You’ve been poked, pummeled and prodded with the now terminally
exhausted cliché ”content is king” until you’re prepared to clonk the
next imbecile who utters it over the head with a 22” monitor. And we’re
not talking flat-screen. Bill Gates
was already uttering self-serving utterances on the subject ’way back
in ’96, which is another one of the things to hate about Bill Gates. Of
course, he thought that audio and video would be essential components of
web content, which we now know is poppycock. More on that later.
As we, for better or worse, are rather attached to our heads, we will not prod you with the terminally exhausted cliché ”content is king”. Instead, we will prod you with the brand new cliché ”content is supreme potentate.” And with good reason.
A website lacking living, breathing, entertaining and/or insightful content is merely a blank canvas coated with sponsor decals – in other words, nothing a visitor is going to want to stare at for particularly long without becoming irritated and immediately clicking elsewhere. Too many web publishers, in their eagerness to secure web traffic and advertising network interest, forget this and end with a canvas that, while it may have once embodied the germ of a groundbreaking concept, is in its actual form merely a few scribbles hanging loosely in a frame.
So start with content. Know what you want your website to say, know where you’re going to find the means to say it, and know who you’re going to say it for. Content is two things: the information or wacky fun it provides, and the audience it is providing it for. These can’t be separated. Every medium will impact different audiences differently, and while you may have solved the first riddle and have really nifty content, if you’re waving that content in front of the wrong audience, it’s going to go to waste. This is why you don’t see a lot of Picasso hanging in kennels.
Once you’ve properly focused your attention on content, which, to reiterate, is supreme potentate, and where that content is going, think about how to breathe some life into it. Here’s one place where your visitors can help. Is your content worth discussing? Rating? Rebutting? Provide the means for your visitors to discuss, rate, and rebut. Does your content lead off into a wealth of further exploration? Provide an interactive links library, one which your visitors can help build. Is your content time-sensitive? Label it with the time it was posted.
We’re not going to get into the niceties of web design and presentation, other than to say that without a clean design and a comprehensible navigation scheme, your content will never find its way from your site to the minds of your visitors. Take some time to study effective web design and apply the concepts you learn as you develop your site. Webmonkey.com is not a bad place to get some useful pointers.
Together with the structural and graphic presentation of your site is the actual textual content itself. Here’s where the Internet regularly drives us into apoplectic paroxysms of literary indignation. Nine out of ten websites are written in a language that, at best, can be described as gibberish. Worse still, the gibberish is punctuated with atrocious punctuation, comically incompetent spelling, and grammatical indescretions of a kind for which there should be some kind of capital punishment for. (You see?).
If you want your site to make the impression that you likely want it to make, pay close attention to these potential missteps. Don’t pour more oil on the slippery slope of Internet illiteracy.
In summary, don't let your market aspirations get ahead of your content. See to it, before your even start thinking about search engine placements or lucrative sponsorships, that you have created the best possible resource for the area covered by your site, be it informative, entertaining, functional, educational, or whatever. Try to always look at the site from the point of view of a potential visitor. Is everything an ideal visitor should be looking for on your site somewhere to be found on your site, or at least clearly linked from your site? If not, take some time to make sure it is. When your content is solid, you can then move on to getting it found, and making it pay.
http://www.internetadsales.com/
As we, for better or worse, are rather attached to our heads, we will not prod you with the terminally exhausted cliché ”content is king”. Instead, we will prod you with the brand new cliché ”content is supreme potentate.” And with good reason.
A website lacking living, breathing, entertaining and/or insightful content is merely a blank canvas coated with sponsor decals – in other words, nothing a visitor is going to want to stare at for particularly long without becoming irritated and immediately clicking elsewhere. Too many web publishers, in their eagerness to secure web traffic and advertising network interest, forget this and end with a canvas that, while it may have once embodied the germ of a groundbreaking concept, is in its actual form merely a few scribbles hanging loosely in a frame.
So start with content. Know what you want your website to say, know where you’re going to find the means to say it, and know who you’re going to say it for. Content is two things: the information or wacky fun it provides, and the audience it is providing it for. These can’t be separated. Every medium will impact different audiences differently, and while you may have solved the first riddle and have really nifty content, if you’re waving that content in front of the wrong audience, it’s going to go to waste. This is why you don’t see a lot of Picasso hanging in kennels.
Once you’ve properly focused your attention on content, which, to reiterate, is supreme potentate, and where that content is going, think about how to breathe some life into it. Here’s one place where your visitors can help. Is your content worth discussing? Rating? Rebutting? Provide the means for your visitors to discuss, rate, and rebut. Does your content lead off into a wealth of further exploration? Provide an interactive links library, one which your visitors can help build. Is your content time-sensitive? Label it with the time it was posted.
We’re not going to get into the niceties of web design and presentation, other than to say that without a clean design and a comprehensible navigation scheme, your content will never find its way from your site to the minds of your visitors. Take some time to study effective web design and apply the concepts you learn as you develop your site. Webmonkey.com is not a bad place to get some useful pointers.
Together with the structural and graphic presentation of your site is the actual textual content itself. Here’s where the Internet regularly drives us into apoplectic paroxysms of literary indignation. Nine out of ten websites are written in a language that, at best, can be described as gibberish. Worse still, the gibberish is punctuated with atrocious punctuation, comically incompetent spelling, and grammatical indescretions of a kind for which there should be some kind of capital punishment for. (You see?).
If you want your site to make the impression that you likely want it to make, pay close attention to these potential missteps. Don’t pour more oil on the slippery slope of Internet illiteracy.
In summary, don't let your market aspirations get ahead of your content. See to it, before your even start thinking about search engine placements or lucrative sponsorships, that you have created the best possible resource for the area covered by your site, be it informative, entertaining, functional, educational, or whatever. Try to always look at the site from the point of view of a potential visitor. Is everything an ideal visitor should be looking for on your site somewhere to be found on your site, or at least clearly linked from your site? If not, take some time to make sure it is. When your content is solid, you can then move on to getting it found, and making it pay.
http://www.internetadsales.com/
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