Information Is No Longer Enough

Would you like to know my biggest ever secret to having a successful and popular website?

Ok, seeing as you asked nicely:

Information Is No Longer Enough

I will explain…

Let’s travel back in time 10-12 years ago, when the Internet was just starting to hit mainstream for the first time. During this period, people used the net very differently to today.

Back then, it was all about getting information. I remember the excitement of typing in something like “learn magic tricks” into Yahoo, and getting over 100 matches with information on the subject.

It was exciting, powerful and new.

New Decade – New Rules

Fast forward to 2008, and the same search yields 475.000 results, plus a heap of videos, images, DVDs, podcasts and more.

Quite simply, we have been spoiled, we have so much information at our finger tips, and we can access it at warp speed. What’s more, now that the Internet is a great option to make money, every man and his dog has a website, a blog, a youtube account etc… so competition for virtually ANY keyphrase is high.

So what does this all mean?

It means that if a user searches for A and you provide info on A, this is no longer enough to be successful in your niche.

The net of 2008 is much more about building fans, loyal readers, getting links, getting mentioned elsewhere, going viral, creating buzz etc…

You are not going to achieve any of the above by just providing information.

You need to provide the information in a new, exciting, interesting and entertaining way.

It is the people that can combine information and entertainment that are going to rule the markets for the next 10 years, and those who can’t, will struggle.

For Example

Just look at people like Gary Vaynerchuk, perhaps the hottest guy around right now, his WinelibraryTV website had over 10,000 viewers for every single video, who had absolutely zero interest in wine.

Yes, you read correctly. 10,000 people per video watched a show about wine, yet they had no interest in wine.

This was because he made the show fun, he injected passion, entertainment and humour, and he used the mediums of video and social media perfectly.

Now, Gary could easily have just posted facts and stats about the wine on a blog, but instead he made it entertaining and interesting first, and informative second.

A Perfect Example

Here is a perfect example, let’s say you want to do a blog post about how useful the Internet is, you could write about it with some facts and info, or you could even create a top 7 list about it…

or… you could do an experiment to see if you can live solely off the Internet for 7 days. All your shopping, including food, must be done online, you must unplug your phone and turn off your mobile (Cell), you cannot pay for anything in cash or with a card, just via Internet payments.

This is a new and entertaining way of packaging the concept. A new angle if you will.

It is a new twist, an exciting angle, a life-changing experiment.You could make a series of blog posts from this, or you could put a webcam on your head and broadcast it live to ustream 24/7, you could do video diaries, you could podcast about it, you could even go on local radio shows and discuss it.

You have taken something dull and turned it into something that radio and tv would love to speak to you about, all via adding a new twist and angle on a standard subject.

The Attention Entertainment Age

The tables have been turned my friends, information used to be a valuable currency on the Internet, now, as my friend Rich Schefren says, “we are in the attention age”, where attention is the main currency.

You are not going to grab attention with just information. You simply won’t stand out from the crowd, you won’t rise above the noise of the 450,000 other pages of info on a subject.

So if you want to be successful on the net, be entertaining, be passionate and most of all…. have fun. If you can’t do any of these things, make sure you have a huge ad budget instead.

Dean

PS: If you want specific blueprints on how to make interesting content, make sure you are signed up at BuzzProfits.com