Everyone has heard the phrase “less is more”, and it has recently applied to content production. The prevailing theory is that content should be about quality, not quantity. Content should be well-researched, be of interest to many parties and contain facts and figures that inspire thought and conversation to lead to those all-important clicks, leads and engagements.
But Jeff Bezos, formerly of Amazon and now owner of the Washington Post, is finding significant success by publishing more posts per day – nearly 1,200 each and every day. And it is working. Traffic on the website for the Post has increased 28% over the last year. They even eclipsed the New York Times from October to December in 2015.
Bezos is using a strategy that worked for him at Amazon. By focusing on the long tail audience, that is, smaller niche audiences in a wide range of interests, instead of what is hot and popular at the moment, the Post is getting more interest across the board, leading to more clicks than what others are getting on their trending topics.
It is not just the Post either. Other sites have done the same to similar success. Does that mean everyone should churn out article after article of the most mundane topics to attract new audiences?
No.
The entities that have seen success with this strategy have already established themselves as experts and reliable sources of information, leading audiences to click on their headlines not just because they are viral or ranking first on the search engine page, but because they are taking that split second to check out to whom that link belongs.
Small businesses can still benefit from this strategy however. Search engines take location into account when ranking results, and being close to the person searching will give you a boost in their rankings. If you have established yourself in the community as a reliable community partner, good at what you do, and responsive, you can also benefit by adding more content to your site.
If you post once a week now, consider bumping that up to two times a week or even six times a month. Not every post needs to be a thousand words or more, and mixing up content with shorter articles or blogs, with some pictures or video, can have an immediate and profound impact on your web site visitors and conversions.
