Someone asked on Quora if their blog could compete in an overly crowded segment of the blogosphere. The question was too good to answer there… I wanted to share my answer with all of you.
Of course they can compete! Great content will always rise to the top, regardless of how crowded the space is. Different techniques you can apply are:
- Be fast – If you’re the first site or blog to repeatedly capture a topic, you’ll get noticed more.
- Be on top – Understanding search and its impact on your content will help you garner search engine traffic.
- Be social – Utilize social media to amplify your blog and integrate social media into your blog so others can amplify it for you. Sharing buttons, retweet buttons and announcements on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are a must.
- Be remarkable – When there’s something to talk about on your blog, people will talk and more people will come.
- Be consistent – Writing content and growing readership requires momentum and regularity. Don’t think one great post is going to do it for you… every post adds value incrementally.
Great content will always bubble to the top… and fully leveraging all the tools to promote your content and make it easily findable are absolutely key.
I could hardly agree more with those 5 points. Simple, but not easy. That’s my only push back. Doing all 5 of those will require a serious investment. Most of the list merely involves a significant time investment (not saying it isn’t justified), but #4 is a different sort of thing. “Being remarkable” doesn’t come simply because you invest more time, though being consistent, one could assume, statistically increases the odds of producing something remarkable. I would venture a guess that you, Doug, could make a case for a more objective understanding of “being remarkable.”
And I lied, I have another push back.
Sometimes Great Content rises to the top. For the most part, without an intentional promotional or marketing strategy, Great Content is likely to live in obscurity and search engine invisibility. With that in mind I would suggest a slightly different premise for your post. Great Effort will allow someone to compete in a crowded online marketplace (ideas or products). Great Content would make it that much easier.
I couldn’t agree more! Great content can really be a great asset to your marketing efforts. Once it has been written, you should utilize all channels to recycle it through and get it swirling into the online space.
Great post Doug! I agree with Big Help Bill – without some kind of an engagement strategy, content just sits there waiting to be discovered. Best buy has taken this to a new level, check out this story from Ad Age: http://adage.com/article?article_id=147956
Thanks for all the Awesome Doug, we need to catch up soon!
Taulbee Jackson
President / CEO
http://raidious.com