A billboard in the wilderness is like a tree falling in the forest. Does anyone know it’s there? How can anyone find it?
The most important writing skills
Search engine optimization and earned media have become a content provider’s most important skills. From a business perspective, get search right, and you connect with that most wonderful thing of all, a new customer. Get it wrong, and the potential customer will locate the competition and your market share and business will suffer.
However, writing for social media like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter or websites or blogs must be short and concise. It’s intended for reading on phones and tablets and even smaller media like wearables. Too often it is not concise, full of excess verbiage. The ultimate goal, reducing word and space count while retaining the same meaning, cannot be ignored. No one but no one, wants to read big online copy blocks. It is such a turnoff.
There are two important skills to master: reducing unnecessary words and spaces while optimizing tags for search. There must be a compelling message across within predefined character limits.
The Internet frees content limitations
In some ways the Internet has freed content limitations. A web location, a landing page, or YouTube video could be as lengthy as the creator would like. On one hand, this has freed up marketers to tell their full story. Alternatively, it’s handcuffed content creators with character limit restrictions that are even more confining than television, radio or print. Yet ever since marketing began, there has been limited space. Whether it was a newspaper or magazine advertisement or a 15- or 30-second television spot, marketers have been challenged. They must get the most amount of pertinent information across, with a compelling call to action.
Earned media and organic search
Right now, people could be searching online for your products or services or political messages. But attracting people to your web page or video requires either paid online advertising or earned media, which includes SEO or natural organic search. Within paid options there are strict or predefined character limits for every type of advertisement. In the SEO world, there are tags that need to be populated that are quintessential to your success and they also have predefined character limits. Content providers must learn this–or be left behind, all alone with their inventory–like a billboard in the forest.
Who can benefit from being a better writer?
Anyone whose career involves online writing! Writing with new flair and style, with content that search engines will find, becomes the key to career success in social media, websites, blogs, PR, advertising, marketing, journalism and internal communications. As a result, newly refreshed writing can attract positive attention from supervisors and managers who recommend promotions and salary increases.
A note about content: It’s King!
We search for things large and small on Google. In many ways, we all work for Google now, providing content. We are the audience that searches for content and creates revenue for the search giant. Social Media also plays a key role in search. People want to know more about the companies and individuals they are considering doing business with. Social Media provides that, with sponsored content and user reviews. As we all know, Social Media has changed every Internet relationship.
Digital marketers have been saying ‘Content is King’ for the past decade or so. Should we believe it? (Maybe not)! Every day, content creation and distribution through social media and the Internet grow exponentially. In 2008 Google had indexed one trillion web pages. Google’s updated its total to over 60 Trillion pages of indexed content in 2015. YES, Trillion with a capital T. In 2016 Google updated its press release, having now indexed a remarkable 130 Trillion web pages.
With over 40,000 Google queries every second, there are 3.5 billion daily searches. On YouTube, over 300 hours of new content per minute is uploaded. YouTube’s more than one billion users comprise one third of all people using the Internet, with its audience rising 40 per cent since March 2014. YouTube mobile attracts more viewers between 18 and 49 than the largest cable network in the U.S. Everyone is making content…And people like to follow the herd, right? Content is King! Content is King?
No… it’s not. It may be surprising to know that content is not King. In fact the Emperor has no clothes. Yes, stripped naked right in front of the worldwide audience.
Let’s look at data, applying logic and reasoning. If there are 3.5 billion searches per day, then there are 1.2 trillion searches annually. Do you see a problem with that many yearly searches? Or 60 trillion web pages to choose from? If everyone conducting a Google search visits a multitude of webpages. Then, after an initial search, they only visited one webpage in their life, without revisiting the same page. There would still be trillions and trillions of pages never discovered.
In addition, most content becomes a very sad and sorry time waster. Talented people put time, energy and expertise into content creation that never ever is seen. Creators somehow think, as did Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, “If I build it, they will come.” Well, that worked in a movie. But it does not accomplish anything in our Google-dominated world today. Whether it’s web pages, videos, marketing messages or product information, most content created on our planet is simply lost in cyberspace.
So what is king? Content, found at the precise moment someone is searching for your product, service, information or the entertainment you’ve created – THAT KIND OF CONTENT IS KING!
I can help you understand how to think differently, when it comes to your content. It will make a huge difference in your career as a content creator, making your bosses and supervisors stand up and notice their search ranking climb up and up, because of you — and my forthcoming book: How to Be a Better Online Writer Overnight.
How to be a better online or digital writer overnight – makes a bold claim, improving your writing in one day. It sounds audacious but it’s true. To begin you just need to learn three two letter words — Of Is and By — and eliminate them. Once applied, this writing system immediately improves almost any sentence, and shortens paragraphs and documents by 20-30 per cent. Use it and there will be clearer, more concise paragraphs with fewer words; mistakes will quickly disappear. Then you can apply my many other writing tips in the book. All have learning exercises to help you master the concepts. It will be self-published soon. Look for it on Amazon. In the meantime, excepts will be regularly published on The PR Writer website.
It’s simple, it’s basic and it works. The technique has been applied and refined among thousands of college and university students, and at major international communications firms. The changes are dramatic. And yes, it will happen overnight. I mean it.
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