Why Beef Up Your Content?

Many small-business owners believe their websites already contain all the content they need. They’ve got contact information, company profile, and a list of products or services. Great right? … Great start. But everyone else has the same information on their site!

Increasing content can make your company more attractive, more unique, and easier to find through search engines. It will help keep visitors coming back to your website. More quality content can help you to position yourself as an authority, or expert in your industry. And boosting the variety of web content will give you more angles from which to direct people to buy-in to your products and services, making this decision easier for them.

25 Ways to Boost Your Website Content

1. Create a blog. Use this as a platform to regularly post new information to your website. It can be news, opinions, whatever. Keep each post centered around one specific topic. Keep them informative and useful. And keep them coming!
2. Write a series of articles. You may want to do some keyword research and look at your web analytics to see which keywords are the most active and perform successfully for your website. Then write a few articles, letting all web visitors know where to get them.
3. Post your email newsletters. Don’t let all that great info go to waste! Offer it to people after those on your mailing list receive it, and soon others may be prompted to subscribe too.
4. Offer instructions on how to use your products. If you currently offer these to your customers in print, by all means become the official source for up-to-date instructions or manuals.
5. Write a free e-book. Choose a hot topic, a niche topic, or anything extremely valuable, like an industry report you’ve completed.
6. Describe your services. Yeah, I know you already have a list rght? Well don’t stop there. Be more descriptive. If you have simple bullet points for each service, describe what the customer can expect…how they should prepare…what they should get out of it. Even create service packages or product bundles.
7. Review a product or service. You could choose one that is or isn’t a direct competitor, and discuss the pros, cons, etc.
8. Install a forum to invite visitor participation. This is a great way to increase your website content because visitors do the work for you! It creates a sense of anticipation and excitement. I’ve used PHPBB forum software in the past — it has good support and is widely used.
9. Post company bios. Letting customers see a more personal side of the major company players is a great way to convey your office atmosphere and a start to building a business relationship.
10. Post company news. Let people know about your successes, staff changes, and what you’re working on.
11. Offer tutorials. Informative tutorials offer a step-by-step approach toward reaching a goal. These make you a valuable source of guidance and can entice newer visitors.
12. Invite guest writers or bloggers. Include a fresh perspective on topics by inviting other writers to contribute to your website. You can get backlinks from their sites and add weight to your site by including other professional voices.
13. Include customer testimonials. Everyone loves to read testimonials from other happy customers before and after committing to a purchase. Make customers feel confident and satisfied in their decisions with real testimonials
14. Post customer reviews. Online shoppers like to read realistic reviews of products before purchasing them. According to a 2008 report from The Nielsen Company, 81% of online holiday shoppers read customer reviews, with 71% feeling more comfortable they were buying the right product, and 63% feeling it was important to have multiple reviews of a product. Go ahead, beef up your content with reviews!
15. Run contests. This tactic could be monthly, seasonally, sporadically — it works because it generates a buzz around your brand name, creates awareness, and increases content.
16. Interview an industry professional or celebrity. Interviewing a well-known person in your industry will add valuable content. You could meet someone like this through a professional networking organization, at a trade show, heck it could be your best friend. Make sure to ask questions people want answered. Let the interview progress organically and you might encounter some unexpected gems.
17. Conduct a survey and report the results. Gather up some interns to survey your target market, trusted customers or professional associates.Then publish the results to your online community.
18. Include RSS feeds from related, non-competing sites. Keep your content pertinent with a stream of fresh content flowing on your website or blog.
19. Post press releases. Any company changes or news merit a press release. Archive press releases on your site.
20. Post magazine and newspaper articles featuring your company. Good press legitimizes you in some customers’ eyes. Flaunt this publicity online with pictures, excerpts, and full articles if allowed.
21. Run weekly or monthly specials. Offer coupons or specials on a regular basis. It keeps ‘em coming back.
22. Run a weekly or monthly feature. Develop a unique feature you can highlight on a regular basis. Reflect your company culture be it creative, fun, elite, environmentally conscious, serious, etc.
23. Post videos. YouTube has proven how much people enjoy videos. Produce short clips and post them on your website. Allow people to send them to friends.
24. Insert a photo gallery. Showcase your accomplishments with professional looking photos. Or, allow users to upload home photos showing how they proudly use your product.
25. Create a glossary. Write a glossary or “dictionary” of industry terms which would be helpful to new visitors or those unfamiliar with your subject.

Enter to win a FREE website review!

Do you have more ways to boost your website content? Tell me how you’ve done it, and you’ll be entered to win a FREE website review.

Contest ends and drawing held on: Thursday, April 30, 2010.

Take a good look at your website copy. Does it drive sales? Or is it just filling space? Kudos to you if you’ve contracted a marketing professional or web copywriter to write your web content for you. Interesting, engaging, well-optimized web content is a must-have in today’s competitive online marketplace.

However, it’s not enough to just have good content. It needs to emerge from invisibility, slow the scroll bar, escape the back button and speak to your visitors. Here are five mistakes you should avoid when writing web copy:

1. Hard to read.

Let’s get the most obvious (and most common) out of the way first. Your body copy isn’t speaking — it is whispering if it is too small or too faint to read. In addition, extremely long lines of text (before a line break) are exhausting to read. I see this often on flexible-width websites that span across gaping, wide-screen monitors. Many readers tire of this and will quickly give up. Instead, opt for a comfortably large typeface with sufficient contrast. And keep the width of your paragraphs limited or fixed — do test on multiple screen resolutions.

2. Not compelling.

What good is an interesting read if you are not inspired to take action? Tell readers where they should go next, what steps they should take, how and when. Don’t leave anything to the imagination or expect people to read between the lines. Web users are travelling at the speed of light, so make it very clear and easy to answer your call to action.

3. Doesn’t give ‘em what they want.

People normally land on a webpage expecting to find specific information — to solve a problem, to answer a question, etc. Carefully choose very specific headlines, informative subheadings, meaty bullet points, and pointed paragraphs which fill users’ needs and meet their requests. Skip all the glib marketing fluff and usher readers right to the content they are looking for.

4. Too wordy.

Long rambling paragraphs are intimidating. Do you want to invest precious time reading walls of text only to find at the end that your question hasn’t been answered? Think back to grammar school — start paragraphs with a ‘subject sentence.’ Then support that ‘subject’ with the next few sentences. Then conclude it and move on! Give people what they need in appealing, bite-sized chunks.

5. Not organized.

Last but not least — I can’t stress the importance of reflecting information hierarchy in your web content enough. Pages that have a gazillion text sizes and text treatments lack focus. Web visitors who can’t focus find it challenging to make online decisions. In general, the more important things should be larger, less important things smaller. And keep healthy white space around organizational elements to facilitate eye movement around the information!

These were just 5 of the most common mistakes business make when writing web content. Contact Mindspring Design to get a website analysis report for your company.