One thing that people always bring up when I talk about blogging is that content is king, but content is not king. They expect to get a lot of subscribers and visitors to their blog if they have great content. This is not true at all however. You have to find some way to market your content otherwise you’re going to find yourself wondering why you can’t get people to come to your blog.
What I am saying here is, content is not king! You do need to have content on your blog but it doesn’t have to be mind blowing. Sure, if you have enough time every day to write a mind blowing article then go ahead and do it. But always make sure you have enough time every day to market those articles. I know, it is the simplest thing to realize that marketing your blog should be one of your main priorities. I have gone over and over how to market your blog. There are simple ways like commenting and using web sites such as Stumbleupon. So why are you failing? Because you are not listening to many of us trying to teach you how to make money off your blog.
I can’t sit here and tell people over and over the same things. There are only so many things that I can write about if I do not have any more information about that topic then it is hard to write about it again. People are lazy and you do not want to go back through someone’s blog to read all of their articles. People come to my blog and only read the most recent articles. If you are one of those people, then you have just failed as a blogger. I know you are feeling lost and you do not know where to begin. Well the idea is that you begin somewhere. Remember, content is not king so you don’t have to worry about writing a mind blowing article. Just write something that is more than two paragraphs every day that may intrigue readers. Then make sure to market, market, and market. You may understand how to market yourself and your blog by reading some of my other articles Below.
5 Reasons Why I Comment on 36 Different Blogs
Blog Tip: You’re an Idiot If You Don’t Comment, Yes That’s Right Idiot!
Advanced Stumbling: How to Make a Stumblable Page
Tomorrow I will get back to my private ads mini-series. Sorry I wasn’t around this weekend because of sickness.
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Very harsh, but very true. Alot of bloggers that try to make money online are simply writing a post once or twice a week, and not marketing their blog as well as they could. Then they wonder why they aren’t making anything.
You can attend all of the blog events and conferences you want but it won’t help if you aren’t willing to work as hard as you can to market you blog.
Like Gary Vaynerchuk said, Quit putting it off with excuses. If you work during the day, work. Then come home, spend a couple of hours with your family, kiss the dog, then work on your blog. 7pm-2am is enough time to do some damage.
Steven-Sanderss last blog post..Blogging, A Life Changing Opportunity
After I wrote my post I just so happen to see Gary Vaynerchuck’s quotes on problogger. That guy is dead on. If other people want to read it go to: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/09/30/13-gary-vaynerchuck-tips-on-building-a-profitable-blog/
Too many people unfortunately take the “if I write it they will come” approach to their blogs. It doesn’t work. They will not come if they cannot find your blog or can find no compelling reason to visit it. You might get lucky and have a visitor stumble or digg a post into stardom. But who wants to bet on luck?
Wow, very defensive article. I’m sure new bloggers will look elsewhere for advice if they come here and see an article that baiscally says, “read all my other articles you lazy bastards!” That being said, I can’t imagine why anyone who wants to make money blogging WOULDN’T promote the hell out of it. The reason I think people say that content is king is that, recently, bloggers have spent so much time marketing and promoting that they have lost sight of the reason people subscribe to blogs in the first place. If readers do not want to read your blog, even if you promote your face off, they’ll stop coming to your for their informaiton/entertainment because the content isn’t there.
Very interesting post BUT not entirely true. You see good content will bring traffic ala Google. Google loves a lot of good keyword rich content and will send traffic your way. Need some SEO too.
I do agree with you in that writing is only half the battle. The other is promotion. And if you have crappy content this will only send your visitors to your Adsense ads. Hey…that’s not a bad thing right???
Nice view though!
This quotation is perfect: “content is king but marketing is queen and the queen runs the household”
Great content requires good marketing to be read and appreciated. However, good marketing requires great content to back it up. Success is managing to do both right.
I believe that when people say Content Is King, they meant that it is the content that brings out the beauty of the site – QUALITY! By having good content, it makes people come back. It makes people tell others about it.
Sure, one could market all they want but if the content is shit then the marketing efforts are pretty much pointless, so in the end Content is still King.
I’m one of the few (I guess) who relied almost totally on content. People just come and keep up coming back, Google sends about 56% of my total visitors.
Of course I do understand where you’re coming from, I write hardware / game reviews so it’s not surprising people searching HD4850 review could reach the site.
Unfortunately not everyone is writing such topics where people could bump into via search engine, that’s why marketing effort is needed.
And I also believe that marketing effort will vary depending on blog type, I like it that Google (on it’s own) is a good marketing tool for me.
That is quite interesting how successful you have been with Google. That just goes to show that if your niche is really targeted or unusual you can build a lot of organic traffic (unless it is so unusual that nobody is searching for it!). I suppose with even just a minimal amount of marketing you could steadily increase your visitor totals even more.
I agree with the rest of the comment. Think of it this way. Marketing brings them in. Content keeps them coming back for more.
Jamess last blog post..Is Jesus Unique or Original?
“People come to my blog and only read the most recent articles. If you are one of those people, then you have just failed as a blogger.”
How about some way of navigating to old articles? Your site doesn’t have any archive pages and the only way to get older articles is to go to the previous page link at the bottom of the page or by tags.
I don’t know about other people but I don’t want to go back through every post that way. Monthly archives in the sidebar would be useful.
sean.
I have to agree with this 100%. It is not particularly easy to browse through old posts without either paging through the blog or knowing what you are searching for using the search box. I think that an archives page is essential. One plugin that I just recently adopted on my blog and that I love is YARPP – Yet Another Recent Posts Plugin. It automatically creates a list of related posts for each post, which you can display at the end, and thereby making it easy for readers to find additional related content. Also another way to keep readers on your site longer as they work their way through these links.
Franklin,
Very good post and i couldn’t agree with you more, content is not king and has never really been king. Useful information in posts are just that, but at the end of the day marketing your site is what you should be concentrating on.
The mistake most people make is that during the early days they write post after post and then proceed to market the posts but once a certain point is reached they expect it to market itself, which is never going to happen.
kahthans last blog post..Doing Proper Keyword Research
You’re exactly right. And people write this great content and by the time they’re ready to market it the information is already old. If you write an article today and wait until tomorrow to market it then no one will care. it seems that a lot of people I care about new content daily. It doesn’t have to be some mind blowing content.
I can’t agree with you, if there is nothing interesting on you blog why i should be your visitor.
“content is king but marketing is queen and the queen runs the household”
it is very interesting sentence.
Shoto Azikuris last blog post..Commenting as Sourse of Traffic
Just because the content isn’t everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write good content. I just think that in content was king that visitors would just come rushing to your blog. But that doesn’t happen. You have to market yourself way better than writing content. I’m not saying do not write anything interesting on your blog. Just don’t waste two hours of your day writing the perfect article.
Yep, I agree – Content IS NOT King
I planned yesterday that my next post would be about what is king and why content isn’t king, so look out for that tomorrow
It’s all about the marketing and getting yourself out there – if no-one knows about your blog, how can they read your great content?
Otooos last blog post..List Of Blogs With Top Commentators Widget
At least you agree with me. There are a lot of people that have disagreed which is okay but I know that I have never really worried about content and I was still able to have successful blogs. I think people just misunderstood when I said that marketing is a king. I know content is important but it is not the life or death of your blog. Having to locate content and great marketing will make any blog succeed.
I think no one ever said that it should be mind-blowing when they say “Content is King”.
It just has to be decent.
The reason behind the concept “Content is King” is that without content (remember, decent content will do. doesn’t have to be mind-blowing) – what is there to market? I don’t see the point of marketing crappy content.
In every website, the first step is always content, marketing comes up next.
Have a King first (content), then expand the kingdom (marketing).
It’s just like how you commit yourself to write articles first, then comment on 36+ blogs daily. The priority is still content, marketing comes next.
Either way, both are important, just that content is hailed King as it comes first before marketing.
Interesting discussion. I think the main point is not that content is not important, but that some people think that they have to have the absolute best content to keep readers coming back. Or, that if they produce brilliant content people will automatically start flocking to the blog. As long as you write something interesting and pertinent and do it often, the marketing will take care of the rest.
Well, in many cases content is the king. The better the content the higher the changes that readers will do something out of it (like stumbling it on StumbleUpon.com, bookmarking or they will remember your blog). However, the right phrase would be “Content is not everything” because you’ll never get massive visitors unless you exert some time advertising or promoting what you have written. So for me, content is still king and promotion is the queen. Nice partners.
Keep It SEO simples last blog post..Another BS Contest That Is Probably Fake
Yeah, I still like that illustration. The point is not to be so obsessed with the content that you forget about or minimize the promotion. As I wrote earlier and I think this is a good way of putting it: Marketing gets people to your blog. Content keeps them coming back.
If you write a blog about music – you should think about submitting it to idiomag – great way to drive traffic. Also there is a tool at http://idiomag.com/bloggers which can help make you some money too.