The internet is like a giant machine. If searchers are the gasoline that runs it, content is the engine that moves it forward.
People are online by the millions all the time searching for help, information and answers to their problems.
Content feeds their needs and answers their questions, and as needs change so should content.
A website is never finished and a blog is an ongoing, endless process.
It’s never like writing a novel when you can finally lean back and type “The End”. The day you decide it’s the end and quit adding content to your site that will be the beginning of the end for your online business.
Google loves content, and part of its ranking process is revisiting a site frequently to see if there has been fresh relevant content posted. It will be disappointed, just like a human visitor if there is nothing new. Google also checks to see how long people stay on your site and how many pages a visitor accesses. The more pages, the more Google smiles on you and the longer your visitor stays the higher Google will rank you.
But I hate writing!
You’re not alone. Even most successful internet marketers outsource writing to others. It is time consuming especially if you submit articles to directories and add to your blog daily. If you own a dozen sites, then writing can be a full-time occupation.
If you hate doing it, you’ll be miserable.
There are a number of reputable online agencies that can provide writers, some of whom work for pennies. These people are often based in the Far East or India where the cost of living is lower, but the down side is English is their second language so you may end up with third-rate work that has to be heavily edited.
Pay a little more and specify a writer with English as his or her first language and you’ll get much better quality work. You may even know someone, a college student perhaps, who could write your articles for you – they’ll be glad of the extra money too.
If you really are interested in outsourcing your content, check out my blog writing service: Blog Writing
Video is content too, but making a movie scares the beejeebers out of many folks. They’ll make excuses why they don’t use it, but cost is no longer an excuse. If you can use a computer efficiently then the technical side of video shouldn’t be a problem. It just takes practice and in the end you may find it’s a lot of fun. If you can’t afford software like Camtasia, PCs come loaded with Windows Movie Maker and I’m sure Macs have an alternative. Once you get good at it, reinvest some profits into getting good equipment and software. If you don’t know what to say, write a script. Practice makes perfect, and there’s many popular far-from-perfect videos on YouTube made by people who look a lot scarier than you!
If you want a successful corporate blog…keep your visitors and the search engines happy with lots of good, fresh, relevant content and you’ll be on the road to success.
Previous posts in this Successful Corporate Blogs series:
Successful Corporate Blogs: Are You Really Writing For YOUR Audience?
Internet Marketing Is Easy When You Use This Technique
Internet Marketing Is Easy When You Use This Technique Part 2
Successful Corporate Blogs: The Technique That Sells More
Successful Corporate Blogs: Build Loyal Relationships
Successful Corporate Blogs: Be Like Lady Gaga
Successful Corporate Blogs: Share Your Mistakes
Successful Corporate Blogs: Use Different Media
Successful Corporate Blogs: Grow A Thick Skin And Do Not Take Anything Personally
I feel that making a professional video is a challenge. It requires us to get really familiar with some good movie making tool and have a professional voice. Shooting clips is the easier part, getting everything else is quite difficult. These days viewers routinely expect even graphical content in their videos and I am not sure if there is an opensource project that helps us do create advanced level video. Do you know any?
Raj
I agree video can be a challenge but you have to start somewhere.
You could start with a ‘teaching’ type video of your screen and a voice over.
What do you think?
Andrew
If you hate writing, you cannot blog. No matter how good you are at podcast and video posts, you need to write for yourself
Really why?
You could do all the podcasts and videos yourself and outsource the writing.
That would work.
Andrew
Yeah, the saying goes that content is King, and it is not called King for nothing, you can only be outstanding if you have unique and interesting content. but easier said than done, it sometimes takes me even days to write a blog post. So for me, i found that making a video is much easier than writing something.
and if you can afford to buy one, i recommend you use Proshow Gold. With it and a little creative, you can make a really impressive video yourself.
Alex,
How long do the videos take you to create?
Andrew
it often takes me only about one or two hours to creat one, and sometimes it may takes longer it i want to do something “amazing” 😀
Alex,
Thanks for coming back to me. That sounds like a good 2 hours (or so) spent on creating some amazing content.
Andrew
I know how you feels Andrew. I’m also not fond of writing and sometimes i outsource this task offshore. I like the contractors at odesk.com. Most of the writers are really good and very creative. You might want to try them out and they don’t cost you much unlike agencies.
Gary
Finding a great affordable writer is hard. I’m glad odesk has worked for you.
Andrew
Super post. Writing is not my forte but I actually enjoy posting and writing articles. However, it is very time consuming and outsourcing is a very good way to get good content. The hardest part is finding good material from top writing services. Do thorough research before forking out any money from outsourcing sites.
Paul,
I agree it can be hard.
Whenever I outsource anything I ‘test’ the outsourcer by asking them to perform a small task. I do pay them for the the task and I get a feel for how good they are.
Andrew
Writing for Corporate may be boring task but it worth alot.
I too believe that Content is the engine of any site and it is important to maintain it well.
Producing content is one of my challenge as well. I have to spend lots of time to come out with a piece of blog post.
David,
Perhaps you need to think about outsourcing some of the writing.
Andrew
Content does drive the net. It would appear that many blog owners do not get it. There is so much rehashed crap posted on sites and much of it does not make sense. I do outsource some of my content by professional writers at unbelievable low prices. Good quality content is a major key to success.
True, I agree that while we do the podcasts and videos we can outsource writing, its a good idea to save sometime and utilize it for some other purpose. Running a blog is very challenging and its not possible to do everything on our own.