Everyone is familiar with the mantra “great content attracts valuable links“, or “if you write it, they will come.“ Of course, both are true to some extent, but great content also needs great promotion.
You can’t expect content to sit there on the web on its own and just attract links without any SEO or website promotion work can you?
So too you can’t expect to just whip out a great post out of thin air (although there are a talented few who have this exceptional ability).
There are steps to creating great content that will help define your brand and build your credibility with your clients. So what are they?
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Consider Your Audience
I have seen so many writers fail to grasp this important step. Considering who you’re writing to has to be right up there with ensuring correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. If you don’t speak in your audience’s voice, how can you expect to reach them accordingly?
There is a caveat to the opposite approach as well ““ if you speak in ‘technicalese’ common to your industry, but ignore the rest of the population who might be reading your article, then you have failed just as miserably as well. Unless, of course your audience is the technical side of that industry.
So, consider the audience you are writing for. Ask yourself if your post speaks to them in terms that they understand. If it doesn’t? Then consider major revisions to the post until it gets your point across to those people. Nothing’s worse than writing that doesn’t communicate what you want to effectively.
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Consider Industry Influencers ““ What Are They Discussing?
Yes, this is much easier said than done. But, it’s possible.
One of the ways to create unique exceptional content is to keep tabs on the influencers in your industry. Ask yourself:
- What are they writing about?
- What are current industry trends?
- Do you want to go outside of industry trends and discuss a topic that no one has covered yet?
- Where can you lend your expertise in a specific content area that no one else can?
- How much would you want to write about this topic?
Longer, significantly more detailed, extremely high quality articles tend to get more attention in some industries than others. Consider these points when trying to come up with content that will beat your competition.
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Consider Promotional Writing Opportunities On Industry Events
Do you have a conference coming up that you can cover with a whole series of articles on the topic? This is a great source of content. Of course, always be careful not to plagiarize the speakers.
If you are live blogging conference sessions it’s always a great idea to make sure that you include the name of the person who’s speaking when you quote them. You don’t want to unintentionally commit plagiarism of a speaker’s slides.
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Code, Post, Publish, Link, Promote
And finally, once you have created that content, now is the time to publish it and promote it!
Be sure to adhere to as simple a coding structure for your content as possible according to the doctype that you’re using. Make sure you come up with great titles and Meta Descriptions for the content pages. Make sure you interlink your content with appropriate anchor text to internal website pages that make sense.
And finally, make sure you include SOCIAL SHARING buttons (Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) so that others can share your content easily. And of course, actively promote your content on your social networks!
The above is one group of methods that is sure to help you develop a content action plan so that you can come up with even more and better ideas along with ways to promote them. This isn’t the only way that you can create great content, but it is one way, that, when done right, can produce significant results in the months and years to come. And the last point is most often overlooked but is probably the most important point of all? HAVE FUN!
