Blogging advice articles all seems to include the matra – “create great content”. The theory goes that if you create great content people will come to your blog, link to it, pass it on to friends, bookmark it and your blog will grow.
OK – we’ve heard the ‘write great content’ thing over and over again.
But what is this ‘great content’ thing that we talk about? How do you define it (or can you at all)?
What is Great Content?
I’m interested in how you’d answer this question. Looking forward to seeing what discussion emerges. Feel free to answer as a comment below of if you want to take it up as a post on your blog – please leave a link in comments so we can track what everyone is writing.
Great writing is subjective BUT it can be found when the reader finds a connection of value from the material for his/her own life.
Building on Joseph’s comment, after reading great content, I have a better understanding of a problem or issue, my view on that problem or issue changes, and/or I am inspired to take action. For me that’s the value of great content.
Write information that people want, make it clear and concise and make sure it’s full of substance!
A writing readers would share without being asked. Something that address to their problem so they’ll want everyone else to know. And also something you said earlier. An article people will waste their link juice on :)
Great content gets my readers to DO something. If I inspire them to tackle a home project, order supplies, watch a how-to video, tackle a craft…anything that promotes action means I’ve done my job.
It’s gotta be memorable – something that affects us on a deeper level than just intellectual, that sticks with us after we’ve moved on. It’s gotta be remarkable – something that I’d want to share with everyone else. It’s gotta be valuable – something I can use to make my life better.
Great content is in the eye of the beholder!
1. Unique.
2. Well written.
3. Helpful.
4. Easy to read.
5. Fun.
6. Engaging.
7. Makes people want to react (comment, link, stumble…).
Here are 7 rules that I came up with :)
Great content is SUBJECTIVE. But it starts and ends with offering, informing, and resonating. The hardest lesson? Even the best writer misses the mark at times.
I enjoy reading posts that really allow me to connect with an idea or concept and understand it well. I like to read beyond basic ‘common sense’ info to be provoked into thinking down paths I didn’t see on my own.
And funny is good. I like funny.
Great content is memorable. It says something which the reader couldn’t have found anywhere else. It offers something unique: this could be the blogger’s style, the information in the content, or a different angle or point of view.
Great content is something which sticks with you after you’ve read it the first time.
Great content gets a response — it could change the reader’s emotions or thoughts in a single moment, or it could change the reader’s entire life.
I think great content is something I will read all the way through, because I connect to it. Especially with blog posts, I tend to “go long”. I just rattle on and write whatever comes to my head. I’ve had people tell me that they feel like they’re talking to a friend when they read my posts. I write in the style I like to read. I like to be able to sit there with my coffee in the morning, and go to my Google Reader, and find something that feels like a conversation with someone I know and care about.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing about. I’ve even read tech blogs that are personal like that. Blogger Buster is a good example. Very techie, but also very personal. I hate it when I need to know how to do something technical, and the writer is obviously only writing to other techies.
If you can’t convey your thoughts in everyday language, you’re going to have a horrible bounce rate, because after about a sentence or two, they’re going to click out.
Good question. Great content is like a spark that pulls a visitor into your blog and turns them into regular readers. Makes them say “wow”, “makes a lot of sense”, “i never knew that” or anything like that.
You can’t really measure the quality of a content. Its just a little feeling type thing. You just know when you see it. Its like when you like someone, you just know it.
What is great content is very subjective of course, depending on your interest. A great technical content may not interest me much as it would probably be way over my head :) Great content for me then, is something that evokes a reaction other than a yawn. If it piques my interest and makes me want to keep reading, that’s pretty good. If it makes me want to cry, that’s even better. If it makes me laugh out loud, that’s the greatest.
I’m having a poll over at my blog right now in order to see what exactly my target group is and what they demands are. Most of the people responding tell me how they apreciate my content because of various things.
– I make use of diffrent multimedia, for example not sticking only yo vlogs or text or pictures. I like to make use of diffrent media, but not more than two at a time.
– Some of them really appraciate the amount of my work for the blog, research, rants and preparing materials (I blog on learning Japanese).
– My readers point out my creditabilty is in great balance with sense of humour, which is a con of course.
– They know I’m likely to be the only one blogger within this small niche (Polish blogs on Japanese).
On the other hand, I’d like to be more sociable, and stll learning on that. It’s quite hard to pursue bloggin in an uncrowded niche. My job is probably to attract people not interested in Japanese previously. That’s a whole damn of work :)
Great content to me needs to be easy to read in a few different ways:
1) Easy to skim / Well organized. If I can’t see what the post is about by reading titles and sub headings, I will not give it a chance. Unless it is Seth Godin or Mark Cuban. Everybody else has to write properly.
2) Good information that I can learn from, or entertaining. Give me a reason to read it.
3) Timely or Timeless. If it’s neither, it’s usually not worth my time.
1) Hooks me in from the first line
2) Tells a story with an arc (Beginning, middle, end)
3) Makes me respond emotionally (laugh, cry, stare at the wall and ponder, bang my fist etc)
4) Changes the way I see the world
Request: Could you do a blog about how to use Stumble Upon as a marketing tool? Specifically, how to make it easier for your site readers to figure out how it works.
Whenever you write posts on your blog that answer your readers’ questions, YOU HAVE JUST WRITTEN GREAT CONTENT.
1. Find out what your readers want.
2. Respond to what your readers want by writing up articles that answer all their questions.
3. If you don’t know how to answer your readers’ questions, then network with Darren Rowse, myself, or any other helpful blogger.
Great content to me is one that helps me discover the answer(s) or information I was looking for in a creative, and entertaining way.
In a word: Passion. You can’t fake it, and audiences can smell it a mile away.
Decide on who or what your target audience and then KNOW IT.
Even extremely well-written content on a blog is ineffective if it doesn’t interest the audience that is reading it.
I think original ideas, but which everyone can relate to and as well as have an opinion about.
I like questions no one seems to have asked before.
My favorite post that I did was asking why only gay men have gaydar? I’ve never heard that question asked or answered really well yet ?
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Interesting! I thought you were going to give some pointers on this… but I guess it all depends on what you’re writing for and who your audience is.
If you were writing for an audience of 12 & 13 year olds, it would be different than writing for a much more mature audience.
Everything written by myself is inherently good content.
This post of yours is a great content; in the context that this single post of your will probably create link backs than most 1000+ blog posts out there; as readers are likely to write about it on their blogs and link back to this post. This will also create higher number of comments than usual; which to some writers are best form of content, as they are user generated free contents.
:)
I honestly think great content is writing something you are passionate about. If your just writing something to get traffic and hits then it will usually reflect in your writing. You can tell pretty easily when people make a post talking about whatever subject and they don’t have affiliate links everywhere, it’s genuine and you can get a real sense that the person does have a passion for the subject. That is great content.
Passionate insights delivered concisely. :)
I would define great content as:
1) Meeting the reader’s needs
2) Memorable – they remember and use it in their lives
3) Interesting enough to keep the reader going to the end
4) Well-edited and visually appealing
5) Posts that have a “long tail,” that readers keep coming back to.
I do my best to make every post have great content. But sometimes I am surprised how valuable readers consider a post that I thought was sub-par when writing it!
For me great content is simple but concise, structured & exciting but most importantly its written with the reader in mind. NOT THE SEARCH ENGINES.
With this in mind, it’s important for the author to understand who exactly his/her blog has attracted, not who they want it to attract!!
I like to think, if You can write an article that enhances reader’s life – You created great content. It’s the same as the question – what can be called art? – If something great,unique has been created in their own sphere – it’s art.
If it helps you!
http://franklinbishop.net/top-commenter-of-each-month-wins-200/
Great content, in my opinion, is:
-Informative: I should come away from a blog post a little smarter than before. But some posts are still fun to read without being informative.
-Easy to read: Shorter paragraphs. A decent font that is not microscopic. And no flashing ads, talking characters, sudden loud music that distracts me from the content.
-Relatively clean of spelling/grammar errors: One or two in a post don’t bother me. But if errors are a chronic problem in a post, I’ll quickly give up. I might be more picky than most on this issue, though.
-The right length: I like posts with some meat to them. More than just one or two sentences, or even more than one or two paragraphs. But I don’t wanna read a novel. Don’t have time for long, drawn out posts with lots of detail. Blog posts especially, should be concise and to-the-point.
-On Subject: It’s okay to go off-topic every once in a while, but if a blog website is about iPhones (for example), I want a majority of the posts to be about iPhones. Otherwise I feel cheated.
-Honesty: Bloggers should be honest. If you don’t know something, that’s fine, I’ll respect you a lot more for admitting it. This also carries over to affiliate links, which brings me to my next point…
-Honesty in linking: If a post contains an affiliate link (to a book you read and really liked, for example), at least mention it. I always put “aff link” after anything I link to on Amazon with my affiliate account. Also, if more words in a post are affiliate links, I probably won’t click on any of them (yes, I do see this every so often).
-A modest number of daily posts: I’ve subscribed to a few big blogs that will have 20+ posts per day. That’s too many. I don’t want my time to be monopolized with so many posts from one blog. A couple of posts a day is fine.
I might seem picky but I have read a lot of great content that breaks 1 or more of the items I listed above. If a blogger is passionate about their subject, then I can easily lend them a little slack on their posts.
Personally I would refer to a site as having great content if the writer is compelling and I’m enjoying what I read!
It’s kind of like being at the movies – contrast those films where you’re checking your watch to see when the movie will end vs the ones you’re so engrossed in the time just goes by – the same goes for ‘great content’.
Cheers
-Ross
Pure daring. Daring people to change, think, consider, act, feel differently about about any subject and walk away with that difference burning in their mind.
So if you walk away gears working, fuel of the mind burning that is great content…
A number of good suggestions here — though nothing is applicable to every type of blog and not everyone has the same aim. (Political bloggers often go longer than readability might call for, but that’s okay because they have serious aims.)
Still, if there were any simple way to generate “great content,” we’d all be doing it and, suddenly, it wouldn’t be so valuable. Great content is valuable largely because it is rare and hard or impossible to generate at will.
I think great content has to evoke something in the reader…whether that be emotion, laughter, or action.
It either promotes discussion…(think news or political blogs) or it promotes action (think problogger and the way you use the infomation to apply to your blog)
It may promote an emotional repsonse (dooce is good at this) or it may promote laughter (I try this with my blog)…
One thing that is important above anything else is Trust. Do you trust the writer’s opinion over others.
Because the content may be great but is it accurate and is the person trustworthy -?
Great content to me is interesting and useful. Having a great post title is a nice start, but if I read on and the content does not live up to the title, I may unsubscribe. Great content is not too long, not too frequent, but just enough so that the reader will be excited to see you posted something and happy to read it all. I think great content generally uses a variety of mediums, ie pictures, videos, perhaps audio, and related links (oh and of course writing!).
If the reader thinks, “Hey! This is what I’ve been looking for to solve this pressing problem…” or “Wow! This is exactly the information I need right now to move beyond this challenge…” then it’s great content. It’s great content if it moves the reader closer to his or her dreams…
http://wdfavour.successacademyonline.org
I would say great content would be something that one could learn from.Like finding the answer to some problem one may be having or something that may teach you a better way to do what ever it may be you are involved with.
For me it’s simple.
Great content = helps at least 1 other person.
The end.
I thunk of it informative, easy to read and the reader get something out of it makes for great content
1) Concise
2) Actionable
3) Accurate
There’s so much repitition on blogs now – people who take the time so work on original material, packaging up useful information into a neat post are gonna win.
Great content is simply content that answers the readers questions. Great content helps and builds up the reader in some way or another. If it doesn’t do this I question if it is ‘good’ content
Less is more.
Used to be I’d give you a long detailed answer – nowadays, I might say “traffic.”
But when it really comes down to it, you have to deal with that disparity – the writer’s definition of “great content” might not be what makes a blog successful.
I think good content is *useful* content. If someone’s looking for a recipe for banana muffins, then an awesome recipe is good content.
For my site I’ve found writing web design tutorials and releasing free scripts and FF extensions has been a good way to generate farily steady traffic.
Great content requires excellence in three areas. A post must be accurate and precise, giving correct information in a tightly targeted area. It must be desirable by the reading public. It may be good but if no one reads your article it isn’t good for much. Third, it must be mechanically sound. So many posts are full of typos and grammatical errors. It’s hard to be great if you write like a third grader.
Great content does not come easily – it takes work. The old saw is proven: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right!
LOL – nice one!
Write a post that is only 134 words, with a provocative question and a reliable crowd of readers.
Bang – you’ve just generated great content and didn’t even break a sweat!
I like it.
Cheers.
I think most people are either going online to find information or be entertained. If you have articles that provides either or both of those elements while engaging the reader, then you have created good content.
A convincing article that motivates reader to take an action – is a great quality content article.