Here's #9 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #9:
Great Web content is interactive.


Use cool tools as “link bait”—something other sites will read about and want to link to. For instance, create a handy web-based calculator for a need common to your audience. Maybe it’s a mortgage comparison calculator for borrowers. Or an ROI calculator for software buyers. Or a calculator to help farmers determine how much herbicide to mix.

Other potential tools could include color selectors, product selectors, or video demos. Whatever the tool is, just make sure it’s “cool,” relevant and well-publicized.

The use of video content in Internet marketing is soaring. YouTube has found that 37 percent of its users have purchased something offline that they saw advertised on YouTube. The company offers this advice to marketers who want to make effective use of video:

• “Just because you have video doesn’t mean it’s good or meaningful to the people in your market. Either modify it so it is, or don’t use it.”

• “Check everything you intend to post on YouTube to make sure it represents your brand and moves your mission forward.”

TechTarget’s “2009 Media Consumption Benchmark Report 2: Closing the Gap.” also confirmed that technology buyers are using social communities in the decision-making process. “A very high percentage of the buyers indicated they now consider social communities to be one of the major places they'd go for information on the Web,” said Marilou Barsam, senior VP-corporate and client marketing at TechTarget.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.

Labels: content marketing, social network content, ten hallmarks of great web content, web copy writing