Where should you spend your time trying to target and interact in the millions of conversations going on? There's no simple answer to that question and it varies on dozens of factors. Factors that I'm still trying to figure out. Keyword searches is an easy way to determine where you need to be communicating and sharing content. So you find hundreds of places where you can could comment, share, or optimize to get the right people to start listening and responding to you. Again, now what?
Creating and maintaining a blog is one of the best things you can do to drive people to your web site, have killer SEO, and create content on a regular basis. It's fairly simple to create a blog; the critical part is maintaining and publishing content on a regular basis. That was on my biggest hurdles when I started this blog. You must commit to writing either once a week, a few times week, or almost everyday. You have to be producing high-quality content on a consistent basis.
Content is your best marketing tool. However, if you don't produce enough or the right types of content then it could hurt you instead of helping. I take the less is more approach and quality over quantity. If you can only get one high quality piece of content created a month, its much better than four poorly written pieces that could actually be hurting your brand or company's reputation. Content is the glue of inbound marketing. People start sticking to that glue by finding you through organic searches and referrals from other Web sites or blogs.
Creating engaging content is the key to having people find and link to your web site. Content can take many forms and be used for different purposes. One of the best ways to use content is for educational purposes. The content should connect with the customer and draw them in to your web site. Here are ten examples of valuable content:
Searches engines have changed the way we find information. It was very difficult to access information before the Internet was invented. We now live in a real-time world of continually updated information, which we have access to at almost at any point during our day. We come into contact with so many Internet marketing messages and there are hundreds of ways to find what we're trying to answer, that businesses have to be listening and contributing.
Conversations now take place in a virtual, always on, environment. Recommendations that used to be said word-of-mouth are now talked about on blogs or twitter. Complaints, that if heard, were filed through a returns or customer service department. Communication has changed and us, as a society tune out most of the other messages through some form of technology. You know what I mean, think about what's in your living room or in your car.