Starter Ideas for Web Content » Atlanta Web Design

Marketing Monday # 23- Starter Ideas for Web Content and How to Manage It

Content consists of the text, videos, images and sound used on a web site.  It’s important to keep your content fresh.  Stale content may attract new visitors but it doesn’t keep existing customers returning.  Additionally, search engines look for fresh content and rank higher based on the frequency of content updates.

Even though you know that it’s important to have fresh content it may be a struggle to come up with ideas for constantly creating fresh content.  There are plenty of ways to come up with new ideas.

  • Check social media sites and see what your customers are saying.  Are they complaining about a problem that they haven’t found a solution to? Do they rave about a product that compliments what your company does?
  • Check out forums or sites where your customers hang out.  Do many people run into similar issues?
  • Send out a survey to your client base.  As the questions directly to see what people’s issues are, what they want to know more about, what interests them.
  • Utilize guest bloggers who also focus on your audience but bring a different perspective or a product or service that compliments what you offer.
  • Write about volunteer activities that you do.  People want to know small businesses on a personal level; it’s part of why people choose small businesses.
  • Incorporate “How To” guides into your content.  You can never go wrong with these, just make sure what you’re writing about is relevant to your business.

On the multimedia side of things there are several ways to add and refresh content.  Multimedia includes pictures, videos, sound and animated images.  There are more but this covers a large majority of multimedia content.  Keep in mind that you can add or update these in addition to your text content.  There are various ways to incorporate multimedia content in your website.

  • Pictures tend to be included with every blog post and/or article posted on a website.  People are visually stimulated so including a picture draws people in.  Additionally, it provides a quick glimpse of what the article is about.  Animated pictures can be added to your site as a nice visual but this isn’t something to flood your site with.
  • Videos can be used in several ways such as interviews, testimonials, video-blogging, and many other ways.  (For an in depth look at how to use videos on your website check out a previous post we wrote in our Marketing Monday series.)
  • Be aware of how you incorporate sound into your site.  It is a nice addition, however, think about the user when incorporating sound.  If you do have sound make sure it is easy to turn off or mute upon entering your site.  Everyone does not enjoy sound.

As stated earlier, it’s important to have fresh content; meaning you should regularly focus on adding content to your site.  Yes, it is one more thing to do and that can definitely be overwhelming but there is help!

  • Schedule content updates as a weekly calendar task so that it gets done regularly.
  • Create a content plan so you know what direction you’re moving in.  This helps to eliminate content that seems random and unconnected.
  • If you don’t have the time to create content yourself look into hiring a content writer.  You can hire them on a per project basis or as an ongoing writer from sites such as Elance or google “freelance writers”.
  • If you have a marketing team or person, if it isn’t already, content updates may be something to add to their responsibilities.

Content plays a large part in how well your website ranks, how interested your clients become in your business and, in turn, your sales.  Make a point to give high priority to content on your website.  If you get stuck in any phase or are looking to outsource this part of your business contact us.  We can help you with all types of content!