to engage visitors/readers on your website too because
Engagement => Attention => Greater chance of business happening
The competition is tough on the Internet due to fair and unfair reasons. There are some websites that have excellent content, and there are some that are merely content farms aggregating inferior content from various sources. Unfortunately, the search engines do little to discriminate and this is why it is very important that you’re able to convey your visitors that you are here to interact and set up a relationship with them, and you’re really serious about what you are communicating. So how do you engage your visitors?
- Give them what they are looking for
- Empathize with them
- Offer something really useful (it can be information)
- Encourage them to have a dialog with you
- Convey to them that you are one of them and not some unknown entity
We like to do business with people we’re familiar with and when you engage your readers they get familiar with you.
A good way of engaging visitors, especially on your blog, is by encouraging them to leave comments on your blog. Darren has listed 13 Types of Posts that Always Get Lots of Comments.
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Content Strategy, content marketing
Good content establishes your authority
Dec 15, 2009 Comments
Why so much hype about publishing good content on your website or blog on a regular basis? On the basic level there are two reasons: search engines prefer websites and blogs that have fresh content, and social networking guys and girls always have something to promote or retweet. So your content constantly generates new traffic and keeps the buzz going.
On a more advanced level, people begin to respect you (not as an elder but as a person who knows things and shares them confidently), and when they respect you they don’t fear doing business with you. When you constantly publish content people can derive knowledge from, they begin to see you as an authority. Interestingly, I’ve observed this on the Internet and also in my day-to-day life, given a chance people like to listen to those with authority and they like to read what they’ve written. But does only publishing good content make you an authority?
Not necessarily. Good content must be followed by regularity and relationships. Occasional sparks don’t bind people to your ideas. They have a low attention span on the Internet because so much is happening here. Written a great blog post? Cool! How are you going to make people read it if you haven’t created an audience for yourself? An audience is often created a few persons at a time. You create valuable content on a regular basis, you start interacting on other blogs, online forums and social networking websites and people start visiting your website or blog. If they see something remarkable there, they make an effort to return and check out what new you have published. Even after 15 days if they don’t find new content they assume you publish occasionally, and soon they lose interest, and you start all over again, and the loop goes on and on.
On the other hand if you publish valuable content regularly, they become used to visiting your website; they may even subscribe to your RSS feeds or newsletter, and start following you on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with what you have to say. Sometimes they may also link to you from their websites and blog posts, or promote your links on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon etc. This creates a cascading effect. More and more people become aware of your thoughts and ideas and they want to interact with you. When they interact with you you get a platform to share more of your knowledge. This is how you establish your authority.
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Blog Publishing, Content Strategy, Social Media Marketing, content marketing
Does your content engage your readers?
Oct 07, 2009 Comments
The most important job of your content strategy is to engage your readers in a continuous manner. This is how they remember you. This is how they become familiar with you, and what you can offer them.
In order to engage your readers, you need to talk and listen and respond, instead of just talking at them from your lonely, isolated part of the universe. Ask them questions, and give them answers, or even probable answers, when they ask questions. Don’t just focus on establishing your authority — although that is important if you want people to listen to you — but along with that also talk in their language and be approachable.
In order to engage your readers in conversations,
Encourage them to interact on the comment section of your blog
The best way of letting people interact on your comment section is to let them share their thoughts. If you have, say, 10 points to discuss on a particular topic, publish just 7 and let the remaining 3 come from your readers. Does this leave your post unfinished? Wait for a couple of weeks, and if nobody talks about the points that can make your post complete, you can always update it.
Publish sometimes things that are relevant to your users even if they’re not directly related to your product or service
Is there some public debate going on on your part of the world and you would like to know what your readers think about it and how it impacts them? Take for instance global warming and rapidly melting polar ice caps. It may not help you sell more network security devices or get you more web hosting customers immediately but it will certainly provide you with an opportunity to reach out to your readers and convey to them that you are not merely interested in promoting your business. Varied topics also encourages those people to come forward and express themselves that are though interested in your field but have got nothing much to say.
Highlight suggestions made by your readers
Sometimes readers/visitors raise very important issues and they need to be highlighted. Talk about them by updating your existing blog post or writing a new one. Give full credit to the reader who gave you the idea and if he or she has a website, link to it. This will give an incentive to your other readers too.
Make good use of social media
Some of your readers may be active social media users. They may like to share their thoughts on Twitter and FaceBook rather than posting them on your blog. If you find it difficult to express what you have to say in the limited number of characters, write a small post on your blog and then just mention the link on your stream.
What more can you suggest?
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Business Development, Content Strategy, content marketing
Content strategy before social media strategy
Oct 01, 2009 Comments
A major part of social media interactions involves promoting interesting and valuable content. Whether it’s blogging, Twittering, Facebook updates, Digging, Stumbling or simply forwarding email messages with engaging links, people are basically promoting content. That content can be in any format: videos, images, animations or text. If it’s interesting and useful, it is valuable.
In this post titled Social media starts with a content strategy the author has rightly stated that on social media nobody cares about you; they care about the content you can provide. People will promote your content if they find it interesting, relevant, topical or useful. So if you thinking about launching your social media campaign you better have some solid content production and content marketing strategy in place.
How do you formulate an advantageous content generation and marketing strategy?
Identify your market and recognize what it is exactly looking for. Does you content meet their requirement? Does it convey the right message? Do you promote your content in front of the right audience? Selling combs to bald people may be an accomplishment but in the long run it neither benefits your customers or clients nor it benefits you.
A successful content generation and marketing strategy involves three fundamental questions:
- What?
- Why?
- Where?
- How?
What sort of content should your website or blog have? What purpose does it solve and why you should publish it? Where should you promote your content – in front of whom? And what strategy and methodology you should follow in order to promote your content in front of the right audience.
Once you’ve answered these question, you can kick start your social media strategy.
