Do the "Write" Thing with Content Marketing

Kate Supino

October 21, 2015

	Not rated
	Rate:

Content marketing is a more recent form of small business marketing that caters to giant search engine demands.

Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo lean on keyword searches to customize search results for people. Search engines then seek out online content with those keywords and return results based on popularity and - ideally - accuracy.

There are good and bad ways to go about content marketing.

If you do it right, you will be rewarded with a higher page rank. If you do it terribly wrong, you could be penalized with removal of your website.

Here's a rundown of what to do and what to avoid when it comes to using content marketing for your small business….

Publish Unique Content

Unique content equals content that is previously unpublished. Unique content is important for higher page rankings.

If you re-publish articles or blog posts, there will be nothing new to direct visitors your way. Plagiarized content equals content that is republished with a new person claiming that they wrote it, when in fact they didn't. Plagiarism isn't just frowned upon; it's an actual crime subject to legal prosecution.

If you’re asking the question of, “Got Leads? How to Make Content Marketing Work for Your Business," make sure you devote a fair amount of time and effort to content marketing so that you always stay one step ahead of competitors.

Understand Formatting for the Internet

If your last encounter with a bunch of words was in high school English class, you may think it is fine to type a bunch of words in essay format and publish it online.

But online readers are very different than your high school English teacher. They are very different than book readers (though book readers are also online readers).

Online readers don't want to click onto your site and see a "wall of text." They want to see sub headers (like you see in this article), and they want to see bullet lists when applicable.

Hire Quality Writers

The demand for online content writing has produced a proliferation of freelance "writers" who all claim to be able to deliver quality content. Be extremely careful about whom you hire to write for you.

If you litter your website with grammatical errors, run-on sentences and just bad writing, your company reputation will suffer. Visitors will see you as unprofessional and cheap. It's worth it to pay extra for quality writers so you get quality content.

Quality writers don't write for a penny a word, and most of them don't write for content mills.

Your best bet, frankly, is to work with a content marketing agency that will hire and manage writers for you. The cost of the writer's work will be included in your overall content marketing package.

Keep it Coming

It's not enough to build your website with content and walk away.

For your site to continually get noticed, you need to change and add to your content on a regular basis. Many companies implement a blog in order to achieve this, and it seems to work well.

You need to develop a fresh content stream of quality information for your site visitors to keep returning. When you do this, your company will be richly rewarded with traffic.

Content marketing is worth learning more about.

Speak to a content marketing firm to learn more about what they can achieve for your business.