Why Content is Still King

March 6th, 2008 | Blogs and Blogging, Internet Writing

First, an announcement. Congratulations to Alyice (The Dabbling Mum) on winning the writing advice contest. Check out her winning writing advice. Also be sure to get over to The Dabbling Mum and sign up for the DM Writes eZine. Alyice is a tremendously talented writer and her eZine is always chuck full of more good advice.

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On Monday, Catherine Lawson wrote an excellent post on asking the question whether social networks or content were king. Cath echoes Skellie’s sentiments about how the cause of rapid growth is due to social networking. Just yesterday, Jim over at PureBlogging.com posted an interesting article yesterday about 3 types of bloggers, suggesting that there are good writers, good marketers, and those who are good at both.

So, all of this forces me to ask the question myself: “Is content still king?”

I think that it is. Social networking, SEO, alternative marketing methods or whatever may be queen in a given case, but content still rules them all. Consider these three things:

On this blog I was able to generate over 12,000 Stumbles in a three-day period on one good article about Internet writing mistakes. Prior to that, I’d never had more than 500 Stumbles on any article on any blog I’ve written. Why did that article hit so big? It was good content, not just passable content. My other articles do just fine (500 Stumbles is good by me) but they don’t even come close to hitting that big. Without superstar content, I’d have had only a couple hundred Stumbles on that page.
Page views don’t always equal regular readers, especially page views from social networks. I gained about a dozen new subscribers from the 12,000 Stumbles. The readers I get when another blog links to me are more likely to stick around by about a factor of 100. How do I get those links? Good content. 12,000 Stumbles gets me about what 10 mentions on other blogs would get me. The social networking traffic is nothing to sneeze at, and I’ll absolutely take it when I can get it. But that doesn’t put social networks that far above other methods of promoting my blog.
In any business in a free market economy, you absolutely have to have a product with value as well as the ability to promote that product. If your product is garbage, word will spread and no one will buy your product. Good content is what makes your blog valuable and social networking is how you promote it. If your blog is unreadable, uninteresting or poorly written, word will spread and no one will visit your site. You can Stumble your own crappy article all day long, but it isn’t likely to hit big because no one else will Stumble it.

So, tell me about your experiences? Where do you stand? Is content still king?

photo credit: (withinReason)