If you are a website owner, an eCommerce business owner, or blogger, you need great content. Not just content that is relevant to your brand, but content that resonates with your target audience.
Google has stated that the two significant factors in the ranking on Google are mobile-friendliness and high-quality content. This means you not only need to create mobile-friendly content by paying attention to format and readability, but you also need to focus on how to maximize the quality of your content.
First, know thy audience!
The first commandment of creating valuable content is to know your audience. You cannot create content your audience will love and respond to if you don’t know who your audience is. So, first, do some research about the kinds of people you are trying to attract. This will be the key to creating good content for your purposes.
Define your niche
Another part of developing suitable and engaging content for your brand is to define your niche. It needs to be as specific as possible without excluding potential customers in the broader category. For example, if you are the owner of a flower shop, you can talk about topics that are more general such as how to find the best flowers for a special occasion. But you may also want to appeal to the more niche-specific visitors who want to know how to combat pests when raising roses.
This helps you provide information to two groups of people: the average consumer looking to purchase flowers and the rose grower with an aphid problem. This helps you maintain both abroad and niche-specific approach at the same time.
The bottom line is that you should do everything you can to find out what is essential to your readers or visitors and offer content that they need to help them with something that they are looking for. Use content tools to grow your brand.
Where to find the best content
One of the biggest problem most eCommerce businesses is that the business owner has no time to curate dynamic content that they can use on their websites or blogs. Perhaps they lack the writing skills, too or feel they don’t have the resources to find great content. In Timothy Ferris’s famous book, The Four-Hour Work Week, he talks about how you can outsource anything you need to so you can free your time to work on other things. We’ve provided a number of resources you can look into to find stable topics and information so you won’t have to worry about doing it yourself.
Content sites
Content sites offer written content for business owners and bloggers so they don’t have to produce it themselves. Below are some of the most well-known content sites that you can sign up to get content from. Keep in mind that some of these types of sites are considered “content mills.” This does not imply that the content is poor. It simply means that these sites churn out content regularly in a “factory model,” so the quality may not always be as good as you need. If you search, though, you can find some real “rock stars” in the mix.
Constant Content
Considered the most elite writing site on the web, Constant Content is located in the British Columbia area of Canada. They feature online content delivered in the highest quality within days of when you submit your request. You can find a regular writer to write your content for you or hire different writers once in a while to vary the type of content you put out.
Textbroker
Located in Las Vegas, Nevada, Textbroker.com has been around for a long time. They just appointed a new CEO who is continuing to find ways to help both clients and writers to succeed. Their pay to writers is much lower than Constant Content, but they offer more consistent work to writers, so you should not have any trouble finding someone to take on your work.
The way it works is that you submit a writing job to the site once you’ve signed up for a client account. Then someone will pick up your article to write it and submit it to the system. Once it has passed through editing, it is submitted to the client for review. You can either accept it as it is or ask for a revision. It is important to note that, since the pay is only average for writers on this site, many writers don’t want to do a lot of revisions since this also takes time to do.
Find a writer who understands our business and can provide content that will resonate with your readers and visitors. Finding a writer who truly cares about your content or subject matter will go a long way toward helping you land the best writers.
Digital Point
Have you ever heard of Digital Point? It is actually a forum that allows artists of all kinds to share their original work such as website templates, web domains, codes, and more. But there is a writers’ marketplace on that site that allows business owners to get writers to create content for their websites at very reasonable prices. Some articles are as low as $5. Just use caution in who you choose to deal with so that you get good content. There are no editors on this site at all and even poorly written content can be approved for display on the site. Go to http://digitalpoint.com to learn more about this site.
The bottom line with all of this is that any of these sites will work provided you find a capable writer who can get to know your brand and your purpose. You can talk to some of the writers, get to know him or her, and see whether they might be a good fit for your content blog or website.
Contractors, Not Employees
Writers are not usually hired like normal employees. They are independent contractors. So you do not have to worry about paying employment insurance, deducting tax, or any of the other things you do with employees. You just make an agreement (either written or verbal) with a suitable writer through these websites or with them directly if it was not through a content site, and let them compose your content and content ideas and get it back to you.
Tip: The better the potential writer knows your brand, the more they are going to be able to capture your voice or what you want to say.
Shop around a bit in order to find the best one for your purposes.
The DIY method
If you have some writing ability and really want to write your own content, then you will just need to arrange a time each week to deal with putting the content out. Spend some time researching what your customers want and the topics they would like to see you address. Remember to make your content provide some extreme value to your readers so that they will be back to see your other content. Remember that blog writing especially is a consistent thing and people will look for added content on a weekly basis. If you cannot keep up the pace with this you may want to outsource some of the work so that you will always have something fresh up for people to engage with.
Know your goals
In addition, once you get a blog or website up and running you need to think about what you want it to do. If you intend to sell on your website or make it a squeeze page or sales funnel you will want to advertise or promote it from your social media site. Incorporate your social media pages within your website by offering a link straight to your social media thoughts and back to your blog or website from your social media.
Do surveys and polls to find out what your customers want. Use content ideas like using podcasting tools to create a podcast or a video to draw even more people in. Studies show that over 65% of people who watch the video about a product purchased it afterward. There’s a lot of research out there that shows that videos and podcasts or some of the best ways to advertise products, services, and your brand itself.
Develop a complete marketing plan with your content generation so that you are not leaving anything out but focus on the excellence of the content so the value you are offering cannot be outdone by your competitors.
If you are the type of business owner who wants to remain in control of a good part of your business, then you may want to take some writing lessons and put out the content yourself.
Whether you plan on creating your content yourself or hiring it out by outsourcing it to professional writers. It’s either money or time you’ll be spending, so choose which one you’ll sacrifice. Content generation begins with that first piece. Good luck and remember that people will go a mile for good content but they won’t even sit for bad content. Good luck and best wishes for a prosperous future!
