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How to Get Your Visitors to Create Content for Your Website
by Clay Mabbitt ©Copyright 2004

An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh 
content that gives visitors a reason to return to their site. 
Unless you have a full-time staff dedicated to creating regular 
content, the time involved can be crippling.  

Wouldn't it be great if someone else would write timely, 
relevant content for you? Sure, but what are the odds of that 
happening? Well, many webmasters are already enjoying this 
phenomenon, and I'm happy to count myself among them.  

Set It Up

Whether your site has a catalog of products or a collection of 
articles, you can design your pages to allow visitors to post 
reviews of whatever is featured on the page. They can share 
their experiences with items they've bought or post comments on 
the information in your site. Don't confuse this powerful tool 
with a discussion forum. You create the topic of each page, and 
encourage visitors to post updates with the latest information 
in this area.  

The more information you provide on your site, the better service 
you are providing to your visitors; but they aren't the only 
ones who benefit from including reviews. It's also a boon to you 
as a webmaster. Even if you never wrote another line of new copy, 
your pages will continue to grow with relevant content. Granted 
you still have to spend a little time reading the reviews and 
moderating what appears on your site, but the time required is 
much less than you would spend writing original content.  

Why Someone Else Will Create Content For You 
While the advantages to the webmaster and reader may be 
obvious, you are probably wondering what incentives exist for 
the reviewer. A few lucky souls have enough free time to share 
their opinions online for the mere satisfaction of seeing their 
own words, but most will need something more tangible before 
they invest the time to write a useful review. The onus is on 
you, the webmaster, to create an appropriate incentive. The 
importance of link popularity in search engine rankings provides 
a powerful clue. At AffiliateScreen.com, I allow my visitors to 
post reviews of their experiences with online affiliate programs. 
At the bottom of their review, they have the option of including 
a link to another page that supports what they've written (or 
they can simply include their affiliate link for the program). 
AffiliateScreen.com gives them the additional credibility of 
their expertise appearing on a third-party site.  

Look at this from the reviewer's perspective. Here's a unique 
opportunity to gain an external link pointing to the reviewer's 
website, but this is far more valuable than a random reciprocal 
link. Search engines are determining link popularity by examining 
both the quantity and relevance of links. The page with their 
link is loaded with keywords related to the product or service, 
and the reviewer can include additional relevant keywords in 
their post. The reviewer actually has a hand in creating the page 
that will link to their site. This is extremely powerful! Can you 
begin to see how anyone looking to increase traffic to their site 
would jump at the opportunity to create content for your website? 
 
Now you may have some concerns that allowing anyone to add 
content and links to your site is inviting your competitors to 
steal your traffic. If your site has detailed reviews of products 
on your site, anyone who leaves your site to visit a competitor 
won't spend much time there before realizing that your site has 
useful, original content that they can't find anywhere else. If 
that doesn't put your mind at ease, though, there's nothing to 
stop you from including a disclaimer when someone submits a 
review. Explain in this disclaimer that direct references to your 
competitors will be removed to keep the reviews informative and 
to avoid marketing hype. You are the webmaster, after all.  

You can draw even more traffic by allowing visitors to rate the 
usefulness of each review. Many reviewers will encourage people 
to visit your site so they can read and rate the review. More 
important than just being a gimmick to increase traffic, rating 
reviews allows you to sort them by quality and expose your 
average visitors to the best possible content first.  

Promote it! 

Once you've got the code in place, it's important to publicize 
this new feature of your website. If you have experience or know 
someone with experience writing press releases, you may be able 
to garner attention from news and niche media. Another highly 
effective form of publicity is to mention the new feature above 
the fold on the main page of your site.  

If you have a newsletter, promote the review process in your 
next issue. In fact, as you begin to accumulate reviews, they 
can serve as great additional content for your newsletter. 
Simply include the best reviews in each issue. As with the 
reviews on your website, you are providing valuable content for 
your audience, giving your reviewer great exposure, and saving 
time for yourself. It's a win-win-win situation.

================================================================
Clay Mabbitt writes articles about online income opportunities. 
He is the founder of a community of Internet entrepreneurs 
sharing knowledge and experience at http://www.affiliatescreen.com 
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