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Just finished my first week at barablu.com and we’re all expecting that the results should be coming through soon.

Actually, it looks like the results are coming through sooner than we expected and in surprisingly good shape. Hopefully it’s not all a case of lies, damned lies and statistics.

There are a lot of things going on in the background at barablu right now which it would be wrong to discuss here at the present; however, my raison d’etre being content, I had to make some early moves to give the web site a taste of things to come and that seemed to be the Barablu Blog!

I didn’t start the blog, it’s been around since the beginning of the year but the postings have been sparse and sporadic. Indeed, the decision had been taken to remove the link to the blog because its age made it an embarrassment. This is a key factor in content; unless you are dealing with some sort of historical event, old copy is just plain bad. Even if you have no plans to add new stuff, you should give what you have the once-over now and again. One site I recently bumped into was talking about presidential visits which seemed fine until it became clear they were talking about Clinton. (And I know Mr Clinton is STILL President Clinton, this wasn’t talking about some book tour in support of the spousal Senator for New York’s electorial ambitions).

Anyway, every day since I arrived I’ve been regularly posting to the Barablu Blog about getting my old PDA to work with the software, the latest Nokia phone — the gorgeous N95 8GB and my quest for a new telephonic gadget and it looks like it is having some effect in the daily rankings. There is new movement in an upwards direction.

In fact, there’s been quite a bit of movement; more than might normally be expected.

Whether it will continue at quite such a breakneck pace is unlikely. The statistical nightmare is that the people who have taken me on may well expect the numbers to continue in leaps and bounds; that’s the danger of any statistical calculation based on a very small set of results.

Yet, all in all, it does show that even the smallest efforts can — and do — have some effect on SERPS and, if the first results from the blog are confirmed by continuous improvement, it also shows the power of content with the new search algorithms.

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If the findings of a new US report are true, then content editors are going to need to rethink their news values.

For it seems that while hardened journalists are insisting that the headlines should be concentrating on Iraq, the world financial crisis and the debate about immigration, what web users are REALLY interested in is Britney Spears, the rise of Nintendo and the release of the iPhone.

Tom Rosenstiel, who helped to write the report for the Project for Excellence in Journalism, told the BBC …

“Users gravitated towards more eclectic stories. There was a sense that users sifting through a lot of raw information; rumour, gossip, propaganda and the news were all throw into the mix.”

The study compared headline news in nearly 50 mainstream news sources, including TV, radio and online, to that of three user-driven news sites. Seventy per cent of stories selected by Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us came from blogs or non-news websites with only 5% of stories overlapping with the top 10 stories in the mainstream media.

The question is what does this really mean for content? Is all that journalistic training and experience for nought?

Firstly, Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us (and StumbleUpon and the rest) are favourite haunts of a tech generation, just the sort of people fascinated by the Wii or the iPhone or Britney so the comparison with sites like TIME.com is not a direct one.

Second, the people who use Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us et al are more likely looking for something light-hearted and off-beat. The Age of Citizen Journalism is here: there is plenty being said on blogs and news-you-can-use sites, and as election year dawns in the US the level of comment will only increase.

Actually, the researchers found traditional news outlets like TIME.com accounted for one in four stories on the user news sites and less than one in a 100 were actually original.

“That suggests that people are re-aggregating the news in the style of citizen editors rather than journalists,” Rosenstiel told BBC news. “These sites offer people a different take on the news but it doesn’t mean that traditional journalism has become irrelevant. They are forming more of secondary conversation about the news.”

So newsmen and women shouldn’t be reaching for their pink slips just yet. The new citizen journalist is more likely a citizen commentator, or just someone sharing their opinion over a few beers (but possibly without the beers).

For content professionals there is a silver lining. All this talk implies that there is an unquenchable thirst for something interesting on the web. All you have to do now is cater to that thirst!

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I discovered an interesting post on SEO Blog spidersecret.com the other day, although it dates back to July 24.

Headed “So what if you give most of it away?: The Bikini Concept“, it discusses the thorny question of free content in an original way.

Put simply, a bikini displays almost all the vital assets of a beautiful girl (or an even an ugly one) yet despite this giveaway concept, it remains more exciting than a less revealing one-piece exactly because of what it doesn’t show.

Lure on a G-String

It’s easy to apply this to content. Give almost nothing away and your reader is likely to become frustrated and drift off. But the more you give the deeper he or she is likely to go. Draw them in far enough and they are more likely to buy the bits they cannot see because they can see the quality that’s on offer.

However, there are differences too. Unlike the bikini, there is scope to hide more content than you reveal and still achieve the same results, as long as what is on show is of the highest standard. The issue is having enough quality content to show to all comers.

The Bikini in Action

Once again the message is to create as much quality content as possible: write often and write soon.

I’m often asked why I produce this site when all I’m doing is giving away content trade secrets for nothing! The reality is that all this site will practically achieve is to whet the appetite of people needing content answers. When they appreciate just how much I know about the subject, they are more likely to ask for a private opinion on how their website could be made better. The bikini effect in action.

And that’s just as well, because it’s probably the only time I’ll experience the bikini effect myself!

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So why beef up the content on your website? The logic goes that the more people you get to come to your website, the more business you get. Logical really …

It used to be said that success on a website was defined as a “conversion rate” of anything better than 1% — that is, for every 100 people coming to your website, one made a purchase.

Yet there is a potential problem. The more varied content one offers, the higher visitor numbers should rise and that is good. Conversely, the more varied the content one offers, the more varied one’s audience will be. In fact, much of your audience will consist of people who have no need for your prime service. By that logic, page views may go through the roof and sales double or treble, but the conversion rate will fall.

No matter. This is a case where it pays not to get caught up in the jargon. The key phrase is sales DOUBLING or TREBLING. There are some analogies with the retail idea of “pile it high and sell it cheap”, if you sell lots, you can afford a smaller profit margin, though that’s not the whole story. Getting many more people to come to your website will help to make your brand a household name. And as the business develops — and as markets develop too — the people that drift through the site today may be the customer of tomorrow looking for the product of the moment.

That’s why some content streams might not seem to be “target audience”. Your net needs to be spread further.

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