Having an online presence is good, but it’s not good enough. We all know the importance of creating a blog and social media accounts for your business, but how do you avoid falling into the trap of neglecting them? The key to marketing your business online and engaging in new and existing customers is creating and publishing engaging content. However, many mistakenly believe they don’t have the time or resources to keep a blog and social media accounts updated. However, creating engaging content that’s both fresh and relevant is easier than you think!
Why Is Engaging Content So Important?
Creating a social media account for your business is easy. Creating a great website built specifically for you is considerably more difficult, but still perfectly doable. In fact, creating an online presence is one of the easier things to complete when establishing a business – it’s certainly easier than acquiring capital or donations, or recruiting and retaining good employees. That being said, simply establishing an online presence is no longer good enough – in order to successfully market your business online without spending a fortune on advertising, you need a steady stream of engaging content to keep your blog and social media accounts fresh, relevant and noteworthy to both customers and potential customers. How do you avoid falling into the trap of neglecting your accounts with stale content?
Abandonment Of Blogs
In 2009, at the end of the “Web 2.0” decade, The New York Times wrote that 95 percent of blogs created were abandoned within four months. With the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, many users are creating social media accounts and quickly abandoning them as well. It’s no mystery as to why many individuals and businesses neglect and abandon online platforms – creating content is difficult, and when many of us juggle professional and personal demands on our time and energy, it is easy to see how the prospect of creating content can become even more intimidating. We often overestimate how difficult it will be to create good, engaging content, and we underestimate our ability to create the content ourselves.
More Than Just Words
Many of us may have unfortunate memories of being required to write essays in school. In class, you were assigned an essay subject, given a minimum number of words or pages and told you would be graded on content and grammar. Some of those assignments may have resulted in a less than stellar grade. However, you are (most likely) no longer in school, and blogging and social media updates don’t have a minimum word or page count. It is also important to remember that modern word processors can often identify misspelled words and grammatical errors, and you can ask others to proofread your work. Even better, engaging content doesn’t necessarily have to include written content – you can just as easily update your blog and social media accounts with photographs, infographics and diagrams, and even short videos. Engaging content is simply that, engaging! If you don’t feel comfortable writing blog posts or social media updates, then there are other great ways to create content.
We Are All Experts
The other way we intimidate ourselves into neglecting these accounts is the belief that we’re not subject matter experts, or that others won’t be interested in what we have to say. It’s important to remember that just about everyone is an expert in one subject or another, and we all have developed methods, systems and tools to work smarter and more efficiently. Your clients, customers and colleagues will seek you out for expertise and advice, so why not utilize your knowledge and experience to create engaging content? Essays, tutorials and even question and answer sessions online can lead to remarkable marketing content for your business.
Remain Positive And Professional
There are some important caveats to remember when creating content. It is always important to remain positive, professional and courteous, and never disparage others online, even your competitors and other products and services that you believe are inferior. It is important to ensure that the information you are posting is original – never “borrow” or plagiarize content from other sources. Finally, it is important to make sure that any expert or “how-to” content you create is both accurate and reasonable – ensure that you are not encouraging your readers to pursue a course of action that is dangerous to themselves or their property or may be legally questionable.