Do you understand the importance of generating new, relevant and interesting content as part of your web marketing?
In 2011 Google introduced their Panda algorithm update which meant that creating quality content became more important than ever. What this algorithm did is focus on content rich websites and ranks your website in a better position in their results based on authoritative content.
Authoritative content is any content that you produce or share that can be defined as reliable and from a trustworthy source. As experts in your field your will be able to produce authoritative content as you can provide true and reliable expertise but you should always aim to back up any information with evidence from corroborative sources.
Producing quality content isn’t just important to help improve your website’s ranking, it is also a fantastic way to demonstrate your company’s expertise and knowledge. As well as this, content generation is also a great way to spread your brand image and build brand awareness.
Types of content
Your first idea of content for your web marketing will probably be something along the lines of website page content or even blog posts. Yes, your website content and producing blog posts are an important aspect of your web marketing, but what you might not realise is that there are a number of different forms of content that you could be creating, these include:
- Web Page Content
- Blog Posts
- Case Studies
- Infographics
- Videos
- Tutorials & Guides
- Presentations
- White Papers
Content Generation Tools
You should now understand the importance of generating content but when it actually comes to putting pen to paper, or fingers to your keyboard is the more likely approach, coming up with fresh and interesting content can be a difficult task.
With that in mind there are three online tools which I use here on a daily basis for inspiration (yes even the experts can get writers block!) that I wanted to share with you.
Buzzsumo
The first and one of my favourite tools to aid with content generation is Buzzsumo. This online software can analyse what content is performing the best for any topic or competitor. All you need to do is search for any topic you want and results will appear in order of what has been most shared on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Buzzsumo is great for finding out what is popular and relevant in the news at the moment as well as what people are interested in, you can even find out what is currently trending that day for particular industries.
If you want a more in-depth analysis of content that is being created and shared you can use Buzzsumo’s content analysis tool which can show you not only how many shares content has received but also the most popular networks, the type of content, the day of week, length of content, and popular related topics. Not only is this tool great for helping to generate content but it can assist you with the distribution to ensure that it going out to the right people, at the right time and on the right platform.
Unfortunately not all this assistance is handed to you on a plate, Buzzsumo offers two packages one at $99 per month which is ideal for bloggers and small teams; and a more advanced package at $299 per month which is ideal for digital marketing agencies.
Google Alerts
You could spend hours every day sifting the web for new content ideas and inspiration, so wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could be alerted by email to new content that is relevant and of use to you? Well with Google Alerts you can do this, completely for free!
You’ll need to make sure you have a Google account to use this tool (get one here), but as long as you do it is simple to use and will prove very handy. You can set up an alert for any keyword you want, then you have the option to select how often you want to be alerted, the source, language, region, how many results and of course where to deliver the alert to via email.
Here at All Things Web® we have lots of alerts set up because we blog on such a wide variety of topics both for ourselves and clients, so it’s handy to be able to check all in one place for any particularly interesting news that has happened that day or week.
StumbleUpon
The one thing about the previous two tools is that you need to already know what you want your content to be about, or have a rough idea at least. The problem with this is that there could be some potentially amazing content ideas out there that you may never even think of.
This is where StumbleUpon becomes such an amazing tool for ideas. Just like the others StumbleUpon is brilliant for content generation as it will bring up results on the specific topic you are interested in, what is different about StumbleUpon is that you can set up a broad topic, for example wine, and then it randomly picks out web pages, photos or videos from across the web which relate to wine.
Yes sometimes you do come across some really random, rubbish or outdated content, but in my experience of using it I have found some fantastic ideas; and bonus just like Google Alerts it is free!
Feeling Inspired?
Hopefully I have inspired you a little and you are ready to go full steam ahead and produce some fantastic content that will benefit your web marketing and your business. Figuring out what to write or talk about is the first hurdle and with these tools you have now been given a step ladder to help jump over it.
If you decide that producing your own content is not for you then the team here at All Things Web® can help with content marketing services, why not give us a call today on 01285 50 55 50 to find out more.