Content marketing implies gaining a substantially higher following on online platforms, with an aim to benefit business.

These five techniques will help to uplift the performance of your web content and social approach.

1. Allies
Symbiotic functioning for mutual achievement of goals is effective. Website partners exponentially increase visibility and improve ad impression, as well as provide better page rankings.

In content marketing, a potential business partner can be from another industry, but should merge with a common ideology. For instance, a website of footwear reviews would team up with a foot care specialist or footwear store.

A few criteria for choosing a partner are:

• They have considerable traffic and cater to needs of a similar demographic in a different manner.
• Feature articles, guest posts, and alternative methods to enrich content visibility. Trade guest posts, run product features, and seek creative new ways to expose your content to a broader audience.
• Utilizing online means to implement relevant advertising that boosts audience segmentation and target acquisitions.

2. Platforms
Establishing a presence on every social media site, is a waste. Building and developing the same on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn, should be done in addition to using referral sites and fresher networks where exposure is higher. Inbound traffic and search engine rankings improve when sharing buttons are available.

Produce content ideally suited for newer platforms of huge referral potential. For instance, Pinterest is image specific. Creating top-quality visuals with artful or creatively witty copy would work well.

• Refresh your existing content by transforming each form into another periodically. For example, turn a past blog post into a video or a past video into a single visual graphic of data.

3. Audience Empowerment
Giving the audience this ability means getting them to work for your cause. Content marketing means allowing the audience to keep the campaign alive as it permeates different levels of the market. Nike, with the #makeitcount campaign, for instance, superbly carried out this requirement.

• Allow audience to communicate through the brand. Sharing any information is encouraged and appreciated. It helps build brand reputation and goodwill among consumers.

4. Earning Share-worthy Status
Simple language, a casual and assertive approach, and insights on trending topics, all attract fundamental human actions towards content marketing.

• Streamlined content, which requires a glance to gain a gist.

• Using confirmations of online shares or hosting a sweepstakes for most shares from a first level.

5. Extract Useful Data
Uncovering facts about the habits of the target audience, their rate of engagement, participation, and preferences, depends on analytics and scrutiny of data. With the help of online tools, this can be done easily.

Content marketing requires comprehensive effort and purposeful performance. Including these five strategies along with social modes enables faster goal realisation and revenue generation.

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Writing just for the sake of writing and not focusing on legitimacy of the content is like trying to paint without a canvas. One might think that being authentic should be easy, but it is easier said than done. Being truthful is one thing, but to be able to fit it in a certain frame while giving it that creative spark tends to be a tough task at hand, even for the most creative writers.

Some useful tips on how to make your content genuine and relevant:

1. Develop your own Signature Style: Paulo Coelho and Stephen King both have very different technique of writing and they both make it work to their advantage. Do not try and copy anyone’s way of writing because that will just come out as a fake print. Write the way you would normally talk because if you do that, your writing would be smooth and expressive.
2. Tell a Story: Relate the subject of your content to something that may have happened around you, or with you. People love reading a great story and this also gives your article a sense of integrity.
3. Form Your Own Views: It is not necessary that you agree with black being the most fashionable color while the rest of the world thinks it is.  If you think it’s yellow, then take a stand and express why you believe it is. When you write about a certain subject, it is important to formulate your own opinions on it as this will naturally create a coherency in your content and make it an original piece of writing.

It is important to take the time and think before you put pen to paper for any topic that you wish to write on. Trying to rush your own thoughts would never give you the result you’re looking for. Originality in content springs from original thoughts, so as long as the thoughts are your own and uninfluenced, the content would be genuine and high-quality.

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It is a believe-it-or-not moment for this blog to have taken shape and an equally unusual space for it to appear. But we like surprises, don’t we? When it comes to blogging, there is a very competitive set of writers who are beating the other genres. They are making good money as well. It is time that before one hits the art of blogging; one should have a look at the happening cookery blogs that have a thing or two to say.

Flavour: One of the crucial elements of cookery blog is the content. Unless an author chooses to stick to a style of cooking or a particular region e.g. www.theitaliandishblog.com, the world is the platter. The point to be taken home is that keeping the options open gives an advantage in competition.

Catalogue: The cookery blogs offer variety over the range of cooking. There are recipes available from around the world with details that gives step wise guidance towards cooking. Thus, cataloguing becomes an important aspect. It is a crucial lesson for bloggers as a catalogued blog help readers to browse through content.

Richness: The richness part lies in the picturesque presentation. These cookery blogs beat every other in style, photography and appeal. The dishes are presented in rich, colourful setting making the blogs an absolute delight in read like www.pinchmysalt.com. Evidently, making a strong connection with an online reader requires a good mix of writing and visual.
Share: It may look like that this is meant only for a food fanatic but not necessarily. Here’s an important point to note. The way the participants and readers share their favorite recipes on these blogs is an inspiration. It means for the blogger half the battle is won. For a blogger to get the readers talking, it is important to engage into one or begin a subject that sparks off a conversation.

We suggest trying the above ingredients to make a blog an interesting one. It takes a little motivation, a bit of skill, a pinch of dedication and some artistry for the touch up for a perfect blog recipe. Blog Appétit.

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Would you buy a product from a website that has boring content which is badly crafted? It’s evidently a no. Therefore, content editing plays the most important role in any online marketing strategy, since the trustworthiness of any website depends on the quality of content.

So, how do you ensure the content on your website is perfectly edited? Here are 4 tips you should know:

1. Free from Errors - A well written piece is always free from any kind of errors. Microsoft word’s feature of checking spelling mistakes as well as grammatical errors proves to be extremely useful for editing. But completely relying on MS word is also not a good option, as a writer is the one expressing his views, therefore it may fail to notice some errors while typing.
2. Read out Aloud - Completely relying on computer editing skill does not always solve your purpose. Therefore, it is best to read out the text thoroughly. When you have technology in your hands, you can also download programs that read out the text aloud, helping you come across errors that you might have overlooked.
3. Don’t Neglect the Content for SEO - Quality content being the best online marketing strategy, writers are often keen on driving search engines to sales pages and therefore pay more attention to keywords, thereby neglecting the quality of the content. It’s better to develop a quality write-up and add SEO keywords later.
4. Never Rush to Publish - After you’ve finished writing your content, do not rush to publish it immediately. It is always a safe idea to proofread the matter you have written, as it does not give room for errors.

Everyone makes online blunders while writing and editing, but it is always best to read it and make the necessary edits, to make it enjoyable for your readers too. If you think content editing is a challenge for you, leave it to the experts to do the job.

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The moment we have to be familiar with a new topic, the only thing that clicks our mind is to refer to an encyclopaedia. Providing us with never-ending information on the easiest as well as the toughest of topics, an encyclopaedia is easily accessible to anyone in the world. With the advances in technology, today we can benefit from online encyclopaedias which can provide us information with just a ‘Click’.

Here is a look at the top 5 such resources:

Wikipedia.com: Wikipedia.org is a world famous free-content encyclopaedia, which is also famous among children. Operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, this site is written by a number of anonymous people without pay. This site can be edited by anyone who has access to the internet but of course with certain limitations.

Britannica.com:  This online encyclopaedia website is considered the most trusted source for student research papers, containing access to volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, dictionary, newspaper, thesaurus, magazine articles and also a world atlas. Considered as the most scholarly of English Language Encyclopaedias, this site is updated every year helping people to get access to worldwide information.

Bartleby.com: It is a great site which provides a wide range of classic reference material, online books, quotations and full text collection of verse. A well-liked website for those who love to read, providing with not only the most excellent works of fiction from classic authors but also a miscellaneous non-fiction work.

Infoplease.com: This site gives all the knowledge you need. It provides access to thousands of articles and references, such as atlas, thesaurus, dictionaries and quizzes to test your knowledge.

Eol.org: Encyclopaedia of life is a fascinating site that aims to provide information about all species of life on earth. It is widely used by students who are studying science or biology.

A free online encyclopaedia is all what we need to gather knowledge, providing us with millions of articles, biographies, pictures, trusted facts and information on which we can count. So, whether  it is a thesis, or a travel write-up, business writing or content for a website, online help is always merely a click away.

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It is said that some of the greatest ideas for a business plan are found scribbled at the back of a tissue paper. And, so I wonder about the stock (of tissues) that someone with an outstanding business plan might have.

Take a look at the points below and you will realize that writing a business plan is no rocket science.

a)      Understanding the Business: The first and the most challenging task for writing a business plan is understanding the type of industry/business that you are writing the plan for. Having done this, ascertain the tone of the plan that has to be inked.

b)      Preparing a Summary: Even though this is something that comes at the last, its importance is only next to “understanding business”. Since it is the summary that most investors read, it has to be informative, concise, extremely well written and thought provoking.

c)      Segregating the Heads: With business plans, organization is really important. Therefore work on the index before framing the main content. Take a book-writing like approach and begin with deciding the head as well as sub-heads of the plan.

d)      Understanding the Tone: A business plan is always, always written in a formal language. An organized structure, smooth transitions and a professional language is the right mix for a business plan.

Ascertaining the audience is also important to frame the content for a business plan. Last but not the lease, persuasive content makes the business sell.

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We often come across the saying that “I was born with an IQ but education ruined it”. Whilst in most cases it has been proved true that no formula picked straight out of the books has ever worked in reality, it is surprising how true it is with writing as well.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the length and breadth of an essay that made literature students fetch copious marks, are insignificant in practicality. Since the industry, today is rooted in a virtual platform and writing has taken a digital form, certain rules of writing do not work.

Writing for the web is not a rocket science. However, like other forms of writing it abides by its set of rules, too. Below is a list of 4 main things to remember while penning for the web:

• Redefined Reading: Only 5% of the entire population on the web would be actually reading it. Well, this may not be true in case of e-books; however, as far as websites and other sales related content is concerned, people on the web “scan” the text. Also, people tend to read 25% slowly on the web; therefore, the content on the web has to be 40%-50% shorter than its print version.
• Information Redefined: Let’s face it! No one is looking for pages and pages of content containing running text. Overloaded with content, information, data and mails 24*7, all that one is looking for at the end of the day is a bang-on solution for their search/problem. If your content can does the tricks in 10 seconds, it will not take more than a minute for the user to get an understanding of the remaining content.
• Voice Redefined: It’s all about writing the way you talk. The only form of voice that works on the web is “interactive”. It is the only way to draw audience attention and encourage information sharing, which is the ultimate goal of web content writing.
• Text Redefined: Crisper, crunchier and much more concise, text for the digital age has to be redefined to fit the small screen of your systems and mobiles. The text has to be focused on the message – to communicate.

When you are writing for the web, you are inviting international readership. Standardization of content, therefore, becomes extremely important.

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The digital age brings with it many irresistible evils, one of which is the ease of copy-paste of content freely available on the Internet. With regard to the amount of knowledge that the digital age has made, it has become so very easy to share collaboratively, I often thing what use is adding any more information when a lot is readily available to be used over and over again. Someone correctly said that “in the digital age, it’s not plagiarism, it’s repurposing”.

Speaking in the context of writing, one of the biggest revolutions that has ushered in is easy availability of copious information. We don’t even know how much text is within our reach. And here is the problem. The biggest problem that most of the writers are facing today is, not needing to write any more any longer. It may seem as the biggest paradox ever, but it’s true that with the diminishing need of having to write content, the content writing industry today is at its peak nowadays.

The focus today is just not creating content; that, the homosapiens have been doing since ages. The concern for the industry today is to negotiate the information that is available in a humongous quantity. Imagine how difficult or challenging it would be to create 20 writings on the same topics. The task ahead of writers is towering. Writers across the globe share the same content pool and creating different versions to save the work from being tagged as “copied” is smart art.

The ‘unoriginal genius’ should not be mistaken as someone who remoulds content intelligently. That definitely is a leverage that is available to them. Young writers can’t be stopped from taking cues from the given content pool. Repurposing the information according to your need has become essential. Almost everyone does that. Students do it. Writers do it. Damn! Even lyricists do it.

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Apple couldn’t have been such a huge name without the vision of Steve Jobs. We may not know how but Jobs definitely had the talent of shafting the essential from the non-essential; and, the courage to toss the dispensable.

At the heart of the extraordinary success of Apple lies the empathetic involvement of every member working with and for it. So what is there for writers to cull from a brand like Apple. Answer? Values!!

The Core Philosophy at Apple….and what it Teaches?

 Jobs was right when he said that the user doesn’t always know what they want. True, because until someone gave them the idea, they were not aware that such a concept/thing/service could exist. This might seem like a long lost lesson, but Jobs adopted the idea of familiarizing people with their wants and needs.

The same applies to content. Readers really don’t know what they are about to read in the very next line. They are not “aware” about the vast knowledge pool that exists on or off the internet. Lesson #1 that can be taken from Jobs’s philosophy is that content (and its marketing) needs to reach people for them to know about the existence of the source. Lesson #2 which emerges from the core philosophy of Apple is that until and unless you experiment with a new writing style, no one will be able to figure out that something could be written THAT WAY too.

How Did Success Happen to Them….And How Can it Happen to You

 It was not an overnight achievement. There was careful planning and adherence to values. Apple believed in turning the most ordinary of concepts into delightfully beautiful products. Your takeaway as a writer “Take something ordinary and make it gripping/interesting for your reader”.

Another great philosophy at Apple’s is to communicate the way the user does. How do YOU do that? By empathizing. Know your audience. Write the way that you think will be understandable by them. Writing for an IT company? Let the tone reflect you as an IT expert. Writing for a fashion magazine? Make it fun, fresh yet simple to understand. Last but not the least, “Think Different”.