Where’s All of Our Content? Chris Haslego Zeus Online Marketing www.zeus-online-marketing.com

How many websites have you been to in the last week that sold products, but offer absolutely no other reason to visit? Considering that everyone involved in internet marketing knows that it often times takes between five and eight “contact sessions” to make a sale to a customer, why aren’t more people giving the customers a reason to come back? The answer is relatively simple: it takes time, effort, and commitment. Simply having a newsletter that your visitors can sign-up for just doesn’t help if you don’t have content on your site to tell them about. Now, it’s inevitable that some of you are saying, “I sell wind chimes on my site, what kind of content could I possibly have?” Good question! Ask youself what topics people who buy wind chimes might be interested in. Most of them may be interested in home exterior tips, learning about the history of the wind chime (such as how it came to be), or maybe content on some of the best locations for wind chimes outside the home. No matter what you’re selling, there is content that your visitors will find useful! So, content is a great way to keep your customers coming back. But, remember, if takes time, effort, and commitment. However, it doesn’t mean that you have to sit down and write a five page article with groundbreaking information every week (although, that would just fine). It could be something as simple as passing along solutions to one customer’s problem to other customers. For example, if sell software and you’ve helped a customer make a “tweak” that fits their business better, post a short article on your site and tell your other customers how this made the product better. Start a knowledge base of content for your site, you might be surprised how quickly you’ll compile little tidbits that can really add up to quality content. Finally, and this one is big, use your content to get your reciprocal links. Now this “external” content may have to be little different than your “internal” content. For external content, the content we spoke of previously for software “tweaks” may not be as helpful as a general article on how the software helps customers in their business. I absolutely love getting reciprocal link requests that that a good article attached to them. I don’t mind giving these people great exposure on my sites because they’ve added more than just a link to my web site, but they’ve added value to my web site. We’ve all heard it before, “Content is king”……it just doesn’t have to as hard to develop as you think and the rewards can be outstanding.