Over three years ago I decided to write a blog post sharing 7 Powerful Lessons Sun Tzu can teach you about Strategy. In that post I researched insights from ancient Chinese philosopher and military strategist Sun Tzu and shared how these lessons can help business professionals win the battle for customers in their respective marketplace.

In 2016, this single post generated over 20,000 unique visitors to my blog.

Think about that for a second.

A post that I wrote three years ago generated over 20,000 unique visitors this year to my blog without me paying a dime for the traffic (and the year isn’t over yet).

Creating quality content (be it in the form of pbn hosting or guest posts) is an essential part of any effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social Media strategy. This is also one of the most neglected aspects of Social Media and SEO. Many business owners and marketing professionals want their “website optimized” to rank high in search engines. They get excited about setting up their social media profiles and eagerly track their likes, followers, and connections.

While having a quality website, the right social media profiles, and quality connections is valuable – it is content that truly brings it all together and delivers the results they are seeking from their social media and SEO efforts.

It is important to remember that Commodity content gets commodity results.

Below are 6 BIG BENEFITS of creating Awesome Content.

• Great Digital Content has a Long Shelf Life

I am not going to tell you that Print, TV advertising, and direct mail are dead. They are not. Every marketing and/or advertising tactic has its place and time to shine. My marketing agency has gotten amazing results from newspaper advertising for certain clients over the last year. What I will say is that print advertising and direct mail have a very short shelf life.

It may cost tens of thousands of dollars to place a print advertisement for one day. After a couple days, that paper is generally thrown away along with your ad.

Creating high quality digital content does take time and resources up front, but it can continue to drive traffic to your website for many years to come.

As an example, here is a snapshot from my Google Analytics for the Sun Tzu post I referenced that I wrote three years ago. You’ll see that this post has generated over 20,000 unique page views and visitors this year.

• Outrank the Big Boys

Ever heard of David & Goliath? Sure you have. Quality content is like your sling shot to battle the giants. Google has changed their search algorithms and placed a much larger value on quality content.

As an example, you’ll see that for the search term “Sun Tzu Lessons”, my blog is able to out rank some giants including Business Insider, Huffington Post, Life Hacker, and INC magazine.

• More Social Shares

Creating high quality content, and adding well positioned social share buttons increases the liklihood of visitors sharing your content with others. Google and other search engines do look at page level metrics such as social share signals and links pointing to the page when determining their rankings.

This is  a self perpetuating feedback loop that continues to make itself stronger and stronger. The more the content is shared, the more people see and share the content.

• Become a Trusted Resource

Sharing valuable content gives you the opportunity to educate and help others. If they find your content to be beneficial they may subscribe to your blog, or reach out to you to get more customized assistance, which can lead to new business.

• Grow your Audience & Influence

When a visitor comes across valuable content that you created they may have a desire to be aware of future insights or content you create. This could lead to them following you on social media, subscribing to your blog, or simply frequenting your blog to read new posts.

As your audience and influence grows you build even more “reach” and opportunities to distribute your content, engage others, obtain more press attention, monetize your content, and form new meaningful relationships.

• Convert more visitors into Leads, or Customers

As the amount of quality traffic to your website increases you have more opportunities to “convert” this traffic into a subscriber, lead or paying customer. Depending on the type of business you are in this conversion could be: a phone call, newsletter subscription, purchase of a product, request for a quote, etc. I do suggest that you add a call-to-action box under your blog post. I utilize a WordPress plugin called Socialize to accomplish this. You’ll see my call-to-action box below this blog post and it includes multiple conversion opportunities such as subscribing to my blog, purchasing my book, and sharing my post.

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I hope that you have found this blog post to be helpful!

Happy content creation!