Why do I need original web site content?

“Content is King.”

Blah, blah, blah… People have been throwing that phrase around since before Bill Gates used it as the headline of a web post more than 20 years ago. With the exception of Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message,” probably no phrase relating to modern information propagation (and revenue generation) has been more tossed about in online marketing circles. And just like McLuhan’s famous line, it’s often been regurgitated inappropriately and with little understanding of what it actually signifies.

I could probably generate a couple of thousand words here just to summarize what that phrase means, and why, and why any of it matters. But you know what? I’m not going to do that. Feel free to interpret “content is king” however you see fit—for now, it won’t really matter.

Instead, I’m going to go in a different direction. Let’s take it on faith that content is, indeed, king (regardless of what that means). If we accept this as true, then why, exactly, do you need content? Why does this matter to you and your business, and to your customers?

If you’re even casually browsing this site and wondering how (or whether) the services of Waltham WordWorks can benefit you, then you probably already understand that content matters, and you also already have some instinctual feeling about why it matters. Let’s take that up from the gut level to the intellectual level.

Human beings crave relationships. We cannot, in fact, survive without taking part in many complex relationships. These relationships change continuously, but they are always there: they strengthen, they weaken, new ones are made, old ones fall away; we build them consciously, they are created by accident, or they come into existence (or are destroyed) by forces outside our control. Our relationships exists in a complex web, the strands not only of various strength and thickness, but of various materials: we’re born with some ties already (family), weave others by chance (friends), and others by choice and circumstance (co-workers and colleagues). They are woven from intangible materials: faith, belief, respect, trust.

That’s where the “why” of high-quality online content begins to come in. Customers don’t know you: you’re not family, you’re not a friend, you’re not an old schoolmate. They’re out there combing the web for a particular purpose and—let’s face it—every search really is in some ways like looking for a needle in a haystack. How do they find that needle? How do they find the right haystack? And, from the bag full of needles a search engine will offer, how do they find the right one? Not to stretch this metaphor too thin (…I’m a writer, after all…), but how do they tell the needles from the pins? Pins only hold things in place temporarily: needles do the real work of stitching things together.

That’s what great content does. It shows that you are different from others out there. You have expertise. You are not a passive consumer of content that others have made in the past: you are a producer, putting in the extra effort to understand the work you do and why it matters, for yourself and your clients. You are the expert who creates the content today that others will lazily cut and paste next month.

Your visible expertise is an important concept in building trust, and trust is an important component of every healthy relationship. Using content to show expertise is a great way to get started—a fantastic way to make a first impression.

Of course, trust is not the only factor in a strong relationship. But it contributes to a stronger foundation than you would otherwise have. It gives you something to build on: now you can start adding to it, with responsive support, flexible scheduling, and other important options that give you an edge over your competitors.