You hear the cliché ‘Content is King’ frequently, but why? Content increases your online profile and that’s important for a number of reasons.
Content is attractive to search engines
If you have a website it’s the content that gets you found when people are searching for whatever you’re offering. However, there are some requirements:
- It needs to be relevant to your key subject for that particular page
- It needs to contain your key phrase – people rarely search on one word, they usually search in the form of a question
- It needs to be consistent with your website’s core subject
Search engines like all these things and you need to tick their boxes to get well up the rankings.
The challenge is that, once you’ve written your website content (or had it professionally written for you) you don’t want to be constantly tinkering with it. If you’ve got your message well-focused for the human beings who are looking for your offering, constantly changing it is not a good strategy.
BUT search engines like fresh content – and, if your website never updates the content, they will visit your site less frequently – so your site could slip down the rankings. That’s where a blog comes into its own.
Content allows you to demonstrate your knowledge
This is the thing many experts miss. If you show your breadth and depth of knowledge off, with ‘how to’ articles, tips, advice and checklist style processes, you’re demonstrating how good you are as an expert.
Some people argue that, if you give away your knowledge free-of-charge, people won’t pay your for your services. I don’t think that’s true. Most of us can manage a spreadsheet and with a little effort could probably do our own accounts (well, certainly, if we’re running a small business) – but it’s so much easier if you let an accountant do it for you. Less stress, less time and it’s more cost effective. That’s the same principle – people like to know how – but, when it comes down to it, they’d rather engage an expert to get t right.
If you’re highly visible as that expert choosing your services is a no-brainer.
Content expands your visibility
Content isn’t just what you write on your blog. It includes your newsletters, email campaigns, social media posts and articles, lead magnets, articles published in the press – anything that showcases your expertise and business.
We’re not talking about sales blurb – good content should not need to sell (and nobody wants to be sold at). The right content in the right places ensures you build a reputation as the go-to authority in your industry.
The challenge for busy business people can be the time it takes to generate good content. My top tip is to write a good article and then leverage it.
- Post it on your blog
- Upload it to your LinkedIn profile
- Take quotes out of it to share on social media
- Use it as the lead item on your newsletter
- Merge it with other articles around the same subject to create a lead magnet
- Use stand-alone chunks to add value to your email campaigns
There’s a lot of mileage in a good article! Make writing articles a regular habit and your reputation as a leading expert will grow and grow.
