Building an Online Business Your Customers Will Love!
In this Article:
- Quality Content VS Quantity content
- Understanding the Consumer Economic Cycle
- Here’s an Example: Let’s talk TV’s
It seems so easy, right…making a little cash online. But even when you dig into the details of how to build a business online things can get confusing pretty quickly. You find two things: 1) Building a business online is just like, well, building a business (there is no “easy” button) and 2) There is a ton of information to go through for how to build a business online. And, to make matters worse, one person will tell you to do “this” while the other will tell you to do “that” in order to make your millions.
Ugh! Who do you listen to?
At the end of the day…yourself. I think that most entrepreneurs are pretty smart and we kind of know in our gut what we should be doing. And when our gut doesn’t tell us, our testing and mentors will. So I would encourage you to take in the information, test it out, apply what works, and discard what doesn’t. Because really, what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another…for various reasons. However, you are building a business so there are basic business-building principles that will always apply.
But one thing is for sure: Your customers are experiencing the same kind of overwhelm and confusion in regards to all the information and content available on the web. They too are wondering who the heck they should be listening to when it comes to their particular problem. So…be sure you’re giving them only your best content!
Quality Content VS Quantity content
Overwhelm. We’ve all experienced it, right? We have shrinking attention spans just at the time in history when we have the largest quantity of information available to us.
And all that information is easily available at the click of a button on our computers, laptops, tablets, e-readers and phones.
So why then as marketers are we so driven to dump even more information onto our customers? Why would we think that adding more to more is going to result in better?
Well, this actually goes back to the typical consumer cycle. And you will see that “content” is following that same cycle. And this cycle starts with a new idea and works its way around to where we are right now in terms of content and building your online business. Let me explain.
In recent internet history, content was all about more. Because…when we were in the quantity phase of our information consumer cycle that’s what we were supposed to do.
But now, we are in a different phase of that cycle. One that actually will result in “better” if you are willing to slow down, embrace the transition that is taking place, and allow yourself to be different by creating less, doing more with that content by fully leveraging each piece, and setting a higher standard for your niche.
Understanding the Consumer Economic Cycle
Duplicate content, Article farms, stealth sites, and outsourced $2 articles filled with nonsense and bad grammar lightly spun to simply replace synonyms and syndicated to hundreds and thousands of websites. This was the reality of the past for the internet.
The result was a huge quantity of content dumped onto the internet. Some great, some good, some bad, and much completely a waste of time. Yet people were hungry for the information so they consumed more and more and more no matter how good or bad it was.
At first.
Then, because information came easy and cheap, it started to lose its luster and we consumers of information began to crave better. We wanted quality.
This is where we are now. And even though a lot of people want to point to Google and their slaps and algorithm changes as being evil, the fact is that they made changes based on consumer demand. If they didn’t do it, then we as consumers would have done it anyhow. And Google, as a business knows that their customers would have left in favor of another search engine that gave better results.
That’s business. And, this is a typical consumer economic cycle.
Here’s an Example: Let’s talk TV’s
Think about television sets. When they first hit the market they were big, clunky, had tiny screens and poor picture quality. And, they were expensive. Families would huddle around a single television set to watch one of the three available channels. But we were okay with that because it was a new thing.
Then, the technology got a little better, and televisions became more affordable. At this point we entered the cycle of quantity – we demanded more than just one television per household…and more channels…and more shows to watch (for better or worse!)
We needed one for the living room, the den, the kitchen, the bedroom, the kid’s playroom, and the garage (aka “man-cave”). And when there just wasn’t any reason to have “more”, we moved to the next stage of the cycle…quality.
It was about better. High definition, TIVO, picture in picture, flat screens, surround sound speakers, home entertainment systems, and more. Today, settling for a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) is just not an option!
So the consumer cycle is from new, to quantity, to quality.
Sounds a lot like content, right? And right now your customers are demanding quality stuff. They don’t have the luxury of time to sort through all the crap to get to the good stuff.
So how can you provide quality content and become the go-to authority in your niche? Well, that’s what we’ll talk about in the next article! If you don’t want to miss it, be sure to click on that link below and subscribe so you don’t miss a thing!
Until next time…
Dawn
Your Turn:
What do you think? Leave a comment or email me directly with your thoughts…I’d love to hear from you: [email protected]
photo attribution:
http://nevadarecycles.gov/main/about_tvs.htm
