Internet marketing is designed to promote your content, but creating content has little to do with internet marketing.
Great content relies on the combination of good writing, editing and publishing. And the better your content, the less marketing hype you’ll require to sell it.
Sounds pretty simple, but not too many bloggers or internet marketers have a basic understanding of this stuff. With that said, let’s go over these basics to get you familiarized:
Writing
You either love writing, hate it, or you’re somewhere in between. But it doesn’t really matter how you feel because as long as you’re a blogger you pretty much have to write content.
The nice part about writing great content is you don’t really have to be a good writer, you just need to be good enough. This means you can get your point across in a clear, concise and consistent manner.
Being good enough is pretty simple, actually. Just remember to:
- Use only as many words as you need
- Use proper spelling, punctuation and grammar
- Be comfortable being yourself
Follow those basic guidelines and I assure your content will do its job to enlighten or entertain your readers, or both. Plus—the more you write, the better your content becomes.
Then you can start breaking the rules now and then and look good doing it 🙂
Editing
The editor is the most valuable person on the internet.
Why is this? Because the editor takes an average or good piece of writing and makes it great. Even more importantly, the editor is a strategist: she selects the content that makes her readers happy.
The editor’s value is ever-increasing on the web: somebody has to filter all that content, right? Somebody has to mine all that gold from the cold, silty river. And that somebody is…the editor.
Starting right now, I want you to think of yourself as an editor. Not just blogger, not just writer—but editor. Congratulations, you are now the most valuable person on the internet!
Publishing
Publishing is the business of your blog. It not only includes writing and editing, but also the niche, content strategy, marketing, monetization, SEO and more.
As publisher, you carry a greater amount of power and responsibility than the marketer because you are in complete control of the product, which is your content. Content is king, and it’s also cash.
Another great part about being a publisher is you can publish more than one blog or website under the umbrella of your publisher brand. At this level you can really leverage your talent and experience to grow your business. This is how Wordful plans to grow, by the way.
I hope this helps. Please comment if you want to chat.
Photo by aslakr.
Hi Charles,
Great post! If you look at the newspaper world, copy editors generally are paid more than reporters. When copy editing at The Boston Globe and other daily newspapers, I was keen to remember the reader is the customer, paying my salary. I often described my role as “reader advocate.”
Happy to read your assertion: “The editor is the most valuable person on the internet.”
Thanks, Suzanne, I appreciate the comment. I’m willing to bet in the next year and beyond we’ll see a big emphasis on the whole writer-editor-publisher construct within internet marketing. Content can’t live on marketing alone!
Wish I could hire an editor!
You have nicely explained about Blog Content, but I believe that the key to getting your site to the top of a B2B keyword search list isn’t just content, the proper site architecture is also critical. So it’s not just how you say it that counts in SEO; it’s how you build it, too.