For years internet marketers have been saying that “Content Is King.” If you want to have a successful online business and if you want to be an authority in your market, you have to consistently create content that helps and serves your market and core customers (i.e. the customers who consume your content and buy your products over and over again).
If you are going to go do the hard work it takes to create content that adds a great amount of value to the marketplace, you need to seriously consider the “useful life” of your content. With this in mind, the key questions you must ask yourself are:
Will your content benefit your prospects and customers for months and years to come? And will your content pay dividends to you and your business for months and years to come?
The two questions that I posted above are a major reason why I am getting into markets that I would classify as “evergreen.” I’m talking about markets like health & fitness, weight loss, debt elimination, golf and even the dating and relationship market.
What I really like about these markets is that I can write a piece of content today, and in most instances the content will still have value three to five years from now, it not longer. It’s timeless!
The same can’t be said for much of the content that is published in the web business and internet marketing space.
This market (i.e. web business and internet marketing) moves so fast that if you make a post today, in many cases the content is completely outdated six months from now. It’s window for “delivering value” can be quite small.
That is major reason why I do not like writing about SEO. Google is constantly changing it’s algorithm and what worked six months ago, in many cases, does not work today. In fact, I know of several marketers who spent weeks and months creating some excellent SEO courses that are now completely outdated and worthless. They were excellent courses on the subject of search engine optimization when they were released. But with the massive changes that Google has made in the past 18 months with their Panda, Penguin and Exact Match Domain updates — most of these courses are completely outdated.
On the other hand, consider Mike Geary’s best selling ebook “Truth About Abs.” This book was released to the market more than six years ago — and it’s still selling like hot cakes!
Travis Sago’s “The Magic of Making Up” is another excellent example of a web-based information product that has “timeless value.” Travis released this ebook close to 4 years ago and it is still generating sales day after day, week after week, month after month.
If you are an aspiring web entrepreneur who wants to build a lasting business, but you are not quite sure what market you want to be in — give the “nature” of the market some serious thought. In other words, think about the long-term prospects of the market you are targeting and think about what type of content you want to deliver to your target market.
For you to have success in any market, you have to deliver value. And if you are going to invest your precious time creating content that helps and serves your target market, place the odds of success in your favor by publishing content that has timeless value.
When I first started this blog my intention was to primarily do reviews of internet marketing products and to blog about product launches. My thinking on this content strategy changed when I realized that the value of the this type of content has a short lifespan. Let’s face it, most internet marketing products are either obsolete six months after their release or there is simply little interest in these products six months after they hit the market.
I am still going to build Web Business Research. In fact, I am more excited about the future of this blog than I have ever been. However, the content strategy that I am using to build this blog has changed.
Going forward, my intention is to focus more on creating content in the following two areas:
- Content that is based on “business & marketing principles” that will serve web entrepreneurs and internet marketing professionals for years to come. The idea is to focus more on publishing “timeless” content.
- Content that originates from being “in the trenches” every day building various web-based ventures. In other words, whatever I learn I will share it with the readers of Web Business Research. Whether it’s from implementing a new traffic strategy in my business or from doing online research, as I make new discoveries I will share what I learn on this blog. Some of this content will be timeless in nature. And some of it may have a short lifespan. But as long as it has value, I will share it with you and the other readers of Web Business Research.
Now, I will still be posting reviews of internet marketing products. For example, a few months ago I wrote a post on why I purchased Mark Ling’s Affiloblueprint 3.0. Mark’s new affiliate marketing course is excellent and I wanted to tell the readers Web Business Research about this superb training. As I move forward I will continue to share my thoughts on internet marketing products that I review and test in my business. However, internet marketing product reviews will not be the focus of this blog primarily because the useful life of most of these products is short-lived. I simply don’t want to invest my time creating content that has real value for just a short amount of time.
I started thinking about this issue of “timeless content” a few weeks ago. Soon thereafter I realized that I needed to rethink my content strategy for Web Business Research along with some other projects that are currently on my plate. I want to encourage you to do the same. Think about the content you are publishing and think about the value of that content. Will your content still possess value six years from now? Or, will it be outdated six months from now?
If you are a blogger or an online publisher who wants to develop an authority site that will have influence in the marketplace, leverage your work by producing content that delivers value for years to come. Make your content “timeless.”
All the best,
Jon Poland
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