Building, content and advertising
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Been busy building - as near as I can tell - a valuable content site or two. As I mentioned in my last post, it’s still kind of hard to be sure so I’m pretty much trying for attractive, well organized sites with good internal linking and a LOT of content with as much as possible of that being new and backed up with 3rd party articles. And writing and publishing articles, which hopefully I won’t be penalized for when they get posted on a site with more PR. I figure if I write the content I should be able to use it without having to go through every article and essentially rewrite it so it’s different from the published article. There are peope who do that or something similar - such as providing multiple versions in the ARs they use for providing syndication copies. That strikes me as a good idea though the execution can be complicated - and it is dependent on your distribution method. One of the most fascinating things about working online is the endless creativity you find as you look at and analyze what people are doing and how they go about it. The causes - constant changes in SE algos, overuse or abuse of various techniques, habituation, new and changing markets - can be infuriating since just when you think you have something going suddenly it dies and you’re back to nearly ground zero. Through all this there are still a few constants. People come online looking for information or entertainment. Only a very few come saying “I’m going online to buy a …”. They may end up buying online, but it rarely starts off that way. And this means that content is what it’s about. And you need to think about content as being more than text. As technology and infrastructure continue to improve, photos and images, audio, video, live interactive real-time audio-video events, eventually full length online films, real-time shopping in physical brick and mortar stores through virtual telepresence, immersive interactive 3D virtual worlds — and much more will all become part of “content.” Obviously much of this is already present, some still in embryonic forms that only hint at the potential and power, others, seemingly more fully developed are still only infants. There’s a lot of talk about how many billions of pages there are and how huge the internet is. The internet is a mere child. It’s new, it’s small. Is it any wonder how much constant change there is? This is still a very immature technology. And it’s very nature ensures on-going evolution. When I think of the first computer I used to do state and federal program tracking and reporting, the explosion since is astonishing. That machine had no internal storage. A 1oMB (yes, this was back in the dark ages just after the discovery of the wheel) external hard disk costing $1500 was the ultimate add-on. I read today that Green House will be releasing a 4GB compact flash card (in Japan). How can anyone predict what we’re going to be working with in a year or two years? Sure we can assume that CPUs will be faster, bus speeds will be up, memory will be faster, bigger and cheaper, storage will be even cheaper, but how do we account for the wildcard, the off-the-wall breakthrough or the brilliant adaptation of some development ffrom a totally different field? The rate of change is accelerating as a result of the accumulation of knowledge, cross-fertilization, rapid development cycles and competition. It’s not simply that things are changing faster. We tend to assume that next year will be much like this year which was much like last year. Not too long ago, people assumed that the next century would be much like the last century. And not terribly long before then, people assumed it had always and would always be just like it was. But is it true anymore - WAS last year like this year? Since change is discontinous across our experience we can say sure it is. And some aspects of the human experience haven’t changed much despite having taken on new modes. We rarely recognize how much has changed and how quickly it’s happened because we are embedded in the process. I’m running on at article length here and better refocus this a bit. To see change, you have to step outside the flow. To be successful, you have to know what’s going on, what it means and where it’s leading. If you stay locked into the day-to-day flow you’ll be swept along by the changing times. If you can learn to step back, step outside, really see the changes and use them to redirect your efforts, then maybe you can ride the wave instead of scrambling to catch up. Who knows, you may even get out in front and be ready, cashing in while everyone else is still scratching their head and wondering what happened. And now for something not quite totally different: I went all astray there since I’d planned to just do a short post and mention Content Attack one last time.again and do a short post. There are a few memberships still available so if you want an ongoing source of good, useable content, you really ought to give this a try. I’ve talked about it before, I still like it and use it myself, it’s capped at 150 members so there aren’t any 1500 people using the same articles. Sandra’s capable and responsive and provides more than she promises, so check it out if you’re looking for 300+ private label limited distribution articles a month:
And yet more different, Mike Filsaime is at it again. This time it’s a free advertising blog. Even if you aren’t interested in signing up and posting ads this is something you should take a look at, analyze and think about. There’s a valuable lesson here for every marketer: |
