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The art of optimizizing with articlets

Posted by Michael Martinez on March 7, 2008 in Content Theory

People have no problem talking about themselves or their companies but they become reluctant and obstinate when you suggest that they “create content” for their Web sites. The average business owner creates more content for his or her Web site in a week than will be actually posted on the Web in their life time.

It’s personally frustrating for me to see someone who is extremely articulate, passionate, and engaged in telling people about their business just freeze up when it comes to writing a few sentences a week for the Web. People who have no problem with walking into 15 strangers’ places of business every week, asking those strangers engaging questions, and providing a semi-canned spiel about what they do, what their value proposition is, and how they can help the 15 strangers deal with their pain should have no problem writing 10 sentences a week about what they do, how they helped solve someone’s pain, or how life is a little easier because of their industry.

We recently had a client on the phone who wanted to create a larger Web site. “Just add a blog,” I said. “We don’t have time for that,” he told me. I guarantee you he has the time to stop and spend 15-20 minutes to talk to a complete stranger on the street about his company.

But that’s okay because, you know what? You don’t have to use a blog to add content to your Web site. You can write a brief little announcement about your latest special deal and put it up on your site.

If you want to add pages to your site that will stay there you can create an archive of little articles (call them articlets) — each no more than 10 sentences long — that each reside on their own pages. These articlets don’t have to say much. They can recap a brief conversation you had with someone, answer a question, describe a rainy day where you fixed your indoor plumbing, etc.

Articlets are unique, content-rich globs of information about you, your company, your services, your products or whatever that you share with other people. You speak several to dozens of them every week; you just need to write one down each week.

An articlet is a vital part of the business person’s vocabulary. It’s the answer you’ve given to the question that is asked 100 times. It’s the piece of advice you’ve given to a customer to help improve the value of whatever product or service he just bought. It’s the referral you make to someone about a business you feel good about sending new customers to. It’s the little technical detail about your industry that you sometimes share with inquisitive people who have just bought your service or product.

An articlet is not a sales pitch but it’s the perfect sales pitch. It takes no time to write, no time to organize, and requires nothing more than a few minutes.

The problem with articlets is that they become daunting when you think about them en masse. Getting an SEO client to stop agonizing over volumes of data is not always easy. Sometimes the big picture is the little picture. All you have to do to help yourself is add one page of content per week. You don’t have to design a page, just write a few sentences. You’ve probably already composed them without realizing that was what you did.