During website building and online marketing seminars people keep asking me the same questions: "why do I need original content? why having About Us, Products and Contact pages are not enough? I am not doing anything fancy, I own a simple business, why do you want me to write a novel about it?"
Well, the best way to answer these questions is to raise some counter-questions.
- Do you want your prospects to be able to find you online?
- Do you want to make a compelling pitch on your website so people would pick up a phone or email you?
- Do you have something to sell online?
If you answered 'yes' to at least one of these questions, you better start working on your novel (well, not exactly a novel) tonight. Even more, you need some of the chapters to be located outside of your online home (your website), just pointing to it. Times of cheap gimmicks and occasional technical tweaks to your website in order to gain a better ranking on Google are over.
Again, many people seem to be oblivious to the fact and keep looking for a magic bullet. Usual places where hopefuls are trying to get the answer are IT department of their company or just a house of a random computer programmer they happen to know.
Unfortunately, computer wizards will not help you here. You need to figure out how to tell a compelling story about your company and how to get that story in front of a crowd that cares to listen. This is not what normally IT or SEO (search engine optimization) people do.
By now you are familiar that more than anything else Google loves original content. Not the stuff you 'borrowed' from another website, not something you bought for $5 online that is so impersonal and mangled, it's hard to tell whether it was written by a real English speaking person, or a machine.
Even though aesthetically appealing website is a must, a lot of technically outdated and visually unattractive websites often rank much higher on Google than shiny flashy pieces of art with no original content. If you are trying to make some quick sales or you're an affiliate marketer, then buying some cheap random content might work. If you own a business, you need to build your content consistently and provide your potential prospects as well as the whole world with something more interesting and more high-class to read and watch.
- Here you have some choices:
- Write the content and produce videos yourself.
- Have somebody in your company do it for you.
- Hire some outside help (PR agency, online marketing firm, etc.).
If writing articles and creating videos is your passion and you possess ability to look at your business impartially, from outside, go for it. You will save some money and the process will be a share pleasure.
If you are not the writer type or you do not have time for that, look for outside help. Try to hire somebody who is more than just a good copywriter. The ideal candidate might be a boutique PR and online marketing firm that can give you a lot of personal attention. If your company is a little bigger than mom-and-pop shop, you need somebody who is able to think strategically, who can interview key people in your company and literally get the juicy information out.
Whoever will be doing it, they need to integrate the content in your current website or blog. They also have to make a decisions on what to use outside the website, what press members and bloggers to contact, where to post the original content and where to link it back.
