SEO is becoming more and more reliant upon traditional marketing values. And at the centre of all this: content. Big, fat, awesome, amazing, brilliant, useful, imaginative, thought provoking content that offers some value to people reading it. Content that makes people give a shit. As an industry, we’re becoming better and better at producing this real content. And we have to keep on improving because more and more people around us are doing too.
So we practice, we take advice and we read! Here are 5 books I absolutely LOVE and that will help you to make your content better.
1. Made to Stick
I’ve recommended Made to Stick before. It’s awesome. You really need this in your life. Written by the Heath brothers, this book explains what makes an idea take hold. Great for helping us make content that’s memorable.
2. Brandwashed
Brandwashed is a book by Martin Lindstrom. It’s not actually about content in any single way. Instead it’s about some tactics companies use to make us buy from them (some less pleasant tactics than others). But some of the principles apply to creating content. For product page content, we need to know what makes people want to buy. For non-commercial content (link bait and so on) we need to make someone buy into our content so much they want to share it. And these principles are in many ways similar to persuading someone to buy from you.
3. Naked Conversations
An awesome book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel that offers insight about communicating through blog content. For any company bloggers, this is a must.
Naked Conversations on Amazon.
4. Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins
…or to give it its full title, Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Find, Develop and Deliver Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact. This is a book by Annette Simmons on the art of storytelling. Content that tells compelling stories is a winner… this book can help you make your stories better.
Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins on Amazon.
5. The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited
….or, again, to give it the complete title: The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-Life Lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing. This is a book by Emanuel Rosen and it does focus a lot on getting people to talk about products. However, we can take these principles and apply them to making people talk about your content. Word of mouth in the web driven world is social sharing, linking and citing and you will invariably want people to do that with your content.