Live from Blog World Expo 2010: Creating Killer Content

This post are my notes from the live session at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. Please forgive me if I misspell anything or if some of the notes don’t make sense, as I am trying to gather as much information from each speaker as I can.

Quick Facts on the Session

Topic: Creating Killer Content
About: Chris Garrett walks attendees through principles of creating compelling content that will draw readers into a blog and get them excited about passing it onto their network.
Speaker: Chris Garrett

Live Notes

Darren Rowse started by introducing himself and talking about the ProBlogger track that they will be running for Blog World. Chris Garrett starts his presentation first.

Content is what will drive your blog, socia. media efforts and your traffic.

What is Killer Content?

You have to like your audience and get to know them.
It one thing to “hear” about doing something, but it’s another thing to actually DO it.

Chris shows a cycle of what is killer content.

Attraction >> Retention >> Conversion >> Referral

The key is to grab the attention of your target market. However grabbing their attention and maintain that attention are two different things. You need to hold on to your audiences attention by awesome content. If you have awesome content, they are much more likely to referral their friends and want to tell their friends. With all of this in mind, you need to have some sort of conversion goal.

Put your blog on the map: Become a must-have resource in your niche

Brand, Authority
SEO – Search Engine Performance
Viral Appeal, Visibility, Value, Longevity
Marketability, Re-Package into Products
Convert your traffic

Don’t create content just to fill a word count or a certain number of blog posts per week. Really understand your target audience and WANT to create content of value.

Chris then asks the following questions:

Do you know your prospect?
Do you know your niche?
Do you know your positioning?

He talks about an example of a person who wants to start a blog about making money online. He then asked the guy, how much many he made online?? The guy said “I haven’t actually done it yet”.

Chris said that its ok to be a beginner. The key point is to be honest about who you are and your expertise.

Critical Success Factors

Be remarkable, more useful
More in-depth, better researched
magnetic headlines
Attractively presented
Easy to grasp
Friendly URLs

Only 20% of your readers will actually click through to your blog.

Compelling Content Types

Your Biggest Tips
Guides
How-To, Tutorials
FAQs
Story with a Message
Research and Results
Jargon Buster
Product Database
Case Studies
Resource Round-Up

A really good point he mentions is that you should give away tips for free. If you are always trying to make people pay for your content, people will think you really don’t have any good tips, because you haven’t show it yet.

He talks about an example of a post Darren wrote about “How to Hold a Camera”, which seemed extremely basic. But that post got so much exposure and thanks by his readers.

If you are looking for topics to talk about for your blog, you can also use your clients as a resource. Write posts about questions they ask. Also go to places like Yahoo Answers and niche forums to see what questions people are asking.

Writing about problems are extremely popular. The reason is that you are saving people the headaches and the time to not make the same mistakes you made.

Tell a Story

Chris talks about Darren’s experience with when he started blogging. He talks about how he wanted to give it 6 months to see if he could make a living from blogging. When he got his first Google check, he realized the potential

Here is the slide he showed for telling a story:

Headlines

Look at the newspaper, magazines, other popular news outlets and see what headlines they use. Their is a reason why these outlets are popular. Using powerful headlines is extremely important.

Borrow Authority

If your blog is not established yet, you can borrow other people’s authority while you are earning yours. You can do things like interviewing popular industry experts. By using their names, you are essentially borrowing their authority and it helps translate authority to you.