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Free NewsletterWhen I started Online Business Zen, I wanted to offer sound internet business advice without the hype. You will find a lot of other sites that will show you the latest “get rich quick” online business scheme. The reality is that most of these online schemes backfire, just as they do if you were to try them with regular “brick and mortar customers.”
Lets take the example of various strategies for manipulating search engines. You can pay someone to create thousands of links to your site on often unrelated sites, spam news sites and engage in other so called “black hat” strategies intended to gain a high ranking for your page on google. This type of manipulation might even get you to the front page of google for certain keywords. However even if you do all of this, and even if it generates some sales for you it is unlikely you will see repeat sales unless your site is compelling, fresh and gives the customer a reason to come back for more. If you’ve tricked them into coming to see bad content they won’t stay.
You may have heard the saying that on the internet “content is king.” The reason for this is that in the modern internet, compelling, entertaining and educational content is the best free way to attract new people to your site, and a stream of fresh content is the best way to keep them coming back. The goal of your free content is to not necessarily to promote your products, though certainly compelling free content might drive some to purchase your paid content, products or services.
The goal of regular free content is really to create a long term relationship with your customers. That’s the reason why blogs, email lists, podcasts and videocasts are so compelling from an online business perspective. Someone who subscribes to your blog, email list, or podcast gets fresh free content from you every week or so. Over time they get to know you, respect your expert knowledge and ultimately trust you.
We make purchases based on the advice of those we trust. When I move to a new area and need the car repaired, roof fixed or want to find a good school I ask people I know and trust. Recently I received a fly rod as a gift, and decided to learn more about fly fishing. Quite honestly, I don’t know anything about fly fishing other than it looks like fun – so I found some lessons being offered locally and signed up for them on the advice of a friend.
If the fishing lesson, service or product is good, its very likely I’ll recommend it to some of my friends. And some of them will recommend it to their friends, and so on, and so on… Word of mouth is a powerful multiplier.
This is true for traditional businesses – we reach for the brand names we know first, and its also true for online businesses. Your fresh content is your calling card, your lifeblood and the basis for your long term brand.
So what does all of this mean for building a successful online business?
- Fresh, regular free content is a key component of building a long term relationship with your customers
- Compelling free content can help directly promote your product or service
- Relationships build trust, which is the basis for long term, repeat sales
- Fresh content and relationships ultimately build your brand both thorough repeat customers and word of mouth
I’ll take this a step further, and look at the popular “quick” tactic of buying articles. There is a burgeoning market in “articles” which you can purchase and slap into your web site as fresh content. I’m not talking about the occasional guest author article, but a site consisting almost completely of purchased articles.
Yes, you can build a web site like this, and perhaps even be successful, but what message are you sending to your customers? Are you building a relationship with them when you outsource all of your content? Yes, they may purchase once, but its unlikely they will be long term customers.
Do you have your own thoughts on web content, relationships and online business? Drop us a comment below. Thanks for joining us on Online Business Zen, and please subscribe to get more of our thoughts on building your online business.
