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Regardless of the topic or goals of your blog or website, you need solid content to fill your site. You’re looking for something that has the potential to really go viral. You’re hoping for a subject that will really incite people to leave comments and join the conversation. You don’t just want to add content in an effort to meet an artificially important quota; you want meaningful and substantial content.

In the world of blogging and web development, one adage has risen above all others, “Content is King.” We understand that websites are a combination of design elements, usability, navigation, load speed, interactivity and content. More importantly, we understand that content is the king that rises above all others

“With compelling content, a weak performance in these other areas of your website will be overlooked. With weak content, even the most beautiful and easy to use websites will ultimately fail to achieve any notable level of success.”

Jim Matheson

To produce the greatest level of success, I’ve always advocated that bloggers and website developers spend time developing each of these areas to their fullest potential. It’s what I refer to as the total package. In other words, a plane with four engines will probably get in the sky fastest with all four engines running. But since this is a lesson on developing content, I digress.

Laying The Groundwork: Compelling & Engaging

The two core concepts that we want to achieve as the defining attributes for our content are compelling and engaging.

1. Compelling: According to Webster’s dictionary, compelling is defined as “forceful; demanding attention.” They even go so far as to provide an example sentence to clarify its meaning, “The novel was so compelling that I couldn’t put it down.”
2. Engaging: According to Webster’s dictionary, engaging is defined as “tending to draw favorable attention or interest.” And gain we have example usage provided, “A movie with an engaging story that will hold your interest for a couple of hours.”

These definitions and example sentences demonstrate perfectly the type of material that you want to provide at your blogs and websites. You want your material to be so powerful that it drives people as if by force to read, participate in the conversations, and connect with you as members of your community. You then want to keep them engaged drawing them in for longer and more frequent visits to your site.

The 3 Basic Categories of Online Content

As you become more experienced online, you will eventually grow to realize that there are three distinct reasons that people are surfing the internet.

• Education: Many visitors, especially those coming from search engines, are looking for information on specific topics. They want guides that explain how to do something in a way that is quick and easy to understand. They want to be educated on a particular skill or on a particular bit of knowledge. Wikipedia is a perfect example of a site that appeals to users seeking knowledge.
• Entertainment: Many users browse the internet simply to pass the time, to amuse themselves, or to find something to make them laugh. Many television networks are now broadcasting their programming across the internet to draw in this group of online traffic. Youtube is an amazingly popular example of a site that appeals to entertainment focused users.
• Engagement: With the advent of social media like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, there is ever growing demographic of users online who are searching for ways to connect and engage with other people. People are drawn to sites where the comment sections are used to carry on substantial conversations.

Take the time to improve your content and you’ll be amazed at the dramatic change you’ll see at your online community. Mingle all four different forms (video, photo, audio and articles) of content into your site and work hard to increase your site’s level of education, entertainment and engagement

You’ll be glad that you did. More importantly, your audience will be glad that you did.

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Image: Information overload.

Description: Poorly written blog content can be very overwhelming, especially in our business

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