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
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
content development strategy
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.
Understanding the Influence of Content on Visitor Preferences and Actions
content development strategy
In actual reality, there is no singular or definitive reader profile you can use to fit a benefits/cost ratio. When a website consistently receives tens of thousands of new visitors in a single day, you can see how Nielsen’s guidelines are broad generalizations developed from limited empirical evidence.
The profiling of visitors is also futile because their informational needs are constantly shaped and transformed by your content. Every word you write and concept you put out influences minds and creates desires or perceived needs.
It is not as simple as simply producing information that is relevant to your site theme or creating resource pages to fulfill the keywords used by search engine visitors to find your site. Content is more more powerful and it can be used to develop entire breeds of new audiences/customers from the existing crowd.
Take my article on the importance of social media marketing. It is an educational piece I specifically created to demonstrate the efficacy and value of social media channels for your own website or business. This article is written to inform and was also created as a lead-in towards an future series of articles on social media.
Nielsen’s guideline reports are the same. He publishes his findings in the form of guidelines in order to recommend public compliance. His guidelines are designed to re-conceptualize or reformulate industry standards and this positions his brand as a leader, hence making his consultancy service attractive to high profile clients.
My article was written as a means towards an end; To generate interest and demonstrate expertise. By teaching my audience about social media, I am producing future interest for advanced social media marketing tactics. These future articles might be very detailed or they could be short, bite-sized tips.
The length of the articles don’t really matter when you have an audience that is sold on what you’re selling. An audience that has a foundational understanding and an avid interest. And this is the real trick to increasing the benefits of every article you produce for your visitors. Content pre-sells and makes related content valuable.
Word count is a superficial yardstick that is not important for blogs.
Moving Your Visitors Along the Attention Funnel
content development strategy
Content can be strategically developed in many ways. For instance you can write about broad and general topics to accumulate mass interest and get visitors to come into your site. This also includes writing content specifically for social media.
Use the right content hook to get people in the door. After that create similar content to maintain their interest while gradually producing material that builds on what you’ve already written. Distribute their attention by directing them to correlated products or services through your affiliate recommendations.
Once they are subscribed to your email newsletter or RSS feed, the attention of readers can be funneled in so many ways to build your reputation (send them to a mention of you in the press) or generate income (promote J.Vs or relevant products).
Content development is not a perpetual cycle of fulfilling reader needs via archetype profiling. It should really be a strategic process that generates desires and builds on them by offering related material which capitalizes on established visitor interest.
Forget the impossible task of satisfying readers by creating articles of a certain length or type (short or long, brief or detailed). It doesn’t really matter because visitor objectives and preferences are circumstantial factors you cannot predict.
Know that any percentile you’ve calculated from a poll or test will rapidly be adjusted and made inaccurate when more people flow into your website. Focus not on framing visitors in a fixed mold/profile but rather create interconnected layers of information and use content to funnel the audience into the core of your business model.
Content Differentiation Helps You Survive & Succeed in a Crowded Space
content development strategy
Content is a subjective factor because it is irrevocably tied to the creator’s knowledge and experience levels. You might think that your article on viral marketing is superb but someone more experienced and knowledgeable will find it simplistic.
On the other hand, complete beginners with little to no background knowledge will not understand your article and hence, will fail to appreciate its value. Your content is only as good as the degree to which the reader finds it useful/entertaining.
This subjectivity of content consumption is one of the main reasons why I think that content dissemination and distribution channels are sometimes more important than the actual content quality. The more visitors you can get to view your articles, the more they will begin to resonate with the right people and spread on their own.
But one thing remains constant: whatever content you produce will be benchmarked against other content in the same niche. If you are writing about making money online, your content will compared with other blogs which produce the same content. This naturally arises because of attention scarcity on the part of readers.
Differentiating your content from others ensures your website remains necessary, well branded and distinct from the rest of the crowd. When you are the only hot dog vendor stationed at a busy road junction, you automatically capture a market.
The Reason Why I Write Really Long Articles on Dosh Dosh
content development strategy
Content differentiation is usually a natural process for blogs. Your personality, background, opinions and the way you write distinguishes your blog from many others. The manner in which you interact with visitors and network with your peers also affects their overall loyalty and support for your site.
But sometimes that isn’t enough to develop reader interest and repeat visits. That’s when you need to focus a little more on differentiating your content type. This is one reason why I’ve been experimenting with longer articles for the past few weeks.
One thing is for sure: you won’t be seeing articles like the ones here on any other blog within this niche. I’ve noticed that the majority of bloggers covering the same topics like to write shorter blog posts that are easily digestible. Nothing wrong with that at all; I like reading and writing short blog posts myself.
Long articles alongside infrequent posting is an example of a content development strategy I consciously adopted to differentiate Dosh Dosh from other blogs. After blogging like everyone else for 9 months, I thought it was time for something different and so I cut out all the news posts and fluff to focus on unique content.
So far, the results have been great. While I enjoy this content strategy, I do plan to include some short action articles as well because some ideas and initiatives will achieve greater traction when they are published and spread in a simple format.
Note that changes to your content focus/format should be undertaken as part of an overall content development strategy, which can involve the production of content in multiple channels like audio or visual formats (podcasts/videos/user forums) to thicken up your site’s profile and communication reach.
Creating a Content Development Strategy for Blogs
Decide the most important goal for your blog. For example, you might use blogging as a branding tool or a means to generate direct or indirect revenue.
Make a list of content types that will achieve your goals. Create a weekly schedule which includes these content types (e.g. expert interviews, industry roundup, mullet baits or resource lists etc.)
Observe the type of content that other blogs in your niche produce. Find an informational need that is poorly fulfilled by others and create content to plug the gap. Experiment with different content types to attract attention.
Differentiate your blog by altering the content focus, type and format. Effective differentiation tactics involve creating a authorial persona, writing from experience, sharing your opinions and revealing your personality.
And that’s all there is to it. Pay attention to the content you are currently creating and think of ways they could be interconnected. Examine your content to see if they are fulfilling your overall goals. Create a content development strategy that works.
Consciously and strategically thinking about the content creation process is a good way to position your website against other content providers in the same field. Your site will gradually develop a distinctive value-driven identity, which will eventually lead to greater profitability and popularity.
