To recap, on part one. Once you know what interests or entertains your readers, you can decide which types of content will best serve their needs and how to go about finding or creating it. In part two we continue with the general categories to get you started with your brainstorming:
- Editorials (covered in part 1)
- Feature articles (covered in part 1)
- Political opinion (covered in part 1)
- News stories
- A mixture of the best content
- Reviews of movies, books, music (covered in part 3)
- Interviews (covered in part 3)
- Interactive features – polls, feedback, discussion groups, forums, chat (covered in part 3)
News Stories
Your site can become a news source for the latest developments and happenings in certain niche area by providing timely news on topics of interest to your readers. I’m not saying you can be the next BBC or CNN, because that requires building a huge operation. But what you can be is, for example, the BBC of the karate world, or the CNN of the bonsai tree hobbyists. In short an authority on your chosen subject.
What you’ll want to do is create a separate section of your site to deal with industry news. Or, devote an entire site to news updates. There are many ways of presenting news:
- As a feature article
- As short news clips, with a link to the full story
- As news stories, where each item is explained at length
However you decide to present the news, make sure you give it your own personal style. Take a look around at other established news websites and get an idea of what’s out there and how it is presented. Make yours interesting, personal, chatty, fun, unique, or all of these – just make it yours.
Make sure your news is relevant, useful to your reader, and timely. Old news isn’t no news at all, it’s history! So how do you get news? By:
- Subscribing to ezines on your subject or topic
- Sign up for e-mail news delivery services
- Register to get regular press releases on your topic
- Surf the web for new news items
- Get news from newspapers, magazines and books
- Go to conferences, workshops or seminars and write about what you see and who you talk to
A mixture of the best content
If you can make your site into the ultimate content resource on issues related to your topic, I guarantee you you’ll attract and retain a loyal audience. Your site will become known as a The Place for anyone who wants information on your subject. For example, Harry Knowles has made aintitcoolnews.com into The Site for movie reviews and advance spoilers.
Since you’re the expert on your topic, you can evaluate sites and other resources (ezines, directories, books, offline publications) and sniff out the best ones to list along with your rating and opinions.
This sort of content is like the old book reports you used to have to write for school. Read up thoroughly on your subjects, then hit the high points of a topic. Or, consider writing a summary of three separate article that have the same theme.
Part three of this article covers reviews, interviews and interactive content.
