Is it really worth creating content regularly?

With modern websites containing news, case studies, opinion pieces, tip-sheets and more, Sam McArthur of Savvy Marketers looks at the business case behind creating great content.

A growing aspect of online marketing is the creation of fresh content on a regular basis (also known as content marketing) - but many businesses I've spoken to find the prospect of doing this quite daunting. It's definitely easier said than done! Finding the time for it as well as ideas for what to write about are two challenges, but first, you need to be convinced that's it's worthwhile bothering at all, and this is what today's post is all about.

So while it's all very well for us internet marketers to be telling clients they need to be creating fresh content regularly, what are the real benefits of doing this? I've a number of good reasons for doing so:

Adds interest to your website - a static site which is never updated is rather boring in this very interactive world we now live in. If you've set up a site and never updated it, with the same old information year in, year out, it's not going to cut the mustard with people's expectations of a modern interactive and informative website!

Adds interaction to your site - as above, people's expectations of modern websites are that they are interactive, which means they can comment on something you've said. So if you are going to update it regularly, make sure you use a blog format so people can comment back. And whatever you do don't turn off the ability for people to comment, which I've come across a few times recently! Otherwise it defeats the object of having a blog in the first place.

Shows off your expertise - your interactive site is a great way to show off what you know about your industry sector. It's your site, so make it a great showcase for your business & your expertise. Encourage and motivate people to want to do business with you!

Your business appears busy - if you update your site with interesting news, opinion and articles, it makes your business look busy & there's lots going on. This is more likely to make people want to find out more about what you do than if you have a site which is never updated. People are less likely to want to do business with a company where it seems not a lot is going on.

Builds relations with visitors & prospects - by adding new content regularly and expressing your knowledge and opinion, people get to know the people behind the business as personality is expressed more than just via bland ‘our services' type pages. People do business with people and want to get to know the people in the business before choosing them as a supplier. Your blog can go a long way towards helping with this.

Builds trust - this leads us on nicely to trust. The more you get to know people, the more you trust them. Your content builds trust with your prospects as they get to know you and trust you know your industry/business well. Use this to help move prospects to being new clients.

Content is shareable - if you create content on a blog, it can be easily shared across the social networks. Make sure you make it easy for people to do this by including social networking buttons, and of course, not forgetting to link to your own social profiles! If your content is shared it shows visitors to your site are enjoying it, spreads the word about your business through their networks and can help with the search engine rankings for your website.

Google crawls site more often - if you update your site regularly, the search engines will visit it more regularly. In turn, your latest news could appear in the search results very quickly, in fact within minutes! Your fresh content could therefore be attracting visits to your site from the search engines very quickly.

I hope this has convinced you that creating content on a regular basis for your website makes good business sense and it's not just something else to put on a ‘to do' list. And of course, the more you do it, the easier it gets!