Gareth Hill
You've likely heard before that for a website to be truly effective and add major value to your business, then you need to add regular, fresh and informative content. Why? Well, let's take a look, shall we?
Adding regular, well-written and presented content to your website is an increasingly important and effective method of improving your organic ranking on the major search engines. As people more frequently search for specific things online, any site that demonstrates that it's looking to provide information and help in its respective field or industry can significantly improve its visibility and long-term sustainable ranking prowess.
Most businesses these days have cottoned onto the idea that social media is a hugely powerful player in the overall marketing of a business. But how do you make this effective? It's all very well building a whole load of followers on Twitter or Likes to your Facebook page but what are you doing to retain their interest? If your strategy is simply to bombard them with new products and offers all the time don't be surprised if they drift away or never actually engage with your services. but if you're providing relevant and interesting content to those who already have some interest in your business or brand then you're much more likely to have increases in clicks through to your site and help create longer-term engagement with potential clients.
Regular features, news, information and general content about your business and industry creates the impression that you are on-the-pulse when it comes to your job and can position you as the expert in your field that you undoubtedly are. If people are finding you and your business making regular contributions to the things that are current then you are building trust in yourself, your brand and your business.
Building your brand is a requirement of most successful business models and something that you should be doing as part of your online and offline marketing. Creating new content under your brand banner enhances the business' reputation as a market leader and a name that can be trusted. Content that can be used for offline purposes (sales literature, brochures etc) can be reinforced with relevant and related content added to your web pages, blog posts and email campaigns to ever strengthen your brand image.
Creating a blog or news stream on your website and linking it to your social media accounts can be an effective way to network with clients, colleagues and collaborators in conjunction with offline strategies you may have. It's another forum to share ideas, strike up conversations, field queries and comments and to provide solutions to problems which may lead clients towards your products and services. You may be asked to contribute to other sites or even have others contribute to your site if you are seen to be actively staying up to date within your industry.
Whilst we don't want to bombard our audience with products and services all the time your content does provide a great opportunity to talk through the relative benefits of your products in a constructive way, maybe through a how to guide or explanations on how your service can add value or solve a particular issue that your customers might have in their business. This form of online selling can be far more appealing and informative to your audience and keep them interested in what you have to offer.
We all much prefer a business that has a degree of humanity to it, don't we? Yes we want a business with whom we can trust, who conveys an expertise or takes what they do seriously, but then again, not many want to be dealing with some faceless corporation with no soul either. Use your content to show that you're human, that you can relate to your client's needs because you live in the real world too. Promote the way you work alongside the things you sell and you can further engage your clients interests.
