Creating the best content in your industry
-
Im currently working with a new client and their goal is to create the absolute best content in their industry.
I've seen alot of articles on WHY to create the best content but not a lot on HOW to create the best content.
Can anyone recommend a article they recall which talked more about the HOW. I'm looking for a process on how to create awesome content, how to go about it.
Any suggestions?
-
I agree with Mike Davis.
I ranted on about the need to hire professional writers in a post earlier this week..
Many of my clients are themselves subject matter experts and professional writers. I just point them in the right direction and do some editing as we come up with an editorial calendar. It's not unlike what I did as a magazine editor.
And, yes, it's important to be accurate. That shouldn't have to be said -- but it does. You'll never know how much business you lost because a prospect concluded you don't know what you're talking about.
Getting people to commit to producing content? I agree it's very difficult. Here's a radical suggestion on how to succeed: pay them. I know, I know -- this is deeply shocking....especially if we are talking about non-writers already on staff at a company. Of course, you need high level support to make this happen. But a $1,000 or $2,000 one-time writing bonus can work really well.
-
I know that the whole concept of thought leadership is overused and slightly annoying but to truly create great content that people will consume and share you must be in the right place at the right time. If your client knows of a new governmental initiative or possibly a new emerging technology that is not widely known about but is about to "blow up", positioning themselves for success by creating great content that is well written by an expert is a fantastic way to gain exposure and to set themselves up as a thought leader for that specific subject.
There are a couple little snags about developing the "best content in the industry" not least of which is that it costs a ton of money. Not only will the piece need to be created by an expert in the field, there will also be a need for professional editing (whether video or literary). Another piece of bad news is that a single piece of content is not enough. Your clients need to be pumping out content that is relevant and most importantly, current. Pure and simple, content is freaking expensive!
Another thing to watch out for is the desire to hurry and push out content without properly vetting sources or editing the piece. I don't know how many times I have read the latest and greatest white paper about a very important subject only to find glaring grammatical errors. Even worse, sometimes the content is just plain wrong. Tell your client to treat any piece of content they pushes out as if they were going to submit it for peer review in a scholarly journal. It needs to be well written and accurate.
I am very fortunate to have a full to writer on my staff and a massive pool of experts to draw on, but even still it is difficult to get people to commit to producing the content in a timely manner. Everyone loves to tell you about how they can create wonderful White Papers, but getting them to produce them sometime in the next decade is hard. You really have to set up deadlines and have people commit to keeping those deadlines.
Good Luck!
-
Daniel Tan has a great article out on how to write amazing press releases. I suggest you look for that as well. To me it's the best on the net right now and I personally use the same methods.
Have a great night and a happy holiday.
MB
-
Hi monster99,
Definitely check out http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/ which my favourite content producing article I've found so far.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How best to handle on-site blogs for multiple site views in Magento?
Hi, I'm working with a site on Magento with views for UK, US and FR websites. Currently they have a French WordPress Blog that is pulled into the French site view and an English one that appears on both the US and UK views. Of course the problem here is that the US and UK views are duplicating content so these needs sorting super-fast. The plan is to disconnect the US view from the current English blog and create a dedicated US onsite blog. However, should we continue to use WordPress or instead use an alternative blog module or plugin for Magento? Cost is an issue and running three separate blogs and the cost of plugging these into each site view. However, getting these right for SEO is the most important factor here. I'm also concerned about the mess of multiple plugins causing page speed issues etc... My instinct is to go with WordPress, but I'm keen to hear what others think or have experience of.
Content Development | | ExtraDigital0 -
Loads of Blog Search Results showing up in SERPs - What's the best way to remove?
Our client has a good number of results showing up in SERPs that are search results pages produced by Blog posts. Unfortunately all these results have exactly the same Title tag and it has nothing to do with the blog content which means they are unlikely to help us much. We can’t create a 301 redirect because there is no page to redirect. There is no blog page we can re=canonical to either. The content on these pages is a short list of blog posts by each author. They are not true “Author” pages that would have a URL structure like this: your company.com/author/joeblow Our plan is to use GWMT's URL removal tool to request remove of these pages. (and then try to stop new results from being created) We are doing this to get low-value content out of the SERP. Is there a better way to remove these search results? Any drawback in removing them in GWMTs? Thanks.
Content Development | | RosemaryB1 -
Recommendations Content / Copywriter
We are based in the UK & have used alot of content / copywriters & so far have struggled to find someone we feel meets our needs? Can anyone recommend a content writing company or freelancer? Thanks
Content Development | | webguru20140 -
Where to outsource product pages contents?
We have been told to write good unique content for every products but we just don't have the skill nor the time. (english is not my first-language) Can anyone suggest where to find a good product content writer?
Content Development | | ringochan0 -
Content Marketing Strategy for a Solar Panel Shop
Hi everybody Everybody's talking about content marketing strategies these days and the videos from MozCon has definitely been a great inspiration for me. I have a customer who sells solar panels (wiki) here in Denmark and they are more or less hooked on the idea of investing long term. And this is where I wanna ask you guys for ideas to this strategy. I'm open to anything from overall guidelines to specific ideas on content. I hope you will chip in, thanks a lot 🙂
Content Development | | loevgaard0 -
Matt Cutts and Curated Content -- something is confusing here...
Okay, I read an interview somewhere this week where Matt Cutts said he didn't care much for curated content. Today I searched on that subject and came up with the following video of his: http://youtu.be/zZU7O1BHfyo So, in the video he is going along and saying not to just grab content and repost it. And then at around minute 3:15 he says that, on the other hand, you can have a blog like DaringFireball.net and that's a good thing, because the blogger takes the time to pick and choose what he is posting. I went to Daring Fireball to take a look, and I saw that he writes maybe one line of commentary, and then pastes in a big chunk of the curated content along with a link to the source. This shocked me. How could Matt like that blog -- he keeps telling that he likes original not duplicate, curated content. So, the difference is that a blog can get away with this if they exercise discretion in what they choose to copy and paste? How the hell would the Google algorithm know what the intention of the blogger is? And here I've been wasting my time writing up paragraphs and paragraphs to precede any excerpts I paste in, in fear of getting hit by Google. I'd like to hear your comments on this.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
How to organize content for ecommerce site
Hello, We've decided to create 24 articles of content for our ecommerce site, everything from an FAQ to history of the products to 10 articles on the top 10 products. Really useful to the user. How do you suggest that we make our content visible to the users? We could put a nice button on our right banner that says "Extensive Help Session" or we could put a banner on our home page or we could make it a tab at the top of the screen. We could additionally make a well organized footer with links to the articles. Or we could do all of those but that might be overkill. What do you suggest?
Content Development | | BobGW0