CoachStrategies

10 Reasons to Give Away Valuable Content on Your Site

When people ask me how to get traffic to their site my answer is often a variation of the following:

1. Give other sites a reason to link to you by filling your site with valuable content.
2. Make other sites aware of you.

This is never what the person wants to hear. They immediately start asking about shortcuts. When I was starting out I did the same thing so I understand. It’s hard work to create good content and get the word out. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of time and there is no quick payoff to keep you motivated. It is easy to get started and then give up after the first real challenge because you are not seeing immediate results.

It is similar to getting in shape. Somebody asks how to get in shape and somebody else tells them:

• Drink enough water.
• Get enough sleep.
• Get enough good exercise.
• Eat good food.
• Keep bad food to a minimum.
• Be patient: it can take time to see results.

Then the person that asked the question starts asking about supplements, diet pills, 30 minute abs, celebrity diet plans, etc. They immediately want to know what shortcuts exist.

Good results are rarely due to shortcuts. Good results are often a simple matter of:

• Doing the right things.
• Doing them consistently over time.
• Being patient and finding ways to move forward despite challenges and setbacks.

This is just the price that must be paid. You have to get started, build momentum and keep things going.

I want to help you get motivated. Here are 10 reasons you should invest the time to create valuable content and give it away on your site:

1. Social network traffic. Great content gives other people a reason to talk about you and to link to you on forums, blogs and community sites.
2. Search engine traffic. More content, more keywords, more people linking to you: better search engine results.
3. Frequent search engine indexing. Frequent updates get your site indexed by search engines more often.
4. Return traffic. Keeps users coming back because they know your content addresses their needs and desires. They bookmark your site and keep coming back.
5. Credibility. When you help readers solve their problems and give them the knowledge they need and want—knowledge that helps them get results—they come to view you as an authority.
6. Familiarity and trust. Consistently exposing readers to your personality through your content makes them feel like they know you better and can trust you.
7. Selling without selling. You are silently selling yourself and your expertise without being salesy.
8. Content re-purposing. You can re-purpose all that content for content sharing sites, your coaching programs, tools, books, audio programs, etc.
9. Clarity. The act of developing content for your site often forces you to think through what you know and helps generate new insights.
10. Low cost. It is often inexpensive to develop valuable content for your site. You already have the expertise. The only costs are the amount of time needed to put the content in the right format to distribute and the cost of any tools you need to accomplish that task.

And in the spirit of providing value I’ll give you a bonus reason:

• It’s a proven strategy. Featuring valuable content is one of the most fundamental principles of online success. Ever heard the phrase “Content is King?”. Good content is king and has been since the beginning. This is the grandfather of web site marketing strategies.

Consider this: you can keep searching for shortcuts and secrets and see where that search leads you or you can take action today and put yourself on the path to results. I hope you choose the path that leads to results.

Why Social Media is Hot

Social media, social networks and communities are nothing new.Bulletin board systems (BBSs), AOL and sites like Bolt.com (from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s) are good examples of online communities. Amazon and other sites have made use of community features such as user submitted product reviews for some time. Message boards, newsgroups, list servers, forums and dating sites have been around for a while too and allowed people to build relationships, share content, photos, videos, etc.

A few things have changed during the past few years though:

• It’s now incredibly easy and inexpensive for regular people like you and me to generate and publish content. The tools are easy to use and in most cases free.
• More of us are on the web now and we are more knowledgeable and capable.
• The tools used to create social media platforms have become easier to use and less expensive.

The barriers that existed to user-created content have fallen and continue to fall. The same goes for barriers to developing new forms of social media and social networks.

The results of these developments:

• More people creating content.
• More social networks springing up.
• New forms of social media being created.
• Traditional sites increasingly making use of social media features.

As social media becomes widely present across the web, its ability to reach people increases. That is why it is becoming such a powerful promotional tool and social media marketing is getting so much attention.

Links: Social Media Has Teeth, Effective Marketing Principles, How to Start a Blog

Author feels the sting of social media. [From: http://www.chrisg.com/author-experiences-the-internets-mass-effect-first-hand/] Here’s an example of how social media can be dangerous. I didn’t have anything like this in mind when I wrote about it a while back. Doubtless there are countless ways people can use social media to blast somebody.

What happens when an author goes on national television and criticizes a computer game she has never seen let alone played?

In the past what would have happened is, well, very little.

Today of course is the age of the internet mob. Rather than chants, torches and pitch forks, the modern mob member uses Digg as the tool of choice. In this case the target was the hapless authors Amazon reviews.

Everybody makes mistakes and I think this author will ultimately bounce back but who can tell.

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So what’s the most important part of marketing? [From: http://www.earlytorise.com/2008/01/29/the-most-important-part-of-marketing.html#main] Great presentation of what makes marketing effective by Bob Bly:

It’s the product.

By that, I don’t mean the physical product. I mean what the product can do for the customer. The benefits it delivers… the functions it performs… the problems it solves… the needs it fills.

Are you offering your customers something they truly want or need? And is it an urgently felt need, rather than one that isn’t very important or immediate?

Do the people in your market niche desire or require what you are selling?

Will buying it make a huge improvement in the quality of their lives?

If the answer is yes, your marketing will be fairly successful - even if the price, offer, list, copy, and graphics are not perfect.

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Spreading ideas. [From: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/the-hyping-poin.html] I’ve taken this a bit out of context so the thought isn’t complete. The quote contains a valuable bit of knowledge anyway. Worth reading the entire blog post:

One more reason not to obsess about the A list in any media category. Worry instead about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread.

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What is your approach to marketing? How do you approach developing your offering? [From: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/tribal-manageme.html]

…the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe. Jerry Garcia understood this. Do you?

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Complete, comprehensive tutorial on starting a blog. Free. [http://www.becomeablogger.com/] If you want to tackle starting your own blog, this free video series walks you through the process step by step. Impressive! I can’t imagine this being done any better.

Build Your Email Subscriber List Through Product Promotion

A client completed his first book recently and wants a tie-in with his existing website. He’s looking to create a specific place on the web to point people to so they can learn more about the book and click through to buy it.

I suggested that he use this as an opportunity to: Read more »