Content is King

Attracting People to Your Site with Great Content ... Free or Fee

Web marketers often speak of the "3 Cs" of web sites - commerce, community and content.

Commerce is the ability to take orders over the Internet. Community means the site provides a forum, chat group, bulletin board or other mechanism for visitors to share thoughts, opinions and information about the subject of the site. Content is the information available to visitors on the site.

Many people -Web experts as well as users - believe that on the Internet "Content is king".

The very essence of Internet culture is the sharing of information, traditionally freely and without charge. The notion of using the Internet to actually make money is a fairly recent development, albeit one that rapidly revolutionized the business world.

Today, Internet content comes in two flavors: free and fee. "Free" means content given away for free as a marketing tool. "Fee" means content that is sold as a product, such as a proprietary online database or subscription service.

Content as a marketing tool

In the old model of printed publishing, information was produced as books and articles and sold to the reader for a fee.

In the new model of the Internet, content is published on Web sites and given away for free for a variety of purposes: as a public service, to promote a viewpoint, to market goods and services, and to attract traffic to those Web sites.

The idea of publishing and giving away free content is not new: Drug companies, for example, have long been publishing and disseminating free patient information booklets to promote prescription drugs targeted at the conditions described in the booklets. But the Internet has certainly accelerated this trend.

Look, for example, at any Web site selling nutritional supplements. Many give away reams of research and writing on alternative medicine.

As one of the 3 Cs, content is critical to your Web site's success. People who come to your site expect to learn something or take away free information when they leave. The more free content you offer, the more likely they'll visit again and again.

How to get content for your site

Content is not terribly difficult to come by you don't have to write your own content or even post original material.

For instance, if you are a therapist and have written self-help articles for local newspapers, scan these articles and post them in a "how-to articles library" on your Web site. Almost all your print publications - everything from rotary club speeches to that unpublished book - can be recycled for the Web in this way.

You can post content from other sources, often for free, simply by asking. Many authors will grant permission for you to post their articles on your Web site, in exchange for a link from the article to their own site. Most will even e-mail you the text as an electronic file upon request

Soon other Web site owners will be calling or e-mailing you, asking to post your articles on their sites. If you hold the copyright, you should grant permission in exchange for a link to your site.You can generate lots of traffic and even sales at zero cost this way.

Stuck for content? Here's a secret very few people know: Governments publishes tons of free information on all sorts of business and consumer topics, and almost none of it is copyrighted.

You can just zip over to a Web site, find a report or booklet you like, and make this content available on your site to your visitors. They'll appreciate it since they'd never find the content on their own. All that the government asks in return is that you acknowledge them as the source.

Content as a product

"Content as product" means the information you create is not written to promote some other cause or sell some tangible product; the product is the information itself. Authors, freelance writers, publishers and information marketers all follow this model.

A publisher of financial newsletters, for instance, publishes reports on stocks which she sells as advice to paying subscribers. A brokerage also publishes reports on stocks, but these are distributed free to clients to persuade them to buy the stock - and the broker makes his money from commissions on stock orders.

When content is the product, there are a number of perceived advantages, not the least of which is objectivity. Since you are paying for the advice up front, the writer's sole interest is giving good advice; otherwise, you'll cancel your subscription. Therefore we assume the financial newsletter's advice is objective and unprejudiced; there's no hidden agenda, no product to sell.

The big question facing content-for-pay publishers now is:With information available everywhere, anywhere, at any time, will people continue to pay for it? While many businesses are profitably selling products through e-comnierce, Internet content sales are not yet profitable for most publishers.

Building Web Site Success with a Community of Interest

A "community of interest" on the Web is a group of like-minded people sharing information, experiences and anecdotes on a topic of common interest. Why should you consider establishing such a community of interest on your site? Here's what's in it for you:

First, community increases Web site stickiness. If your Web site is not merely a place to buy products or read articles, but rather a place to gather, visitors will stay longer and come more often. To understand the importance of a gathering place in marketing, merely visit any Starbucks. People come for the coffee but stay for the environment.

Second, you can add community features at modest cost. It's a lot of added value for a small investment.

And third, as the "supervisor" or manager of your online community, you see and hear everything that goes on. This can tell you a lot about your visitors and what they want.

Focus, focus

Most online communities focus on a specific topic aimed at a specific audience. Example: A Web site may aim to generating sales for its sponsors by becoming a community - they call it a "digital hangout" - for teenage girls. Experts in such areas as fashion, wellness and relationships moderate chats on these topics in which the girls can participate.

The key to creating community on your Web site is having some kind of mechanism where visitors can exchange ideas, information, opinions and resources on the topic of your site.

For instance, if you sell welding equipment, your community should deal with tips, techniques and problems encountered in welding. Welding - not your particular product line - is the focus of the community. What promotes your product line is the fact that this community exists on your site. When participants need welding equipment or supplies, and their community is on your site, they are likely to look there first to fulfill their needs.

Make Web Surfers Stick to Your Site Like Glue

Web marketers today are increasingly talking about making their sites "stickier.
"What does that mean?"

Some define stickiness as the amount of time people stay on your site during a visit. The theory is: the longer web surfers stay on a particular site or even a particular page, the more engaging and effective it must be.

Others gauge stickiness by how many times Web surfers return to the site. If they revisit five times in three days, obviously there's something that piques their interest.

However, what's obvious is that if we can increase either of these factors, or both, we can improve our stickiness.

The benefit? The more time a visitor spends on a site, the more likely he is to buy something.

This is the "Barnes & Noble" theory of retailing. Barnes & Noble put coffee shops in its superstores not to make money selling coffee but to get people to stay in the store longer. And it worked: The more people browsed, the more they bought. Web site stickiness operates on a similar theory.

Getting them to come back

Previously, we discussed the "3 Cs" of Web sites - commerce, content and community.

As you will recall, commerce is the ability to take orders over the Internet. Content is the information available to visitors on the site. Community means the site provides a forum, chat group, bulletin board, or other mechanism for visitors to share thoughts, opinions and information about the subject of the site.

Throughout the world there are literally millions of Web sites. So why in the world should anyone take the time to see yours? Strong content can lure people to the site, and plenty of it can keep them coming back.

Despite the rapid growth of e-commerce, the Internet still has somewhat of a "gift culture" mentality. When people visit a site, they might expect products for sale, but they also expect something free - and that something is content.

Be sure your site is packed with lots of special reports, white papers, an articles library, links to relevant resources and other useful content. The more you have, the more visitors will stick - assuming it meets the challenge of organizing information logically and it's easy to find relevant information on your site.

Conversely, when people visit your site and find only production and promotional pages, and no free information, they are disappointed. Free content is an expectation on the part of the visitor. If it is not there, they will not see your site as a resource, and will be less likely to bookmark it and return.

Content on the Web does not have to be static and two-dimensional, as in print. Think about sharing your knowledge and data with visitors as an online tool or capability.

Getting them to stay longer

Of the 3 Cs, "community" is the one most able to get visitors to stay longer on your site, with content being a close second. If you can moderate a discussion on welding, cryogenics, gardening or whatever your site covers, people will stay for minutes at a time to participate in these discussions.

The third C, commerce, can also get people to stay longer and return more often, especially if it's targeted to your visitors'preferences.

For example, National Geographic surveyed its online gift shop to determine the most popular item, which turned out to be greeting cards.

They then sent out e-mails featuring images of four of the cards. The e-mail encourages the recipients to go to the National Geographic site, view the full selection of cards, and then e-mail them to friends.

The click-through rate - the number of e-mail recipients who clicked on an embedded URL in the e-mail to go to the viewing page on the site - was 32%. And National Geographic added 25,000 new names to its opt-in database within 3 weeks.