Nov
Is Great Content Always Enough?
This is a guest post by Maria Rainier, a freelance writer. Contact me if you are interested in writing a guest post.
I’m going to beat a dead horse for just a little while. You have all heard or read the web marketing mantra: Content is king. While the phrase now sounds tired and clichéd, I still believe in this mantra. Lately thought, I’ve been reading a lot of criticisms to this saying, but let me assure you that, without great content, you have nothing to leverage as a web marketer.
Is Your Content Really that Great?
I know that this is a bit of a snarky question to ask, but as a content producer and marketer, you must ask yourself this constantly. You should also ask this question to other people as well and not just your own fans. Seek out criticism; trust me, it is really easy to find on the internet (though it can be hard to find good criticism).
Simply defining great content can cause a big headache. Even if the majority of your audience considers your content to be great, does that make it great? Not by any universal scale, whatsoever. In my mind, great content on the internet encompasses at least one of these principles:
- Credibility – Your content must not only be accurate but appear accurate. The best way to do this is to actually have experience in what you’re writing about. And make sure you understand what you’re saying because if you are just copying some jargon from Wikipedia, your readers will not understand nor trust you.
- Effort – You can tell when someone spends a lot of time on a product. So can your readers. When you present highly polished, extremely well-executed content, not only does it create a better experience for your audience, it gains their respect.
- Usefulness – Some of the best content provides tips and information that the audience can take with them and use themselves. When you provide actionable knowledge to people, they will remember where they found it.
- Uniqueness – Sometimes you come across something so interesting and so special, you just have to share it with others. Perhaps it is a unique idea turned into an article or a remarkable image. The best content has a unique quality to it that adds to its remarkableness. It adds excitement to both those who see it and create it.
Are You Marketing Your Content Effectively?
If your content has at least one or more elements of the bulleted list above, then odds are there is a problem in how you are marketing your content. While I wish I could say great content always stands up on its own no matter what, this is simply not true. Even the best artists have to have some network of ties and connections in order for their work to be seen. The most important factors to consider when marketing your content are the following:
- Be diligent in reaching out with your content. This is the time to really sell yourself and your work. One tweet is simply not enough. Email, IM, or even call friends and peers. Try not only to get them to view your content but share it as well. You should be excited to share your work, and if you aren’t that excited, perhaps it isn’t that great of content (see above list).
- Publish your content at optimal times. This really varies depending on your audience, so finding the optimal time to publish can be a bit challenging. But definitely use your logic to think at what times they might be online and checking social media and experiment with a variety of educated guesses. For a working crowd, just before lunch time might be perfect if people check their social media during lunch.
- Publish your content somewhere else. This can be an extremely tough decision because you’ve worked very hard at creating content that represents you and your site. Why post it on someone else’s site? Because, particularly for new and upcoming sites, your audience hasn’t yet found your site yet. It would be a much better move to publish some of your gems on high-profile competitors, and then watch as the traffic comes streaming back to you.
Author Bio:
Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online colleges, online degrees etc. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.Related posts:
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I agree, credibility is an important aspect for articles, and for all sort of services. Your article may be nicely written and well documented, but it also needs to be credible and authentic. Specific words and a nice structure can achieve that.
Great content can be enough, but as i see it, best would be to have continuous great content
True. Readers will find your content ‘great’ if they find it useful and unique. As you said, content must not only be accurate but appear accurate, readers must find it credible to build their trust (the best way, for me, is putting sources or refrence to support your post)
Hello, Maria.
There are indeed a lot of components that could make a content great and we need to work at them if we want our readership to rise. You are also right that it is not just about great content, but also about how we market them.
I, for one, noticed that blog commenting and tweeting our posts really do well in letting the public know of the latest content we have on our site. Although I am unable to do as much blog commenting now as before, I still believe that the little I am doing now is helping in balancing things out.
Although this is the first time I read of your posts, I still thank you for adding value to Justin’s blog. Thanks, Maria!
It’s so true, Maria. I think people are now in the habit of saying they have ‘high quality’ content but as the standards keep rising, it may not be true.
Really great content is hard to come by.
Darren
People have their own definition of great content. As for me, credibility and usefulness of a post is what a great content is all about. Just don’t copy the article on others. Interesting read.
I try to focus most of my time on creating an article or post that contains useful information and something that will keep my readers coming back to my site. I know I am still a newbie, but I am going to stick to writing great content and engaging my readers. Love the post!
Yes I believe good content is good enough. There is nothing like good quality posts that will generate the maximum number of comments. People appreciate the quality and if it is good, there is every chance you will get the rewards.
Very true, Justin. Only articles that were useful and unique should be called ‘great content’, credibility will be the one that support all your details, information about the article. This is a good way to build your reader’s trust.
I would like to add one thing, not only good contents but also the target is also very important.
I agree that publishing your content somewhere else will help find more audience and traffic to your website. The internet is so vast and there are always untapped markets to go for. Guest posting is one good way to collaborate and build relationships with other people on the web.
A ‘great’ content is always useful, unique, and credible without these factors its not a ‘great’ article then. I agree with you ‘Publish your content at optimal times.’ bloggers should also consider their audience time.
Great content is usually one of the keys to having a lot of traffic but this on its own can not help you so much as a website owner. I agree that your content has to be unique and helpful for it to get high rankings.
You are also right that it is not just about great content, but also about how we market them.I, for one, noticed that blog commenting and tweeting our posts really do well in letting the public know of the latest content we have on our site.
Content must be authoritative and have a sense of credibility. You must convince your readers that you really know the topic you are writing for.
Noel Addison@Web Design Ventura´s last [type] ..5 Things to Look for in a Web Dev Company
Yes, I do agree with you. This is a good way of defining quality content using essential parameters. However, posting great content does not end the job and we need to promote this content effectively using the right SEO strategies. This is where most people lack behind and end up failing in the internet market. I think everyone should know the basics of SEO before starting a website or a blog so that they can choose the right niche and keywords to target right from the beginning.
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I believe content will always be king of the web. Google is trying to align its search algorithm with helpful and powerful content. As long real human beings are doing the searching – great content will be enough.
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i would say great content with uniqueness is well enough…it only attracts the people and gets traffic…
My goal when I started my website years ago was to create great content and hope google recognized it as the best in the business. It’s finally paying off! Write, write and write some more!
Don’t make your content dull and uninteresting by feeding it dry information and tedious facts. Don’t write in a monotonous way for pages just to convince people for the products and services. What makes the searchers visit a site again and again is the quality contents.
I like to think that great content will always be enough .. and to some extent it is .. because it will keep readers coming back to your site.
But you’ve got to get the readers to your site first so you can’t just rely on your content.
Once you’ve got the traffic though the content will just cause your reader base to expand as people always like to share quality content with their friends, whether it be via word of mouth or social media, great content will always manage to go viral if you’ve got the traffic to kick start it.
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Fresh and bang up to date content is very good – interspersed with some fixed knowledge/content. But as many people have said: content is king – but only when you’ve managed to drive the traffic.
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