101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources · PDF fileWordtracker.com 101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources | 2 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Add value to ordinary pages 7 1. Create

101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources

Nick Usborne

To help you engage your readers and get more widely shared

101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources | 2Wordtracker.com

Introduction 6

Chapter 1: Add value to ordinary pages 7

1. Create some checklists 8

2. Ping pong for dummies 9

3. Do some original research 10

4. Before and after 11

5. Got a Q&A page yet? 13

6. Ask the expert 14

7. How to fix it 15

8. Create some comparison tables 16

9. Take your pick from hundreds of Top 10 lists 19

10. Present it as a tutorial 19

11. Use some statistics 20

12. Make predictions 21

Chapter 2: Mix it up with some multimedia content 23

13. Show it with a mind map 24

14. The best and worst use of photos on your site 25

15. Show them how (and more) with video 26

16. Adding some action with Camtasia or Brainshark 28

17. Add some widgets 30

18. How about a podcast 31

19. Shareable mind maps 32

Chapter 3: The power of timely content 34

20. Real time content 35

21. Keep a step ahead of the seasons 37

22. What special day is it today? 38

23. What’s hot on Twitter 40

24. The recency bias 41

25. Bring life and interaction to an evergreen

content site by adding a ‘what’s new’ page 42

26. Coming soon: don’t miss it 44

ContentsChapter 4: Content discovery tips and resources 46

27. Searches related to … whatever you just searched for 47

28. A Google tool you really should use 48

29. Powered by Outbrain 50

30. Yahoo! Clues 51

31. What they copy 52

32. Study key influencers in your market 53

33. Study relevant Google Adwords ads 54

34. Dot different 55

35. Adjusting content on the fly 56

36. Finding out what matters to people on 43things.com 57

Chapter 5: SEO tools and resources 59

37. Can you match these tags? 60

38. Google Instant: slowly 61

39. High value topics 63

40. Time for an optimization review? 64

41. SEO and social media 65

Chapter 6: Finding content ideas

through social media 67

42. YouTube Insights for Audience 68

43. What do they want to share? 69

44. Tracking social media by URL 70

45. Finding the best on Twitter 71

46. The science of Facebook Likes and Comments 73

47. Find the experts 74

48. Bit.ly plus 75

49. Another way to keep your finger on the pulse 76

50. Summify 77


Chapter 7: Finding your inspiration offline 79

51. Read more books 80

52. Posts from events 81

53. Off-site content 81

54. Have you bought any magazines lately? 83

55. Find some old ads or packaging 84

56. Ask a friend or colleague: offline 86

Chapter 8: The power of a human voice 87

57. Share a fail 88

58. Be a passionate advocate 89

59. Be upbeat 90

60. Bring your message to life 92

61. Express your values 93

62. Voice and character 94

Chapter 9: Encourage and listen to reader feedback 95

63. All talk and no listening makes a pretty dull website 96

64. High value comments? Invite them to write more 97

65. Encourage discussion 98

66. What groups say 100

67. Something everyone should on their sites: but they don’t 101

Chapter 10: Be a leader and build your brand 103

68. Not a one-trick pony 104

69. The value of leadership 105

70. The generosity economy 106

71. Cause-related content marketing 107

72. Write longer content 109

73. Brand your content 110

74. Attract media attention 111

75. Make every page part of one story 112

Chapter 11: Random content best practices 114

76. Help readers share via email 115

77. Take another look at your internal links on your site pages 116

78. Think like a journalist 117

79. Writing your page URLs 119

80. Related pages 120

81. Pay extra attention to the first 50 words 121

82. Some things are better said in a series 122

Chapter 12: Managing your content ideas 124

83. Aggregate and curate 125

84. Be a collector 126

85. Create a content calendar, for yourself and your readers 128

86. More on the benefits of curation 129

Chapter 13: Content that touches emotional

or psychological triggers 130

87. Leveraging celebrity names 131

88. Ego linkbait 132

89. How can I? 133

90. Start the page with a quotation 134

91. Take the stress out of that … 135

92. Warning! 137

93. Myth busting 138

94. Open with a shocker 139

95. Feast and famine, greed and fear 140

Chapter 14: Give them what they want 141

96. Can you help me calculate that, please? 142

97. Learn this new idea in 90 seconds or less 143

98. They want deals 144

99. Ways to do that on a budget 146

100. Your readers are looking for the easy button 147

101. Solve some thorny problems 148

Summary: Summing it all up 150

About Nick Usborne 151


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Blogging for Business 50 Steps to Building Traffic and SalesA real world guide to creating,

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IntroductionWhat follows is an eclectic collection of 101 web content ideas, best practices, tools

and resources.

The collection is broken down into 14 separate sections, or chapters. You don’t have to

read them in sequence; you can dip into any section at any time.

As you read through the pages, you may get the feeling you are watching over my

shoulder during the course of a personal odyssey, or search for new web content ideas

and best practices. That is pretty much the case.

I collected these ideas, and many others, over the course of about a year. I set out

daily to identify the ideas, tools and resources that would best help writers create

successful web content.

As you will see, I occasionally reference some of my own hobby websites, most

notably CoffeeDetective.com. This is because while I am constrained in what I can try

when working on client sites, there are no limits to what I can do with my own sites. So

those sites have become my testing beds.

Will you find you can apply all 101 ideas? Probably not. But I would be surprised if

you couldn’t find a way to apply most of them. In some cases, it might take a little

imagination. If you are in a B2B business, it might not be immediately apparent how

you can apply a tip for which I use a B2C example. But if you break the idea down to its

fundamentals, you’ll probably be able to find a way to make it work for you.

That said, you won’t be able to apply all 101 ideas within a week, month or even,

perhaps, a year.

Read through the entire book, and then mark the ideas you would like to try first.

Implement them, track them and analyze the results. When you find something that

works well for you, do more of the same.

Then move on, try something else, and repeat.

And enjoy!

Best wishes,

Nick Usborne

Introduction

Add value to ordinary pages

Chapter 1 All too often we do our keyword research, identify a topic and keyword and then set about writing an article or two.

Certainly, this is the easiest and most cost-effective way to create new content, but it also takes you down the slippery path of creating low value content.

Instead of just publishing more and more articles, consider adding value to those page ideas.


1. Create some checklists

A checklist is easy to produce, and of great value to your readers.

Here are some examples of checklist ideas, for a variety of different topics:

• list of things you need to pack when taking a tropical vacation

• documents you need to take when applying for a mortgage

• materials you’ll need when building a garden fence

• equipment and software you’ll need to create and publish quality podcasts

• items to include in your first aid kit when going camping

• questions to ask when meeting with a financial advisor

• things to do in preparation for a party

You get the idea.

The great thing about checklists is that they can be created for just about any topic or

business, and they are easy to produce.

Better still, while being easy to produce, they are also perceived as being of high value

to your readers.

You also have an opportunity to do some internal linking from your checklist pages to

other content, product or service pages on your website.

And, make your checklists smartphone friendly, so people can refer to them while

away from their computers.

Chapter 1 | Add value to ordinary pages


2. Ping pong for dummiesYou know the audience for your website as a whole. At least, I hope you do.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t address niches within that audience with specific

sections or pages on your site.

One way you can do this is to have a section for experts and another for beginners.

You could even have another for those with intermediate knowledge or skills. Here is

how it can work for ping pong:

On the tabs you can see the beginner’s guide, an advanced guide and a tab for

equipment.



On your own website you probably have areas and pages which are read by people with

different levels of experience. You’ll serve them better by sharing information that is

specifically targeted to each experience level.

Think about this, because it means you can create three times the content for a single

page topic.

If you are hosting contextual ads, or have affiliate links, or are making direct sales,

you’ll also likely increase your conversion rate by linking to products which are

specifically suited to different levels of experience or skill.

This is a win for your readers, and for you.

3. Do some original researchMost web content is just a remix of something else.

We choose a page topic, do some research, throw in some personal experience, and

we’re done. And a lot of people don’t even bother with the personal part at all. They

simply research existing information, and just rewrite what’s already out there.

The trouble is, those become pretty low value pages.

Far better to do some original research of your own, and then publish what you have

learned.

I’m not talking scientific research. This isn’t scary at all.

For example, I did a video of how to make coffee with the Keurig B60 coffee maker.

During the course of the video I don’t repeat what Keurig says in their promotional

materials. I talk about my own experience with the machine. I even disagreed with

them on a couple of points.

That’s original research. And it’s unique. It’s not a remix.

Immediately, it delivers more value.

You could do the same with a sewing machine or a garden mower.

Better still, compare three different brands of models. Which is the best sewing

machine for making quilts?



If your site is about movies, you could sign up for three different online streaming

movie sites, take notes, and then create a comparison table.

As soon as you do your own research, and then publish the results – as a video, a text

page, a slideshow – you have created some unique, high value content.

This is the kind of content that tends to get shared more through social media, and

linked to more by other sites.

4. Before and after

This is another classic approach, borrowed from the advertising industry.

You have doubtless seen your fair share of before and after photos.

Think weight loss.

Think hair loss.

Think home renovation.

Think fashion makeover.

For some reason, people are endlessly fascinated by before and after photos, and

even before and after stories.

Here are some classic before and after storylines.

“I used to be on welfare, and now I own a five-bedroom house and a Porsche.”



“I used to be too shy to talk with girls, and now I am super-confident around even the

most beautiful women.”

As always, when the ad guys use “before and after”, the results can be pretty groan-

worthy.

But the approach can still be strong, even after you remove the crazy promises.

Here are some examples:

• Before and after backyard landscaping

• Before and after website design

• Before and after dog training (video)

• Before and after home office setup

• Before and after car detailing

And so on.

Work through the page ideas already on your site and identify those which could work

with a before and after pair of images, videos or stories.

People love to see the transformation. They like to see what is possible. They like

being amazed by the difference between before and after.

And the more amazing the transformation, the more likely your page is to be shared

through social media.



5. Got a Q&A page yet?Do you have a page on your site where you invite people to ask questions?

If not, please create one now.

Q&A is huge.

Arguably, almost every online search is a question,

in one way or another.

Entire online businesses are built around the

millions of questions people ask online each and

every day.

Answers.com, eHow.com, Quora.com, StackOverflow.com, Mahalo.com, Ask.com,

Yahoo.com.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

So here is the thing. While these sites have massive traffic, and more than validate the

demand for answers, they are all missing a couple of things.

1. They are missing the sense of community that comes from asking a question within

a vertical niche, where everyone is interested in the same, narrow topic.

2. They are missing the sense of authority that comes from asking questions of an

authority author people know and trust.

It is by addressing these two points that you can attract Q&A traffic of your own.

On my CoffeeDetective.com site I have a page where people are invited to submit

questions, which I then answer.

The hundreds of pages created for those questions and answers attract tens of

thousands of visitors a month.

They also add to the sense of community on the site.

In fact, it would be fair to say that my site was transformed on the day I added that Q&A

function.



More community. More loyalty. And a ton more traffic.

So as I said, if you don’t yet have a Q&A page, you really should create one.

6. Ask the expertWhatever the topic of your website, whether it is your own, or you are working for

someone else, one of the most powerful features you can offer is an Ask the Expert

service.

The idea is that a reader writes in with a question, and your resident expert provides an

answer.

This is a variation of the Q&A page one finds on some websites.

But Ask the Expert takes Q&A a step further.

The title of the page alone implies a greater degree of expertise and authority.

Several years ago I introduced the Ask the Expert feature into an e-newsletter I

developed for a major consumer electronics retailer.

People would write in with questions about their computers, software, digital cameras,

TVs etc, and we would answer and publish the answer to one question in each issue of

the newsletter.

In other words, we didn’t try to answer every question. We chose those questions

which we thought would interest a large proportion of our readers.

The program was hugely successful. By tracking clickthroughs we found that the Ask

the Expert feature was by far the most popular part of the newsletter.

Soon after, the Q&A idea was repeated on the company’s website.

Soon after that, it moved from a text-only format to a text plus video format.

The bottom line is that people like to get answers from experts. And they also like

to read the next newsletter, or go back to the website, to see if THEIR question was

selected.



It doesn’t much matter what your topic is. There will always be questions people want

answered.

Your next step, and a powerful one, is to create a page that invites people to submit

their own questions.

Just be sure to include the word “expert” in your invitation headline.

People like the idea of getting access to an expert.

7. How to fix it

There is no doubt that we are a society of consumers. We love to buy stuff. In particular,

we love to buy new stuff.

The new iPad, the new iPhone, the latest movie, the best new restaurant, this year’s

new car models, and so on.

However ... this doesn’t mean we should ignore the tens of millions of people who

also want to know how to fix things, repair things and restore things.

On my own site, CoffeeDetective.com, over 5,000 visitors a month go to a page about

how to descale their Keurig coffee makers. And that doesn’t count all the people

interested in descaling other types of coffee maker.

The site also gets tons of traffic from people looking for spare and replacement parts

for their coffee makers, coffee grinders and espresso machines.

Think about the millions of people who also want to fix their ...



• lawn mower

• stove

• roof

• stereo

• bicycle

• car

• shoes

And so on.

And repairing or fixing things isn’t just confined to the physical objects in our lives. You

can also think in terms of ...

• fixing your credit score

• fixing your relationships

• fixing your social life

I get the feeling that as web writers we may spend too much time focusing on what’s

new, and ignore a massive audience of people who are hungry to learn more about

repairing, fixing and restoring things.

8. Create some comparison tablesCharts, diagrams and infographics are a fast and simple way to communicate

information.

But let’s not forget the simple comparison table.

On the following page is a random example:



This table compares just two products, but you can use the same approach to compare

three, five or even 10.

You can create comparison tables to compare the features of just about anything –

software, hotels, lawn seeds, universities, smartphones and so on.

The good thing about these tables is that they enable you to include a lot of

information within a relatively small space. To achieve the same with text alone would

be clumsy, long and hard for readers to grasp.

Think about the kinds of things your readers are interested in, and then create some

helpful tables.

This is very high value content, because you have done the hard work for them. They

don’t have to visit 10 different product or service websites and take notes. It’s all there

for them on your table.

As a result, comparison tables get shared a lot through bookmarking sites and social

media sites.

Or think about including a unusual comparison table. Take a look at this infographic:



You’ll find the original here.

What I love about this infographic is that it takes a topic, the price of gas, and then

places it into a totally unexpected context by comparing its price, gallon for gallon,

with other products.

Ordinarily, if you were to read about the price of gas, you might expect the comparison

to be with the price of gas last year, or ten years ago. Or a comparison with the price of

gas in other countries.

But you would never expect to see the price of a gallon of gas being compared with

the price of a gallon of shampoo or nail polish.

Plus, you get to compare a lot of other items, quite separate from gas. For example,

it’s interesting to see that Fiji water costs about three times as much as Coke.

The three things that make this content so compelling are:

1. It’s unexpected.

2. It’s deeply engaging, way beyond just the topic of gas prices.

3. It’s an infographic.

In other words, it’s a whole ton more interesting than a regular page of text.

Of course, it also involves a lot more work than writing a 500 word article. And that’s

why most of us shy away from creating ambitious content.

But here’s the thing – an ambitious page will pay you back with a lot more traffic to

your site. It will be shared a lot more than a 500-word article. And it will attract fresh

traffic for a lot longer too.

Now for the tricky part ...

Think about your own business or site topic, and think about how you could create a

page with comparisons – either straightforward, or unusual.

Above all, be ambitious. Create a high value page that will get talked about and

shared, far and wide.


http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1103/gas-comparison/flat.html

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101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources · PDF fileWordtracker.com 101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources | 2 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Add value to ordinary pages 7 1. Create