Content Management and Strategy (a Quick Primer)

I stumbled on a blog post which I wish I'd written. It's a fast read and the quick version is that content is important and you have to know what it means to have a content strategy in order to be relevant online. Relevance online has become synonymous with relevance in the real world, especially for businesses. 

Great content is the way you establish a good reputation with both search engines and their users - your target customers or clients. Content is an umbrella term, used for anything you put on your website, from blog posts, to images, to descriptions of the services you offer. A website is a primary conduit for great content.

But a content strategy should also include social media content on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Not every business will benefit from casting such a wide net, but the biggest brands and the hottest stars use them all.

Of course, posting content is not enough; it also has to be good. You want to be relevant, so your content has to be relevant. It's not all that difficult, but it takes time and effort to plan and execute a content strategy. All too often, businesses don't put enough towards their content and end up with garbage blog posts, stuffed with keywords, and their strategy is near useless. 

If you are dedicated to creating the social interactions and offering the respectable advice that great content provides, your business will not only stay relevant. You'll find that your opinions are considered valuable, your customers are more loyal, and search engines will display your website to the right users and potential clients.