The copywriter’s mantra – content is king
You know how important content is, you know how important social media is, but are you using them both to achieve the optimal effect?
Having a social media strategy is great, but if it is going to work you’ll need great content to fuel it. After all you can’t have a conversation if you have nothing to say.
In the same way, generating loads of content is only good if you have devised a way of sharing it.
How to marry content and social media
A recent post on socialexaminer.com called How Content and Social Media Equal Marketing Success takes a look at this point.
The video interview with Jo Puilizzi (author of Get Content, Get Customers) highlights the importance of content and how it must be written in conjunction with your social media strategy.
But the starting point for any business is to identify the online ‘hang outs’ of your customers and start having conversations with them. Building relationships is the foundation to all social marketing – talk to them, find out what they’re looking for, contribute to their conversations and then start to provide great information.
Done effectively, your customers will absorb your information (eBooks, white papers etc) and spread them to others.
The video is about 12 minutes long but is well worth a watch.
So grab a coffee and discover how to make your content marketing go further.
Content is King!
How many times have you been told that?
Well, it is true. Internet marketers have been telling you for years if you want more organic traffic you must publish more web content targeted at your long tail keywords. Finally, you’re taking notice and more and more companies are adding page upon page to their websites of new content.
But of course, hiring a talented copywriter doesn’t come cheap. So, adding hundreds of new pages of content to your website is going to be expensive.
Now, there is a group of you out there who think you’ve found the perfect solution to this. I can see you patting yourself on the back because you think you’ve got the best of both worlds – shed loads of new content without the high price tag. If that’s you, you’ve probably done one of two things:
- Out sourced your content writing to an Indian company or elsewhere in the world where you can pick up loads of articles for next to nothing
- Decided to take the DIY approach and written it yourself
Big mistake!
Yes, you are increasing your web content at a great rate of knots – but at what cost? And I’m not talking about how much you’ve paid for it; I’m talking about the cost to your reputation.
Why you shouldn’t value quantity over quality
Watering down the quality of your website content in this way could have a seriously detrimental effect on your rankings. Remember those? You’ve quite possibly spent years working on your search engine optimisation to achieve great rankings, do you really want to jeopardise them now?
A big part of your SEO strategy is building back links. Of course, people will only link to you if you provide great content. If you start to water down the quality of your content with poor articles, people won’t want to link to you. And if they don’t link to you…you got it, you’ll start sliding down the rankings faster than soap down a helter-skelter. If you want to attracts links, your content must be entertaining, intertesing and appealing.
But there is a more serious consequence – yes, even more serious than affecting your rankings. Low quality content will have a detrimental effect on your company’s image. Now for the science bit – take a look at these equations:
Great Content = Increased value + Positive effect on your company’s image
Poor quality content = Disappointed readers + Negative effect on your company’s image
OK, so maths was never my strong point but I’m sure you get the gist.
Why am I telling you this?
Because, if you don’t invest in quality content for your website you are going to do some serious long term damage to your reputation.
If you’re not particularly bothered about anything I’ve warned against here, go and hire a company that will generate oodles of content for you for just a few pounds. But if you do care about your image and reputation, invest in a quality freelance copywriter and focus on getting quality content. Yes, it will cost you more but the long term benefits speak for themselves.
The choice is yours.
