Red Chilli Works Project

Are You Using the Right Content Development Strategy for Your Website?

The type of content you produce influences the popularity and profitability of your website. People will often subscribe to and read blogs that are well-written and informative or entertaining.

Potential customers are much more likely to make purchases when your sales copy succeeds in promising benefits and reducing risk.

If you operate a paid membership website, your content needs to be interactive and educational. Directly fulfilling user informational needs and providing channels for user feedback are important.

Content goes a long way in establishing the value of your website for each visitor.

It determines the amount of repeat visitors you’ll get and transforms your personal and business brand. It is easy for high quality content producers to receive natural citations and recommendations. I’m sure you all know how incredibly valuable word of mouth is for increasing sales and your audience reach.

Having the right content development strategy can make a big difference in how fast your site grows. This article can be summed up in one sentence: Learn how to create and use the right content development strategy as a powerful means to achieve your website or business goals.

Guidelines for a Content Development Strategy

I’ve previously talked how content needs to capture attention, a scarce asset in the today’s accelerated information economy. Your product or service must be relevant to customer needs or desires. Content is similar. If the information you offer is not what they’re looking for, search engine visitors will click away to another website.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen published an article yesterday comparing the benefits of creating long and short articles. By benching costs (time needed to read an article) against benefits (value obtained from the article), he concluded the following:
People prefer to read short articles. This is also what we’ve found in empirical studies of users’ behavior while reading websites. People tend to be ruthless in abandoning long-winded sites; they mainly want to skim highlights.
If you want many readers, focus on short and scannable content. This is a good strategy for advertising-driven sites or sites that sell impulse buys.If you want people who really need a solution, focus on comprehensive coverage. This is a good strategy if you sell highly targeted solutions to complicated problems.
Nielsen goes to suggest that a content strategy which mixes both long and short articles is the best way to go, because it fulfills the needs of all visitor types. He recommends producing short articles for the majority of users, while supplementing them with in-depth articles for the few who want to know more.
One way of doing this is to create content that is short and within it, include links to more detailed articles and in depth information on other pages.
The more value you offer users each minute they’re on your site, the more likely they are to use your site and the longer they’re likely to stay. This is why it’s so important to optimize your content strategy for your users’ needs.

It might make sense to follow these suggestions for static websites with fixed pages and content that rarely changes. These sites do not evolve beyond their mission statement, tagline or initial purpose. If they are selling vintage posters, they will always be selling vintage posters or variations of them.

But Nielsen’s recommendations do not mesh well with blogs which continuously provide fresh content on an almost daily basis. I brought up Nielsen’s article to show how markers like content length are not really important, as well as to illustrate the actual value of content as a strategic tool to achieve your overall site goals.

Content Development Should Not be Separated from Strategic Planning

Remember what I wrote about strategic blogging? Creating, maintaining and growing your blog with ends in mind ensures that you stay on track to accomplish your goals. These ends involve the tactical development of content.

Content should be considered a part of your overall master-plan and not just an isolated necessity or discipline. You don’t structure your articles simply to please a group of transitory visitors. There are many other larger factors involved.

If you’re trying to generate as much revenue as possible from advertising, it makes sense to write frequent and shorter blog posts. Going for volume will get you more search engine traffic and that sometimes means sacrificing quality for quantity.

But that’s fine because the size of your traffic is more important then the quality or type. You want the masses in and you want to send them out via an ad link. But this strategy doesn’t work if you’re trying to produce content that makes you an expert.

The best channels, the ones worth paying attention to, filter. They are valuable as much for what they DON’T publish as they are for what they do publish. If you have an ad supported business model then information pollution is an effective means to increase profit margins, but if you sell consulting and/or content a different approach is required

When you’re trying to sell personal consultation services, you shouldn’t create short blog posts for the purpose of generating traffic or piquing interest. Your articles should have one ultimate and all important purpose: to demonstrate your knowledge and skills. People want to hire a thought leader, not an follower.

One infallible way of doing that is to write and share articles of in depth information and unique value. Instead of writing a short reference post which links to a detailed article, write that detailed article instead for incoming links and attention. Every citation you get is a positive vote for your abilities and expertise.

If you’re a web designer looking for work, produce that lengthy manifesto on best design practices. Write a long how-to guide (example) telling everyone what they need to create a brilliant and usable website. Spread it through social media, let it generate some buzz. Give it a chance to develop your brand and reputation.

It also makes sense with network with other established industry players by citing and linking to them in order to generate goodwill. You want those recommendations and testimonials. Your site should reflect your active participation in the industry.

Clients will start coming in naturally. You’ll get emails inquiring about your rates. All this stems from networking and disseminating strong articles that position you as an expert on topics that are relevant to the services you provide. This is something that pumping out 10 short news articles a day will not achieve.