Creative Writing Ideas

Online businesses need to reflect the concept that "Content is King" in the design, marketing, and writing of their web sites to truly be successful.

At Swift Media UK, we always ask these 3 questions to online business professionals to see if they really understand the concept of "Content is King." We find that if they cannot answer these 3 questions immediately, then that gives us a clearer idea of how prepared the client is to be online.

Why should I visit your web site (without spending any money)?

The #1 reason people visit web sites is for information. Thus, if you provide information for people such as free marketing tips, a how-to section, or tips for buying your product or service, you have given a benefit for visiting your site.

The tips for buying your product or service are particularly beneficial because you are helping your potential customers make the best decision they can. It shows that you are thinking of your customers ("Let me help you make the best purchase for your budget"), not yourself ("Buy my stuff because I'm the best").

Why should I return to your website?

People usually won't buy from you until they visit your site 4-5 times. So you should give people a reason to return to your site. Updating product or service information, timely how-to tips, or an upgraded software demo are good reasons for people to return to your site or maybe even bookmark it.

This question also indicates web marketing savvy. Coca Cola does not show the same commercial year after year after year because people will get bored with the same commercial. Nor should anyone show the exact same web site month after month after month. A site should be updated at least every 1 to 3 months, even if the changes are minimal. (Search engines re-index/re-catalogue changed pages).

What separates you from your competition?

We expect to hear company's unique selling proposition (USP) here and try to design or market the site based on this. We are usually amazed when people tell that they are the *best* at something but cannot back it up with customer testimonials or data. We also get many potential clients that have no unique selling proposition.

We often hear the "best customer service" and the "lowest prices" together. From our standpoint, if you want to hire a really talented customer service staff, you have to pay them well. That will affect your overhead and, thus, your prices. Also, we have found that the lowest prices rarely get the best quality.

If you want to achieve lasting success with your website, then the best route to take is to build a content-rich site. A site that has varied and informative articles and information will be big hit with viewers and search engines alike. In case you have writer's block or are not sure how to go about creating more content for your website. Here are some tips to help you get moving.

1. When building content try to solve the problems of your viewers without making them buy something

Of course you have set up your website in order to either make money or "get" something out of it, but it is not productive to build scores of pages with hard-sell messages. People are coming to the net to find solutions to their problems. Provide articles, information and answers to these problems and you will win the respect, and trust of your readers. This is known as "pre-selling" and it is just as important as selling itself.

So, before you start tapping on your keyboard, keep the interests of your readers in mind and then begin.

2. Write about what you know and share your knowledge with your readers

If you have set up a website it means that you know something about your particular field, or have some special interest in it. For example, suppose you are selling digital cameras, why not write some articles reviewing the available cameras that are on the market. Or why not write an article explaining what people should look for when they buy a camera. There are a lot of people out there who don't have the foggiest idea about digital cameras and they would sure be happy to get some unbiased information before buying something.

3. Do research and turn dull reports into interesting articles

You can build on what you know by doing a bit of research on the web. Make a keyword search for "digital cameras" or whatever your field is, and you will find some web pages giving information. Often the information is just listed in a point-wise fashion in bulleted lists. Take this information, and blend it with your own experience to create new articles. You can quote or cite the other articles (with hyperlinks) that you find on the web if they are particularly useful. In fact this is the original idea behind Google's system of PageRank: web pages that are particularly good will earn links or "votes" from other sites.

4. Let your readers help you to create content

If you are not sure what to write about then why not ask your web visitors to submit their questions. These questions will stimulate you to provide answers in the form of articles. A good example of this approach is the site www.askdavetaylor.com . Dave Taylor is a technical "geek". If you have any question about computers, software, html, Mac, linux, unix and related technical matters you can just go to his site and ask a question. Dave's answers comprise hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pages of solid information. In fact, he has 29,300 pages indexed in Google!

You don't have to write hundreds or thousands of pages, but if you follow Dave's example you can certainly build up your site, and easily overcome your "writer's block."

5. Reprint the articles of experts in your field

There is no sense in recreating the wheel. If someone has already written something good about your particular field, you can reprint it. You will have to provide a link back to the author, but if the article really fits in with the theme of your site, then it is worth it. You can find free reprint articles at sites such as www.ezinearticles.com and
www.goarticles.com

6. Let your readers create content directly

Blogs with their "comments" sections are now one of the most popular ways of allowing web visitors to add their thoughts and ideas. You can also set up a bulletin board or forum using the phpBB software (which is pre-installed with many hosting plans). If you have enough traffic and an audience that is passionately interested in the themes of your website, then your own readers will create pages and pages of interesting content. You will of course have to moderate the forums or blogs, but the reward to you in terms of useful content will be worth it.

So, if your site is a bit thin on content, think about these six tips and take steps towards providing information that will make your site a place where people can come and find solutions to their problems or answers to their questions.

Today WebPages must compete for survival just like animals in the wild. Natural selection isn't just a concept limited to Mother Nature. Even in the world of cyberspace there is a "law of the jungle". Search engine optimization or (SEO) lies at the core of this law. Many skills must be mastered to rise to the top. Three important ones are keywords, content and copywriting. Let's begin with the first of the three.

Keywords are extremely important because they act as a marker for search engines. Keywords can be placed anywhere on a website. Besides being noticed they must be carefully selected. You must take care to choose keywords that are not only relevant to your site but also that are likely to be used by those who are searching for what is on your site. Several things must be taken into account. Variations in spelling of the keywords as well as spelling errors can conceivably drive traffic to your site. The links in your site are a vitally important spot to place keywords because not only will they be noticed by search engines but they will also direct people to the other pages on your site thus increasing your ranking.

Content is the second factor here. Beyond the obvious fact that the content of your site is what people are going to read when they get to your site the content is the larger aspect of keywords. The keywords may be the specific point that a search may target but the better your content in both amount but quality the easier it will be to place you keywords. Imbedding keywords in content is one way to get them spotted by search engines but good content will force you to have good keywords. As it has been said the best way to hide something is in plain sight.

To better facilitate the use of the aforementioned factors you must understand copyright concepts. Certain things can be copyrighted and certain things can't. Slogans, titles, names and related items can't be copyrighted although titles can be trademarked. One important thing to keep in mind is how you use something. The context of how you use a word or phrase or what have you can violate a copyright or not. Copyright in many areas is tricky so be careful. Things created by the government are free domain as well as donated items or things people give permission to use by other people for any purpose.

Learn the rules before you play the game.

We have heard of such a phrase where 'content is king'. This applies to online marketing. The reasoning is that by offering useful information to the web community, Google will rank it higher. Having lots of relevant content will in essence propel your website ranking and this will drive more visitors to your site.

I agree that having plenty of relevant content is crucial to drive visitors into a web site. However, to succeed in online marketing, we need the four 'P' and not just one P. Content is the product aspect of the four P. Let's picture this. You have added relevant contents to your site and you don't do anything else other than continually adding content.

That will work. Google spider will eventually visit you site and rank it higher if your content is relevant. But it won't work as well as having the other three P's in your marketing campaign. For example, instead of posting the content on your website alone, you can think of submitting to various article directories available. There are about hundreds of directories of this nature.

This is the 'place' or distribution aspect of the four P's. Instead of one source, your potential customers can then find your content through hundreds of distribution channel around the web. When you are starting up, you have low visitor counts. Using this distribution method, you can attract up to hundreds times more visitors than if you had just posted your content on your site.

The best thing is that these article directories are free. All you need is your time. You can also pay a small fee to organization that will help you submit one article to hundreds of article directories. There are also article directories that specializes on certain field, which I prefer. Your visitor counts will be lower if you submit to these niche directories. However, these are a very interested visitors, rather than just casually-browsing visitors. Furthermore, general directories are having a lot more subcategories than niche directories and visitors will have a harder time finding your content.

My suggestion is to prioritize. There are hundreds of article directories, both general and niches. Your priority should be to submit to niche categories first and then to general article submissions when time permits. This way, you will get more interested visitors to start with. Once they are on you site, you will have an easier time selling your products or services.

Are you a content writer? If so, how do you write your
content? Do you brainstorm? If not, you may want to think
about doing so. After a close examination, you will see exactly
how brainstorming can help you, when it comes to writing
content.

Before examining the benefit of using brainstorming to write
content, it is important that you first understand exactly what
brainstorming is. Brainstorming is a technique that is used in
many different situations, not just article writing. In most
cases, brainstorming is used in problem solving. When it comes
to article writing, that problem may be exactly what to write or
even how to write it. The most effective way to brainstorm is
to write down all of your ideas as they come to you. Whether or
not you use those ideas will be completely up to you, but at
least you will have them recorded on paper.

One of the hardest parts of brainstorming is coming up with
ideas. If you are a content writer, you are urged to have a
pen and paper handy at all times. This will be very helpful to
you, as many writers develop ideas at some of the most
inconvenient times. In addition to sitting down and recording
ideas that you, yourself, have thought of, you can also do a
little bit of research. The easiest way to do this research is
online. Search engines and article directories can be your best
sources of information. You should perform standard internet
searches on topics that interest you or topics that you are
willing to write about. Searching the internet is one of the
best ways to get ideas for your content. You can take those
ideas and then brainstorm from there. In fact, you next step
may want to be creating an outline for yourself. Outlines are
just as beneficial to article writers as brainstorming is.

Now that you know exactly what brainstorming is, what it
entails, and how to get brainstorming ideas, you may be
wondering exactly why you should do it. The most obvious reason
why you should use brainstorming to your advantage is to come up
with ideas. There are many article writers who claim that they
easily run out of ideas for new content. With an unlimited
number of topics at your fingertips, this should never happen.
As a content writer, you should always have something to write
about. This is where brainstorming can come in. For instance,
do you know that you could take a content topic that you
already used to create a brand new article? Say that you wrote
a content on giving gift baskets as a wedding gift. When
sitting down and thinking, or brainstorming, you may be able to
get other gift basket article ideas, such as gift baskets for
Christmas or even how to make your own gift baskets.

Another one of the many benefits to brainstorming is that the
ideas often just keep on flowing. As it was mentioned above, if
you wrote a content on gift baskets making great wedding gifts,
you need to disassociate yourself from wedding gifts and just
focus on gift baskets. Once you do so, it is likely that your
mind will be filled with ideas. Making brainstorming as easy
and as simple as it can be is one of the best ways to come up
with the most ideas. And, as previously mentioned, you don't
have to come up with ideas on your own. You can use your local
library, search engines, article directories, and online forums
to help you brainstorm and generate ideas for your content. In
fact, the more tools that you use, the better results your
brainstorming sessions may produce.

As you can see, there are a number of benefits to taking the
time to brainstorm. To make brainstorming as effective as can
be, you are urged to brainstorm in an area that you feel
comfortable in. Whether this area is in front of your computer
or outside basking in the sunshine; comfort is the key to a
successful brainstorming session.


P.S. Although you may feel as if you have run out of content to
write, you are advised against going with your first impulse.
When brainstorming, you are almost always guaranteed to come up
with a whole collection of new ideas.

Within the virtual world of the internet, "content" is to "money" in real life. Content is our commodity, it is what people trade all around the world. But is "other people's content" actually valuable?

There are many specialists out there that believe that content that has been copied is not valuable anymore and may actually penalize your website online for listing such content but I on the other hand beg to differ.

Ezine article directories world wide consistently list the same ol' content as the other. They all pull into the same pool of authors who ultimately submit the same articles to each directory. My question is this, if copied content is not valuable anymore, why is it that these article directories are some of the most popular websites world wide?

See if you break down the authors article, you start to get clues as to why "copied content" can still be mistaken for original content.

Title & Author Stay The Same, But The Rest Is Not Just Gravy:

One constant is true for all articles submitted by authors: Their "title" and "author" are always the same but everything else tends to change in the process of submitting the article.

See, some article directories ask for a "description" to post online leading to the article. In many cases, I've seen authors simply make up their own description as they go which in turn gives the article a unique feel to it.

HTML Formatted Articles Changes The Dynamics Of The Article:

In other cases, some article directories allow for HTML to be posted with the article. When this is allowed, you will usually get a unique article created by the author and edited by the author. For those sites that allow HTML, there are others that don't allow HTML which in turn depends on the article directory and its own "author guidelines" about a well formatted article. Some article directories allow images, while others do not.

Some article directories have "internal" HTML editors known as "WYSIWYG" editors. These act as an HTML editor which allows the author to personalize their article with bolding text, adding links, etc.

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With All Of These Different Scenarios, Is The Content Still Valuable?

ABSOLUTELY! Beyond and besides the fact that every article directory requires different methods of submitting your article, each article directory is also unique to each other thus providing different content around the article itself.

It's well known that search engines do pick out and identify your "template" content, vs. your "internal" content but at the same time, your template content is unique and hopefully isn't 100% copied somewhere else.

In Conclusion:

Although copied content is looked down on, every website out there has some form of copied content somewhere within their site. Whether it be within your menu system, or content. The fact is, you can ultimately change copied content into unique content by changing the dynamics or properties of the content itself.