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Content Discussion Forum |
RSS Syndication and Articles Question
I've been working on a project for a client (which I'll
post here for review in the next couple of days) that
required me to learn how to create an RSS feed reader
in ASP. In doing so, a question came to mind. As many
of you know by now, I use articles as one of the ways
to promote sites.
Thoughts on PLR Articles
I've seen a lot of references on the web lately for drectories
of PLR articles that you cna buy a subscription to and
gain access to a multiude of articles that you can change
and then post on your site.
Structured Blogging From The Syndicate
The Structured
Blogging Initiative was formally announced at the
Syndicate Conference yesterday. Many bloggers have probably
seen the various thoughts and posts on Structured Blogging
around the Internet.
Proper use of content to promote a store
Can someone clarify this? I have a jewelry store and I
have written couple of good articles about how to clean
silver, etc - jewelry related. Someone told me that I
should submit the same articles to articles sites and
I would gain the link to my site + traffic from syndication
anothe...
Anybody using XARAYA?
I am about to install XARAYA and - although it looks promising - the documentation is "not among the best", so to speak ... basically, it works, but there are a number of issues which are not covered in the docs. Does anyone work with this CMS?
PowerPoint on the web a bad idea
An article on Contentious is basically a
rant against ever putting Powerpoint presentations on
the web. PowerPoint on the web is probably better
than powerpoint in person, as it is easier to ignore.
The reason against PowerPoint on the web is that it doesn't
adequately embody the presentation. Often the sketchy
half-thoughts...
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03.28.06
The True Cost Of Content
 By
Gerry McGovern
Most content will never show a return on investment. The Web is overflowing with low-quality content. Sooner or later, senior management is going to pay serious attention to all this waste.
An organization that had a 4,000 page public website decided to do a major audit of content quality. As a result, it got rid of 1,000 pages. It didn't get one single enquiry for the deleted pages. A 100,000 page intranet deleted 60,000 pages. There was not one single enquiry for the deleted pages.
Content is being created in vast quantities today. The vast majority of this content will not cover its cost of publication. In fact, much of this content will deliver negative value. Publishing this filler content is like sowing weeds in a flower garden. The weeds will simply choke the flowers (the killer web content).
In an age of information overload, content management must be more concerned with what you don't publish. It is easy to put everything you have up. It is easy to take a print document and save it as a PDF. But that's not management, and those who take that approach have no future as content managers.
The fact that the Internet has low distribution costs can be more a curse than a benefit. Just look at spam. Spam exists because it is so cheap to distribute content.
Spam has many forms. An unnecessary email from a colleague is spam. A poorly written document might as well be spam. A page on a website or intranet that doesn't need to be there is spam.
Most authors have never made a living from their books. Only a tiny few live well from book royalties. The rest subsidize their writing by having a "day job". This was the case before the Web. Most web content is not coming near to covering its cost of publication. And yet publishing continues to explode.
Most organizations realize that quality content is costly. What they don't understand is that poor quality content has an even greater cost. The true cost of content must also include the cost of attention and the cost of action.
People are highly impatient on the Web. If there's one thing they absolutely detest it's a website that wastes their time. Poor quality filler content wastes time by taking attention away from killer web content. It gets in the way.
Should someone confuse filler web content with killer web content and start reading it, the costs get even higher. Lots of time will be wasted trying to comprehend the poor writing. At the end, the person will be left confused, not knowing what to do next.
Worse, if the filler content is inaccurate or misleading, then the person may take the wrong action, thus wasting even more time. There is nothing more damaging to your brand on the Web than filler content. The more you frustrate and waste the time of your customers, the more you damage your brand.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that it can't do any harm to publish lots and lots of content. Content is not neutral. It is either delivering value or destroying it. If you want to maximize value, focus on the killer web content and get rid of the filler.
About
the Author:
For
your web content management solution, contact
Gerry McGovern or subscribe
to his New Thinking Newsletter. |
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