5 Reasons To Consistently Create Unique Content

If you have ever looked into making your own blog, you have probably seen this advice…

“Create unique content. Add value. If you do this consistently, then you will succeed.”

It is obvious how to create unique content; you have to work at it. You need to write. How do you know if you are adding value? Well, if you are succeeding you would know. My proposal is that you need to create unique content, get others to see it, and let them decide if you have added value. I personally feel like I am a shameless self-promoter, and I am writing this to show myself the reasons I should be constantly and consistently creating new content.

#1 – Like a Thief in the Night, You Do Not Know What Will Become Popular In Advance

While you can have a feeling in advance as to the possible popularity of a post before you make it, you will not have an accurate gauge of the actual popularity. It could be a 54 word post of cynical commentary, a brief explanation on how to do something that you find trivial, or it could be a comprehensive guide on how to get out of debt. Take the approach of the shotgun when it comes to creating content. Shoot out a lot of content and some of it is bound to hit its mark.

#2 – Creating Unique Content Will Improve Your Writing Skills

The way that you get better at anything is to continually practice at the edge of your capabilities. Writing is a valuable skill. Unfortunately you do not know when you will need it most. You may suddenly need to write a resume, a letter, instructions to a freelancer, or mission critical press releases. It is best to improve your writing skills now, before you absolutely need them. As I write more in the context of a blog, I find that I finding ways to edit a post for search engine visibility without impairing human use.

#3 – Creating Unique Content Requires You To Think Outside of Your Box

As I began writing this, I had two reasons in mind for consistently creating unique content. Displeased with the number of reasons, I was forced to think about other reasons. For me, obvious reasons were the shotgun popularity approach and the benefits of long-tail searches. For you it may have been obvious that it would improve my writing skills and force me into thinking about the topic.

#4 – Consistency and Fresh Content

I doubt the benefit of having consistency with my blog posts. Although I know I personally am subject to the psychology of fresh content. I currently do not use a feed reader of any kind. I know shame on me! I have set them up many times before, but I have found checking the reader more annoying that navigating to a website that I want to see updates from. As a result, often times I will type in a web address and find a lack of updates. If this happens too many times, I tend to forget about that website and not revisit it. If a semi-tech-savvy person is subject to this behavior, just imagine how a person that is not tech or web savvy behaves.

#5 – Get Traffic From Long Tail Search Phrases

As you create more content and have that content indexed by the various search engines, you will receive more traffic from long tail search phrases. It is just a mathematical fact. With more words in the index, you will naturally match a larger set of long tail search phrases. For example, reason number 5 has set me up to receive traffic from a “How do I get traffic from long tail search phrases?” search. I do not know how many other people are set up well for that long tail search, but I know I am in the text of this post. I also don’t care what the long tail search phrase may be, because it will take me longer to find a good one to target than it will take me to simple make another post.
Speaking of which, this post seems to be done, and I have an idea for a new post.

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Tagged as: Blogging, writing

Seth

I agree that practicing something, like writing, will make you better at it. One piece of advice - not that I'm an expert when it comes to "successful blogging" - would be to know your audience. For example, I think I know what you mean by a long tail search, but only because I am familiar with the idea of a long tail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail), and I can sort of manhandle that idea such that it applies to a search term. If there's something more specific than that, then I am unaware of it. And I know you... who is your target audience for this blog? Are they likely to be aware of the meaning of a "long tail search"? Should you define such a term if you're going to use it 7 times in your blog post? Is this kind of question important if you intend to become a "successful" blogger?

Which brings me to another point - when you talk about being successful as a blogger - how are you measuring that? For many people blogging is just a way to express stuff, or to communicate with a select group of people. Are they "unsuccessful" if their blog doesn't get 1,000 hits a day?

In other news, I think you have an interesting point with regard to targeting search terms. Namely, I agree that it's probably not worth your time to try and do so. Rather write something, and then write something else. If your goal is to get many page views, then it becomes more worth your time to target popular search terms I guess, but as you say, it might be simpler and/or quicker to simply spam the internet with posts.

In my game design blog, I posted something about Magic: the Gathering, and suddenly I saw many people clicking through to my blog from a search for M:tG stuff. Also, I posted about a McDonald's promotion, and I started getting all kinds of hits from searches for McD's!

Finally, I just wanted to point out that there are multiple ways to "get better at writing a blog post." It occurred to me that your measure had to do with the number of hits - if your post gets more hits, and is found by more searches, then you're saying it's a better post than the last... that you're getting better at writing blog posts. And in that respect maybe it's true. Hopefully as you write you're also getting better at writing in the way that I (and probably most people) would consider... commanding a stronger use of spelling, grammar, and the English language.

Good luck with your blogging!