Crafting Online Content

In e-commerce and social networking, content is a major factor. Flash media and other bells and whistles can catch an audience's attention. Content is what holds the audience's attention. Bloggers and online writers must become master craftsmen at developing online content.

Crafting great content means:

• Creativity: You need fresh and relevant content beyond the norm
• Consistency: Readers and viewers need to be able to depend our your content with a consistent theme and subject matter
• Connectivity: Give readers something to connect to and a way to connect to others through your content

Crafting great content gets you into all sorts of places like never before. Those in need of such content will hire freelancers and consultants to get enriching and entertaining content before their fans, followers and friends.

With the advent of social networks, online communities and multimedia sharing sites, you can actually share more than just an occasional thought or inspirational quote. You can actually craft compelling and interesting online posts filled with graphics and enhanced with links. These technological advances have made creating new, relevant content easier with the simple addition of tags, hashtags and all sorts of ways for viewers, followers, friends and others to share or even retweet your content.

So what are you to do?

Develop fresh content. Make it something that either informs the public or improves the lives of those who will read it or receive it.

You have to find your own voice.

Your voice is to speak with clarity and conscience. Your voice is to shed light on your viewpoints, your outlook on the world as it is. Once you find your voice, you can share it in a manner that makes enough noise to rock somebody's world or at least get the next fashion trend or Internet acronym started.

In a word, blogging is a great way to share your voice and remain creative in how you both post and promote your content. One of the best advantages of blogging is complete editorial control. On the other hand, that is one of the major downfalls of it, too. It's all on you.

What is a Blog?

A blog is simply a weblog. It is truly an online journal of sorts that provides an ongoing feed of dated material that is published on the Web. It may contain text only or it can include video clips and photos, even audio clips from podcasts or music sharing sites.

Get Started with Something Simple

Try out Blogger or WordPress. Each offers plenty of templates with an ease of posting and tagging your posts. In essence, you can entitle and publish in just minutes, all with all sorts of embedded affiliate links and external links and images.

Start blogging on topics that you are familiar with or that hit close to home. Some of the most popular blogs have been rants and ravings about everything from that latest fashion trends to hit the red carpet at awards shows or avid sports fans sharing a critical view of the hometown favorite. The best thing for beginning bloggers is to start with something that allows them to share their own expertise or something that they really want to express to others.

Create content and keep creating content. Don't lose sight of what you do and how valuable it is to the Internet industry. E-zine editors, web-based publishers and others need your content. Look around and see who is in need of what from you and others with similar talent and skills.

Give yourself time to see what else you can do. Explore some additional options for getting into the field. Do some short-term or small-scale projects for local faith-based or community-based organizations. This can serve as some critical experience necessary in working with a variety of clients.