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| Image credits/artist: Jeffrey Baumgartner |
By
Jeffrey Baumgartner
It never ceases to amaze me the number of organizations
that invest time and money in search engine optimization (SEO: the process of
making your web pages easy to find on search engines) and cutting edge design
only to fill their web pages with mediocre content. That's stupid. Think it
through, you invest in bringing people to your web site and then bore them
silly with poorly written content and the same stock photos that your least
interesting competitors are using. It would be like investing in fancy
invitation cards to a party, delivering them to all of the important people in
your area and then having a party in a messy living room serving only cheap
beer and canned sausages served directly out of their cans. Not only are people
unlikely to stay at your party, but they are even less likely to come to
another party of yours, recommend you to friends or want much to do with you in
the future.
On the other hand, if you make an effort to tidy
up your living room; serve a variety of quality alcoholic as well as
non-alcoholic drinks together with handmade delicious snacks; and you organize
a few activities to make the party more fun, invitees will be impressed by the
party and by you. Moreover, you leave a lasting good impression that makes it
likely they will think positively of you, come to future parties and recommend
those parties as well as you to others.
Compelling Content Leads To Sales
Likewise, if your marketing budget is limited, it
makes more sense to invest in quality, compelling and original content than it
does in SEO, advertising and design. This is because if your content meets
these criteria, people will read it through, they will be interested in
checking out your other content and they will recommend it. Other bloggers will
link to it and reference it. You enhance your reputation. You get sales.
Indeed, content on this web site and in the Report 103 newsletter have led to
over a million dollars of sales of products and services in recent years − yet
I have never made an unsolicited sales call or sent out an email sales pitch.
People even tell me the web site's design is unimpressive or worse!
Nevertheless, compelling contact has led to discussions and sales.
So, if your content is original, compelling and
readable or watchable or listenable, (depending on how you present it), you
build your reputation as being a thought leader. You are someone worth reading
or watching or listening to. Your newsletter is read. Your blog is shared. Your
videos make an impression. Your podcasts are recommended. I am sure that you,
as a thought leader, can see the value in all of this.
So, this raises the question: why do so many
organisations invest in SEO, advertising and cutting edge design and then pay
some half-literate dweeb US$5 to write a blog post which they decorate with an
utterly forgettable image from a stock photo agency? I believe a big part of
the reason is that the metrics measure a lot of the wrong things.
Metrics Measure The Wrong Things
Click throughs let you know how many people click
on your Google or LinkedIn or Facebook adverts, but fail to tell you how many
people are reduced to tears of boredom when they reach your content. Web
analytics tell you how many people visit various web pages, but fail to tell
you how many people vomit after reading two sentences of a blog post or laugh
at the fact that you are using the same generic office scene picture as they
have on their home page. Sure, analytics will tell you how long a page stays
open, but these days, most people open multiple web pages in new browser tabs
to look at − or not − later.
SEO experts can tell you which words should be in
your content and which should be in meta tags to boost your blog post's ranking
in search engines, but they do not and cannot tell you how to string those
words together so that they are meaningful in some way to the people who come
across the post.
Banjos, For Example
Of course, if your only interest is to bring
people to your web site to buy new banjos for just US$19 and you do not care what
they think of you, you do not need to bother about content. Your only concern
is selling cheap goods quickly. You're rather like a dingy shop in the bad part
of town that sells cheap stuff. People go to you for for low prices and nothing
more. They have no relationship with you. Indeed, they are vaguely embarrassed
about doing business with you.
On the other hand, you could have a web site full
of well written information and video clips about buying the right banjo. You
could have professional photos of people playing your banjos in your shop, you
could have banjo tips on your web site. You could have video tutorials on your
web site. And you could sell banjos at reasonable prices. With quality,
relevant content, you form a relationship with customers and potential
customers. People will not only buy from you, but they will revisit your web
site, recommend you to other banjo players and buy from you in the future.
As a result, you will hardly need to invest in
SEO or advertising at all. You will have built a great reputation thanks to
your content. And, of course, people like to buy quality goods from businesses
that have great reputations.
What Is Good Content?
Content on the web can be in the form of text,
video, sound, images or a combination of two or more of these.
Good content is well composed, presents an
original view point and achieves a purpose. It may be informative, for example
it could be an article that describes the features of a particular banjo. It
could be a video that presents an argument, such as why a handmade banjo is
better than a factory produced one. It could be a podcast that tells a story,
for example the day you were playing in a bar and Pete Seeger joined you.
If you, as a business leader, can prepare content
yourself, do so. You have the passion, the experience and the expertise to
write knowingly and competently. But if writing is not your strong suit or you
just have too many tasks on your plate, hire a professional who can write
competently and will invest time in understanding the subject. And, just like a US$5 banjo will be a shoddy piece of crap that will sound awful and fall apart in
no time, a US$5 blog post will be a shoddy piece of crap that will sound awful
On the other hand, a great blog post, like a
great banjo will sound great, exude quality and last a long time. Most
importantly, it will impress the right people. Some of the most popular pages
on this web site are 20 years old.
A Word About Images
These days, a lot of companies buy subscriptions
to stock photo libraries that allow them to choose and use from a wide range of
generic images for a low monthly fee. These images are usually slick and well
photographed, but are utterly boring and fail to represent YOU. A photo of
three smiling, multiracial people in business casual clothing who are all
pointing at a laptop screen impresses no one if you work out of the spare
bedroom of a house in the suburbs. And, your customers will know that.
Moreover, so many small and medium sized
businesses use these services that their images have become ubiquitous on the
web. The result, to return to the party analogy of earlier, would be rather
like throwing a party and having everyone show up in variations of the same outfit
from H&M. Sure, the clothes are all fine and look good. But if everyone
wears them, they all look the same and come across as dull for it. However, if
someone comes to the party wearing an original, good-looking outfit, even if it
was put together with clothes bought from a second-hand shop, that person will
get everyone's attention for looking original and good. Likewise, do not be
afraid to veer from boring, generic stock photos and use original images
instead. Hire a photographer to take relevant pictures, such as you in action;
I happen to think you look better and way more knowledgable than those silly
stock-photo models.
Or go with illustrations such as cartoons (modest
cough − like mine, for example). You could even ask your five year old aspiring
artist daughter to draw some relevant pictures and use them to decorate your
web site and blog. It would be original and, in the right context, relevant.
Indeed, it would be so cool, I wonder if you'd mind asking her to draw some
images for my web site!
Another Word About Design
There are a lot of awesome templates that allow
anyone to put together a slick, professional and stylish web site and blog in
no time. However, if you intend to include a lot of text on your web site, be
sure that the style does not detract from the text and that it is easy to
navigate. Many designs emphasize style over function which is fine if you want
a simple web presence to enhance your professional image.
But if you intend to include content, be sure the
style enhances the content and navigation rather than obscurifies it.
Quality Counts
If you use your web presence to communicate with
customers, potential customers, suppliers, stakeholders, the community or any
combination of these, focus your investment of time, effort and cash on
producing quality content. There is no point in bringing people to your web
site if the content is terrible. On the other hand, if the content is great, a
minimal investment in promotion will have lasting positive results.
Jeffrey
Baumgartner, Author, Artist, Trainer
