If you believe that the way forward in digital marketing is to not only make good use of all those great digital tools, but also to fill them with valuable, exciting and engaging content that makes people sit up and listen, then you need the skill of news writing in your locker.
Loading fresh news content onto your site on a regular basis, is not only a way of telling Google you are active (and it’s good to be friends with Google), but also a way of giving your web visitors something of value and interest each time they come to the site.
Top tips on how to get news writing
1.Research your topic. If you sell carrots for a living, what sort of people come to your website? Is it health food enthusiasts? People with pets? Manufacturers? What do they want to hear about? What would make them come to your website for a daily ‘update’? Target your news based on your target market.
These are the sort of questions you need to ask yourself if you want to load quality content onto your website that your market wants to read.
2.Finding your news. You haven’t got time to get exclusive stories, so just search the internet for relevant news. You can search the major news channels for news on ‘carrots’, and this will offer up any items where they have featured.
3.Don’t steal. Once you have found your news story, you can’t just copy and paste, you need to re-write (perhaps with the angle that your web visitors would find the most valuable), and then mention where the story is from. Either via a link or by crediting the publication correctly.
4.Pack it with keywords. Make sure you get your keywords in the story, it will help you with the all-important SEO ranking and satisfy Google’s insatiable appetite for fresh web content.
Ideally news should be added everyday and it doesn’t mean writing an essay. A short 100 article can be enough.
Just don’t make the cardinal mistake of not updating your news, this reflects badly on your business because it looks like you don’t care. Make 2011 the year of news and tell everyone about the great things that are happening in your business and beyond.