For years, gurus, bloggers and marketers have been debating who gets to wear the crown as the most important factor in your online success.
What is often overlooked is how interconnected all the aspects of online presence management are. The quality, coordination and strategy are often more important than which piece of the puzzle we call king. So let the talking heads continue to debate whether content, social media or promotion is the king for online success. In reality, all three are necessary and intricately connected. You really can’t do one without the other.
I propose that content is the foundation for your online success.
Of course, creating a quality, visually appealing and easy-to-use website is really the first step for your online presence, but let’s hope you’ve gotten that far. If not, then stop reading and go get a website! Once you have a website, the real work begins. To learn more, read I have a website, now what?
[tweetherder]Without quality content on your website, you have nothing to promote.#contentisking[/tweetherder]
This is true whether on social media, online ads, email or even offline with print. Content is the foundation for your online presence.
We’ve had this challenge with several clients who were in a rush to build a social media audience, but had very little information on their website. Without having high quality, useful and relevant content on your website, there isn’t much point to send people to go visit. Similarly, without consistently adding quality content, you are not going to rank high in search or be found by people searching the web for your products or services.
Here are 7 tips for quality content:
- Create a content marketing strategy first! There is no point creating or promoting content if you don’t know who and why. According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 44% of companies have a documented content strategy and Joe Pulizzi believes it’s closer to 15%!
- Assign one person in your organization to be the lead person for content. They will need to manage the process for creating the content, strategy, tactics and testing.
- Regularly add new, relevant and useful content to your website. We do this with our blog, which is easy with WordPress and one of many reasons why we use WordPress.
- Create systems for sharing and communicating. It’s critical to have integration between the content, marketing and social media folks in your company.
- Know why you’re using social media and which channels best fit your brand and audience. Do you want more fans, likes, engagement, brand awareness or sales? Target the content to your audience and purpose.
- Use multiple tactics to promote your content. Email/ newsletters, social media and blogging are the top three. We use all three, but there are many more like videos, white papers, events, in-person networking, webinars, ebooks, etc.
- Test which tactics and content have the best results. Then do more of those!
Is your content king or tired old story?
Make it shine with story, strategy and consistency.
Quit Monkeying Around! Join the Zoo.™