Jason Unger

Is Your Content Valuable?

Posted by junger - 12/11/08 at 08:12:17 am

As you're reading information online, ask yourself: what is this worth to me?

Would I

• actively find out more about the topic?
• sign up to get more information like it?
• pay money for it?

If you answered 'yes' to at least one of those, the content has value to you.

But as a Web publisher, you can't be sure that your readers recognize the value your content has unless you treat it valuably.

How Content's Value Has Changed Completely

The Internet has democratized information. It's a beautiful thing, right?

Well, not for traditional publishers. Control of information has been their domain for hundreds of years.

Newspapers are going belly up. It's not going to get any easier next year, and it will hit certain places much harder than others.

Now that information is available from millions of resources, much of the actual content has lost its value. It's not a rare resource, dominated by a few in power. Anyone can produce it.

Giving Your Content Value

So how do you give your content value?

For small Web publishers, your content has to achieve certain goals or you won't succeed. Even if it's not about making money, it has to serve a purpose.

Your content could:

• Build a community around a product (ex. The Mint Blog)
• Grow a brand around yourself (ex. Robert Scoble)
• Market your offline services or products (ex. any freelance writer with a blog)

How to Make Money From Your Content

As forecasters expect online ad spending to decrease next year, you need to understand that pageviews are not going to pay the bills.

Even if ad spending was going up, users would still ignore ads unrelated to their online goals.

In order to make money from your content, you generally have two options:

• Charge for it
• Treat it as marketing materials for your paid products

Charging for content? Are you serious? Yes. Charging for content can be an extremely compelling business model IF you are creating the right content and, most importantly, targeting the right people.

Most people are not going to pay to read the Wall Street Journal online, especially because the information is available through other outlets.

But if you're a business owner, would you spend $100 to attend a specialized online training or business summit that will make you more money? Of course!

Targeting the right niche with information that will make them more profitable is, in itself, a profitable venture.

Use Your Content to Market Your Product and Services

Instead of charging for your content, use it as marketing for what you do get paid for.

Let's look back at the three 'free' ways to give your content value:

• Build a community around a product
• Grow a brand around yourself
• Market your offline services or products

Each of these use your content to make you money.

If you sell a product, you want a thriving community of users, critics and evangelists.

If you are a talking head or consultant, you need to build up your brand in order to establish your expertise.

If you are a freelancer writer or designer, you need to show off your skills.

Treating your content as marketing does not, however, mean it should be a sales pitch. Like all other information, if it isn't useful, your users won't respond.

What's Your Content Worth?

You're already producing content. But why?

The next time you sit down to write something, measure the value of your content. If you're not getting anything out of it, then your readers aren't either.

For more, follow me on Twitter or sign up for email updates or via RSS.

John C. Dvorak Shills for eHarmony.com

Posted by junger - 12/04/08 at 04:12:17 pm

And while you're at it, visit Dvorak dot org slash blog.

SEO Failure in Action: Sarah Palin, the Washington Post and a $150,000 Wardrobe

Posted by junger - 10/28/08 at 10:10:42 pm

Can you find this story for me?

It's called "After a $150,000 Makeover, Sarah Palin Has an Image Problem" and it's from the Washington Post.

What? You can't find it? That's weird.

What You Just Did (And Your Readers Will, Too)

If you're anything like the normal Web surfer, you grabbed that headline, pasted it into Google, and looked for the top result.

But the Washington Post is nowhere to be found.

In fact, the direct link to the story is nowhere to be found in the four pages of search results. (When you search with quotes around the title.)

If you're the Washington Post, you've got to be worried. Something is preventing your story — when searched for using the all-important headline — from showing up in Google results.

That's scary for a Web publisher.

What Happened Here?

Why isn't the direct link to the story coming up in Google?

Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm more inclined to blame the Washington Post for doing something funky than to say Google screwed it up. They don't mess up too much when it comes to search.

Whatever the case is, there's a problem. And you, as the person who makes your site run, needs to ensure that you're not being left out of search results when you own the content.

What good is a blog post or a research paper online if it can't easily be found using search?

What Does 'Blog' Mean to You?

Posted by junger - 10/27/08 at 10:10:30 pm

The world 'blog' is filled with expectations … but they're totally different, depending on who you are.

At work, we've been discussing the merit of adding a 'blog' to the cepro.com and what exactly it entails.

The editors have been asking for one, but it always leads back to these questions:

• does that mean a place to express opinions?
• is it just a rollup of one author's posts?
• are they short quips and thoughts about a particular topic?

What exactly is a 'blog'?

The 'Official' Definition

Here's what Wikipedia says about blogs:

A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Honestly, this definition means nothing to me. If a blog functions as everything, then it is absolutely nothing.

We already post stories in reverse chronological. Many of our stories express opinions. Some of them are based on reports in other publications.

So do we already have a blog?

Does it Really Matter?

In the old media world, the word 'blog' matters. If all of these bloggers are getting tons of traffic to their sites while you're cutting staff, it must be because you don't have a blog.

WRONG.

A blog is not going to save your business. Embracing the culture and connectedness of the Internet will.

But back to the actual word. If blog doesn't mean anything, why use it?

Totally legitimate question. But the response should be: if the word blog doesn't mean anything, why not use it?

The Moral of the Story

The takeaway here?

It's not the word that matters. It's what you do with it.

The Onion: Taking the Media to Task Since 1783

Posted by junger - 10/08/08 at 10:10:36 am

The Onion, easily the funniest outlet this side of CollegeHumor, certainly has a history of challenging the status quo.

They've recently been running stories from their "historical archives," including their first issue from 1783.

In late 1783, change was sweeping the Western world. The Revolutionary War had drawn to a close, the Treaty of Paris had been signed, Mozart's Great Mass was performed for the first time, and, with the Montgolfier brothers' balloon, mankind was poised on the threshold of flight. And only one newspaper, H. Ulysses Zweibel's The Onion, had the courage to stand against it all. Here, for the first time ever, is a reprint edition of The Onion's October 6, 1783 issue.

It's brilliant.

But while political satire is all the rage these days with Tina Fey's Sarah Palin and Jon Stewart's Daily Show, The Onion has some of the sharpest — and least ideological — comedy.

Gunman Kills 15 Potential Voters In Crucial Swing State

In an era of 24/7 cable news coverage and non-stop election reporting, The Onion is slamming the media for — surprise — not focusing on what really matters.

While members of the media likes to paint themselves as an easy target, there's a legitimate gripe to be made here.

I'm just surprised they didn't pull out the Microsoft Surface table for Chuck Todd.