If there’s one characteristic that I believe leads to success, it’s resourcefulness. Finding a way to get things done is the skill that makes for an effective person—in business and otherwise—and finding that way without throwing money at the problem is often the most effective answer.
But being a resourceful blogger has a double meaning.
In Viral Copy, I set forth four categories of content that tend to attract links. One of those was providing free resources to your readers.
It’s naturally my favorite of the four.
Dan Zarrella nails it when he simultaneously affirms the value of resources and rejects the “content as filler” philosophy:
Content is dead and resource is king.
Yep.
Reader Comments (25)
Beautiful.
Resources are wwaayy more important than content. But they have to be the right ones.
If you don’t have the right ones you would be better off just posting a bunch of big pictures from Flickr.
I will be remixing that resource line for weeks.
Thanks.
Free resources show you’re willing to give in order to get, and that’s a nobel concept. For example (and sorry for the link drop but), I created this free resources for people who are just getting their feet wet with HTML. http://www.fromthepen.com/web/index.html
I coded for years and thought it would be fun to try and teach people the basics.
Feel free to check into it. Hope it helps your readers.
Regards
thanks for the link, and I can’t wait to read it chartreuse.
Resource links are probably the only way for your average blogger to get a link from a really high authority/trust site.
It’s all about adding value – something you know a thing or two about… 🙂
Well, I think content is always going to rule. Links and good content cannot exist in isolation because if we just depend on resources/sources, there will be no more resources/sources…somebody has to generate content worthy of being linked to. So I think both things should be applied concomitantly.
Amrit, resources *are* content, but content is not always a resource. That’s how I look at it, anyway.
Whether it be simply a blog post, or something more involved like a free report, content that isn’t a resource to the reader might just be taking up space.
Without firsthand knowledge of the topic, a blogger/writer has no shot at being a resource or creating meaningful content.
That’s why there are so many ‘dead blogs’.
Every person who works or participates in an activity ( selling, buying, producing, etc ) can be of use to others, as they have tips, tricks and techniques that only they know of.
Long live the resourceful bloggers !
Down with dead blogs !
Where else could we get resources, aside from our day-to-day experiences?
Research? You’ve got the whole world at your fingertips right now.
Plus… I know that they’re not all that popular these days, but I’m a big fan of books. 🙂
I totally agree with you.
Resources are one of the best linkbait strategies. Even more than the lists. Wether it is a tutorial as Buck did, a cool and useful tool or just an aggregation of similar resources. People will link to it.
We can look at the recent case of the AOL Search Data. Lots of people made in the next few days a hand full of applications to search, browse and discuss this Data. That drove lots of traffic and links. I didn’t have the time, resources or will to do that, so I just compiled the available tools and articles related. That brougth me some traffic and links too.
Well said.
I think resources are a great linkbait strategy.
but obviously having an overall strategy is also important to ensure that we have a monetization model.
Well said Brian. I’m grateful I’ve read lots of em while I was young, and continue to do so; imagine how limited my life would be without em! 😮
it’s intresting, how we don’t own even our litle part of the media sphere.
we don’t write, what we would like to write.
nope we write for the community, in service of the community.
content was king.
now resource is the only content that matters.
(thanks for keeping us in the loop;)
Ming, any *good* content is a resource… literature, poetry, tutorials, jokes, even gossip.
The point is to serve the needs of an audience, rather than simple cranking out words to fill space.
“….Anyone can do content these days. This makes content well less important. People want something else now.
They want resource….”
I agree resources our very important. I have come to the conclusion that I can help people more by giving them an array of resources within my niche rather than just giving them the content that I can give them. This is why I have changed this blog to a resource blog. http://dipnoi.org/
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