Create Great Content
In a recent Guest blog over on my colleague Brain Penderville’s site Social Media Doctor I wrote a post discussing the concept that in a ‘creation economy’ content is your key resource. I thought would use a post here to develop my top 5 ideas about the kinds of content you should be creating on the web.
1. Stuff your passionate about; I know this should be pretty much a no brainer, but every day I see people pumping out crappy content they don’t care about. On the web there is an audience for everything, if what you really love is collecting egg cups there will be people out there who want to talk about that and will value your opinion, so follow your passions.
2. Stuff that’s you; this was a close battle for the top spot, passion and authenticity are so closely linked – you need to create your own story in your own voice, remember web audiences are well trained at spotting fakers, develop your own style of writing to tell your story.
3. Stuff that’s original; don’t plagiarise on the web, it’s really stupid, because it’s very easy to trace! Create original, interesting content that people will want to engage with, web audiences are always hungry for new material so trust me you will find people to read your stuff.
4. Stuff that’s social; go and look at what other people are writing, see what they are talking about and work out where your voice might fit and at the same time engage with them. Social media is a discussion and they will most likely be your first market so get them interested in what you have to say before you even start creating.
5. Stuff with edge; you can’t pander to the mass market, it doesn’t work; if you love Star Trek and think Kirk is Better than Picard, then you are mad, but entitled to your opinion; don’t water it down…some people will never like what you have to say, so what? There are billions of web users, what’s 1% of that again?
The way I am starting to think about this, is in terms of my digital heritage, for the first time ever my kids will be able to Google me and find out more information than I ever had access to about my parents, what do you want them to find, a positive role model, or a guy peeing in a bush?
Create great content and people will find you
Peace
Matt
Hi all,
I’d just like to say a big thanks to Matt for his excellent guest blog that he did for me over on socialmediadoctor.eu (sister blog to this one). The blog is entitled ” Content is King: The Key to Business Success in Social Media” where Matt shows his adaptability as a blogger by adopting a more narrative approach than he did for example with this more suggestive one. In fact, I thought that it was so well written that I felt I was in the middle of a noval and couldn’t wait to hear what was going to happen next. Matt’s last line “checkout the devastation a hurricane leaves, do you want to be on the wrong side of that?” was just classic so thanks a mill Matt
Thanks very much Brian, really enjoyed writing the piece for you. You’re very sharp picking up on the change in approach, thought that would be fun to try something different, glad it paid off.
Hope we can keep collaborating in the future, as love you’re blog, head over guys and check it out.
Matt