Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

Chapter 8. Create Wings and Roots

Every single piece of content you create should of course live on your web site, or in your content library, pages, and other ports of call (like a landing page) you establish. But that's not the whole story, which brings us to Content Rule Number 10: Create wings and roots for your content.

This advice is usually applied to parenting: Give your children roots to keep them grounded and levelheaded and offer them wings to explore new worlds and have new adventures. But it also applies nicely to content: Ground your content solidly in your unique perspective, voice, and point of view, but give it wings to soar freely and be shared all across the Web as a social object.

After all, a powerful component of social media and online business is the fact that everyone is a publisher, right? And this includes your readers. Everyone is empowered to share, link to, and comment on every piece of content that sparks his or her interest. This is why we have stressed that each piece of content should be viewed as a social object that also exists beyond the platform it is published on.

"The engine in great social objects isn't in the mechanism itself; it's the fuel—the content—at its heart. Identifying and focusing more effort on high-octane fuel will do more to win friends and influence people than anything else," says Campfire creative director Steve Coulson. "Just produce great content, and it'll speak louder and travel further than you can imagine."

To use another ...