Developing Your Content Creation Strategy.

The message is clear to advertisers.  Ignore it at your own peril.  Google wants you to provide unique value to your visitors.

How do you do this?

One way is with killer content.   Words that make visitors stick... rather than flee.

The most visible example of this is simply your favorite television shows.  Consider:  What makes you prefer one Television channel over the other?  Or, one magazine or newspaper over the other?

What about one website over another?

In the end, the key ingredient is the content.  The information you offer and how relatable it is to readers.

Clever names and marketing only get you so far if there's no meat.

Quality content doesn't just help you with AdWords by making Google happy, but it also:

*  Boosts your credibility where people see you as the expert

*  Keeps visitors coming back,

*  Differentiates you from similar competitors in your market,

*  Drives free traffic from others linking to you,

*  Helps you claim free listings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Simply put, it's a long-term asset.

However, not all content is the same.  There are a lot of shortcuts out there to beef up your website.

A common "Grey" or "Blackhat" tactic is to use software to swipe existing junk content from Google search results, low-quality blog feeds, or wikipedia.  

However, if Google has not already caught on to the junk content, it won't be long before they do.

That is not to say you can't profit from it in the short term.  Just that it's not going to last long.

Of course, there's a reason folks are looking for short-term solutions.

Creating quality content takes work.  You may not be a pro writer or world class expert... and you may be in 5 different markets at a time.

So what are you to do?

Here are 5 strategies to generate quick and easy quality content:

1.  Get users to help generate content.  You might do this by creating a forum or encouraging readers to post in your blog.  To get them to post, you might have contests, answer questions (Q & A), or ask questions about controversial topics.  

2.  Give your take on the latest news stories in your market.  For example, if you run a health and fitness blog, then you can write about what you think of the latest studies that come-out. News sites or Digg.com are great places to check on a regular basis.

3.  Re-publish public domain material with your explanation of why it's still relevant today.  There's loads of old books that are free to take.  Just head over to a site like Gutenberg.org to get started.  There's loads of great stuff on topics like, self-improvement, public speaking, marketing, and much more.

4.  Interview experts.  This is a great way to learn about your market (which helps you sell) and beef-up your site at the same time.  Hire someone to transcribe your audio interviews so you can get content for the search engines.  Remember, Google can't read the words in video or audio files.

5. Selectively re-publish other people's content.  You can do this without getting additional permission from article directories, such as EzineArticles.com or IdeaMarketers.com.  You also might really like a blog or e-newsletter article and ask the author if you can re-publish it on your site.  Typically, others are happy to let you do this for free if you include their resource box after the article with a link to their sites.

Finally, you should also consider using video.  If you can't write or you really shine through video, then get a video camera and record.  Focus your attention on your talents.  

 

Simply put. there's a lot of great ways to deliver value, while keeping your workload manageable. It does take work, but you have to keep in mind that you're building a long-term asset.

If you only plan to be in a market for a short time, then possibly consider identifying a market you want to stay-in for the long-term.