January 30, 2008 17:46
Category: Writing
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Online content writers may never have had it that exciting. The portents really look well. There is a strong streak of light peeping from distant clouds. For once in many years it seems the contents are going to hold the center-stage again.
Why do I, a 7-year veteran in the field, suddenly feel gung-ho? After all, you may ask online contents have never been in the oblivion my writing above appears to suggest.
Maybe not, but there's no denying that in order to attain better search visibility, there have been marked emphasis on link-gathering for a fairly good length of time.
The argument ran like this. Since Page and Brin did their StanU research on connection and strength of links among web-pages, and since that was what Google stresses on the most, therefore links are what that determine how 'best' a webpage is.
I use the word 'best' because the search engines seem to believe that the pages most linked to are the best by default.
Let me say the importance of links is paramount indeed. But an over-dependence on it will make you vulnerable because the underlying theory is basically a man-made creation.
It seeks to justify the actions of a section of people for its benefit. It's not sacrosanct like Newton's laws of motion or say, Archimedes' Principle.
This means if and when Google feels there's something wrong in the theory, and decides to tweak its ranking algorithm even a tiny bit the resulting effect may shunt off many top-rankers to oblivion in the twinkling of an eye.
This has happened on a few occasions in the past.
3 Elements Of Success
That being so, the ideal Internet marketing strategy to pursue will be a judicious mix of 3 main elements - writing content that is good and helpful, making new links without overdoing it, and most importantly creating a unique selling feature and marketing it strongly.
All three have their places under the sun. Each has its own share of importance. Good contents make up the flesh-n-bones of a site (website content planning), the links add to its acceptability among a wider expanse, while marketing hard sells the uniqueness the site has to offer.
You can carve out many flavors with varying degrees of the 3 elements. But what you cannot do without is marketing your site properly. You'll do that because you do not want your site bleeding your funds without some returns. Let me give an example.
Go to ClickBank and click to check a digital product at the marketplace. There is a strong chance you come upon a site that will probably be a 1-page wonder, with maybe no online contents beyond the first page, and maybe no worthy incoming links either.
Yet, for all you know, this digital product may be earning a good 5-digit every month!
Coming back to inevitability of online contents let me deal on a couple of factors that look important. I'll then veer off to a brief discussion on what I call democratization of knowledge.
Change And Challenge - The 2 Factors
The first of the 2 factors is that people love change in contents. A change in perspective, a change in narrating style, a new discovery, a new twist in an old tale - there can be hundreds of them that people like.
The second is that people love challenge. The lure to know the unknown, the urge to conquer the best, the unmitigated thrill to constantly try and better own performance are some reasons that are typical to us, the fellow humans.
Pause for a moment and think about it. Realize there is never a moment when fresh content is not needed. In fact the need is so important that if you write well, many online publishers will not mind paying you handsomely for your contents.
Okay, this may be the bright side of it, the demand side. Is the other side namely the supply of good content also equally bright? Seems not - I explain below briefly. That's good news and a bright opportunity as well.
Democratization Of Knowledge
The digital revolution has flattened the arena of knowledge disparity between different segments of populace. A few reasons why the scope of learning will increase are:
The easy availability of information will encourage people to take more risks across boundaries. They will face barriers like different language, different culture, and different styles of doing business. To solve them more and more fresh contents will be necessary.
Since the spread of Internet will make the world 'smaller' thereby requiring people to act fast and smart, there is likely to be demand for online coaching much the same way like Teaching Sells. That once again means commensurate inflow of quality contents.
It's my belief that the Internet will also slowly but surely help in bridging the gap between quality knowledge and the ability to reach it by the less-privileged and the have-nots of different societies.
When that happens, when knowledge comes to be recognized as a basic need like food, clothing, and shelter, there can be a big surge of the need for different types of contents.
If indeed that occurs, we may be requiring a vast supply of contents than what is imaginable today.
Summing Up
Let me fish out a graphics that I culled from Alexa data. See it below.
Clearly, YouTube is growing more and more popular over Google, as evidenced from its increasing share of daily page-views. The trend started from June-July last year, and the gap between the 2 curves continues to widen.
YouTube scores over Google in page views because of vast online video content
Reason enough to conclude that rosy days await online contents - text, image, audio, video, whatever. Are you up to it?
