Every Internet marketing plan starts with two fundamental building blocks: content and links.

Internet Marketing 101 is not much more complicated than content and links. Content consists of the pages in your site and the stuff on them. Links, external links that is, make your content more valuable because they both point traffic to your site and they are counted and measured by search engines to determine when your content is more relevant than someone else's in search results.

Therefore, pushing your Internet marketing simply means building up more content and encouraging others to link to it. So, step number one is to define a content strategy.


A content development strategy is a plan defining the kind of content you'll regularly add to your site. When establishing this strategy, be realistic about what you can actually do. Can you write a weekly update, a monthly newsletter, a daily blog? Don't bite off more than you can chew. Consistency can be more critical than frequency.

Content can include photographs, company background, case studies, blog posts, testimonials, stories, advice, videos, resources or just about anything else that has some relationship to who you are and what you do. In regard to photos and videos though, keep in mind that photographic and video content require the addition of words to make them work on the web. This is because, at least as far as search engines are concerned, the words on a website have meaning, but pictures and videos are just blank rectangles. So write up descriptions and editorial copy to any photographic or video content, especially if imagery is your primary content strategy.

Whatever kind of content you develop, it must also be compelling. The more interesting, helpful, fun, entertaining, or informative the content, more compelling it will be.

For any service business one of the most important things that should inform your content strategy is the goal of establishing trust. Trust is built not only by demonstrating your competence, but even more importantly by establishing a level of personal confidence. Expertise and confidence are two elements that need to be established before anyone will trust a service to do a good job, whatever the field.

How might a content strategy convey trustworthiness? Trust can be established by being open, honest, helpful and free with information. Here are a few content ideas that are trust oriented.

• Testimonials
• Open forums
• Personal blogs with open commenting
• Professional blog with open commenting
• Articles that demonstrate competence and passion for your business
• Videos

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