Creative content sources for individuals and small businesses online.

By: Brendan Fitzpatrick

Google

Do you have your own blog or website, or maybe a small to midsize company struggling to stay relevant on the internet? Let me start by defining relevance as it applies to improving your presence on the internet first and then I’ll share some ways that I’ve found to be successful.

Relevance – what is it? Relevance it THE single most important feature of a web site or blog that you need to keep on top of if you want to increase your presence on the Internet, ie. increase new and recurring visitors coming to your site. In simple terms, relevance is what it takes to catch your visitors eyes such as appealing graphic ads. You should use graphics and catch phrases that pique the interest of the visitors you want to come to your site. You should use phrases as ‘Must have’, or ‘Top 10’ or ‘The best’ so that internet users feel they need to click on to learn more about that subject.

Second, your blog or your web site should be user friendly. You shouldn’t have too many graphics or too much content that overwhelms someone or they will immediately move onto a new URL. Create catchy infographics.

Third, another important piece of Relevance is to keep your content engaging. Hire someone to write articles if you cannot write good quality articles – and do it frequently. Your visitors will only remember your site if they leave feeling that they learned something or found something interesting about what they were originally searching for. It’s important that your SEO be inline with your content or you will have a major disconnect with your visitors and you will most likely reach the point of frustration like many others that don’t have a strategy. Research your competitors and try to offer more than they do.

Here are some resources that I’ve found extremely useful. Since I do everything myself (graphics, html design, layout, programming and more) I was very skeptical about using any service provider but I jumped into these and I wish I had done it sooner.

Canva.com – a great site for free infographics. For a small fee you can use a plethora of graphics in their graphic library. A must try!

eLance.com – a great site for everything professional, from site design, graphic and content providers and more.

fiverr.com – I can’t vouch more for this site, I’ve ordered customized videos, graphics and more for $5. I’ve also combined multiple services for scripted videos with voiceovers for as little as $10. If you’re swift enough you can combine services from multiple providers and earn a lot of money!

everypost.me – an amazing new tool for free that will enable you to manage all of your social media centrally. Check out their site and review their features. Be aware though that they are constantly updating this tool, it has limitations but they’re constantly getting better.

Inkscape – for those of you looking to do your own graphics without paying for Adobe Illustrator, photoshop and the like, this is an amazing free graphic solutions which competes (if not outshines) most commercial solutions – if you are you willing to put the time in to learn it. If you’re used to Illustrator or Photoshop but don’t want to purchase an upgrade then Inkscape may be for you..