Do you know where the saying “content is king” comes from?
I recently read that in 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay and used the saying as the title.
In one part of the essay he says, “content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet, just as it was with broadcasting.”
“… the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to practice.”
This is still true today, 20 years later.
In the early years of the internet, there were no social media platforms. The early ones came around such as MySpace and Friendster, but they weren’t used by businesses the way social media is used today.
I think many business owners get caught up in putting together the best Instagram feed, adding new connections and reaching out to people on LinkedIn, getting more followers on Twitter, trying to get more people to like their page on Facebook, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, social media is a wonderful tool, but it’s not the most important one for a business with an online presence.
(And let’s be real, in 2019 every business should have an online presence.)
One of the most popular suggestions people give to business owners (regardless of the size or age of the company) is to make content, which is a great suggestion and I agree that everyone should be making content; however, I believe it’s equally as important to talk about which platforms to use.
If content is king, platform is queen.
There is no better platform than your own
The big idea is you have direct access to people who could potentially be your clients, customers, readers, etc.
Social media provides great opportunities for business owners to connect with an endless amount of users, but if Facebook decided to shut down a few years from now or change their terms of service, all the content, followers, and the info I have on my page would be gone.
Only publishing your content on other people’s platforms is like building a house on a rented lot.
This is true for every platform except your own blog.
Blogging is not dead.
It’s alive as ever and it’s one of the best things you can do for your business.
I believe it’s the easiest way to begin to build a connection that keeps people wanting to come back to you.
My biggest recommendation would be to blog on a self-hosted WordPress site where you’ll have total control over what you publish, when you publish, what it looks like, etc.
There are 3 major benefits to publishing your own blog:
- Become an authority in your industry
- Provide value for your readers
- Increase search engine traffic
Become an Authority in your Industry
Regardless of how small your business is, when you become an established leader in your space, people trust you more.
Trust leads to higher customer conversion rates.
Over time, with consistent blogging, you can easily become a “go-to” resource for helpful information within your industry.
This is especially important for small businesses that are looking to compete with larger companies.
If you can establish yourself as an industry leader, the “wall of entry” you have to jump over to be successful in whatever you’re doing, gets significantly smaller.
Blogging is the best way to showcase your knowledge and expertise. I love it because there’s no limit to what you can publish or how often.
When you publish posts that are accurate, relevant, and informative, you will earn the recognition as an authority figure that you desire.
Provide Value for Readers
Posts that help people solve their problems or include tips to make their lives easier are far more interesting and clickable than constantly giving people ads to whatever you’re selling.
I would suggest incorporating whatever you’re selling into the post. I like to use buttons, such as the one a few lines above this sentence.
By taking the time to provide helpful content for free, you’re actually building trust with your potential customers who will be more likely to choose your company over your competitors when they’re ready to purchase.
Another type of content I enjoy making is what I like to call “Author Success Story.” For these posts, I’ll interview a previous client who has written their book with us and has gotten through all of the marketing.
I ask them about the process of writing their book, what their business was like before they published it and what it’s like after, etc.
This not only gives readers insight into what Best Seller Publishing does, but those interviews always have some kind of great advice that I think would be beneficial to any business owner whether they have a book or not.
Authors always share a marketing technique or they’ll give tips for a backend offer they’ve created, and tons of other great stuff.
Increase Search Engine Traffic
I read an article on Forbes once that used a great metaphor. The writer said she thinks of blogging as fishing. The more hooks you have in the water, the more likely you are to catch a fish.
In the same way, as you add more content to your site, more pages from your domain become indexed in search engines because they love to provide fresh, valuable content to searchers.
If someone blogs consistently, they’ll have that many more opportunities to plug in their keywords to each post which adds more fuel to the SEO fire, so to speak.
I’m not saying one should write off social media and only focus on blogging.
With this post, I wanted to emphasize how important it is to publish content to a blog that is totally under your control.
Blogging can do nothing but help your business.
2 Comments. Leave new
This is great because I know for me, I am impatient and want to see results quickly. But with content consistency is key, and the prior client interview is an awesome idea to help produce content in hurry. Thanks Rob!
Read over your paragraph starting with “if you can establish yourself as an industry leader…” Do you see a typo? I am a professional copy editor besides being a writer and editor, but do you think anyone cares enough about their content to follow a blog on the topic of common mistakes made in writing? Just curious.