Business ‘wisdom’ tells us that to succeed, we have to keep our knowledge to ourselves to form a competitive advantage. Most of our mothers however would have emphasised the importance of sharing to get ahead in life. So when it comes to producing information for the web who is correct? The mothers or the business gurus?
Our own experience tells us that we can make friends and influence people by giving things to them. Sharing our toys made us popular at kindergarten so why should it be any different in the digitally connected world? One of the easiest ways to gain brand credibility is to share your business knowledge with others.
How so? If you are willing to give out genuinely useful information for free, your reputation as an expert will be automatically enhanced. If you are the only business in your field sharing valuable data or insights, customers will immediately recognise the difference between you and your competitors, making you the ‘go-to’ organisation when it comes time to make a purchase or seek paid-for advice.
And so it is for the Internet too. Although much of the web content you produce or have ghostwritten will appear on your own website, it makes good business sense to commission articles for other sites. Clearly your competitors are unlikely to publish your articles, but industry-specific portals now exist which are used by consumers to obtain a broader understanding of a topic without the usual brand-biased content found on vendors sites. These portals may be unwilling to publish content designed to promote a specific product, but are generally more than happy to use advisories or guides which assist their website visitors.
The other advantage of contributing content to other websites is that they often act as a funnel, drawing people to your article and then encouraging them to ‘click through’ onto your own website where you can use more targeted messages to make a sale. These shared articles allow you to showcase your business’ expertise before bringing potential buyers on board as they seek other relevant and informative product data on your own website.
So, although it is hard to measure a definitive ROI for shared web content it does not mean that it is a waste of time and money. Brand reputation is notoriously hard to quantify but is absolutely essential for the ongoing success of a business. Sharing articles and advice is certainly one way to raise a
business profile so, as always, it would appear that the mothers were once again correct.
So if you whether you need a hand with writing web content for your own site, or creating articles for distribution to other outlets, send me a message using the Contact Form and I’ll tell you more about how I can help. You can use the QR Code over there to share this post to Twitter too ->
Image courtesy of Master isolated images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
