Content Farming
I sometimes assign my students to create a new topic page on Wikipedia in order to learn how it works from the inside. It is a bit difficult to find a topic that has no entry these days. So, I was surprised when I did a search on "content farming" and found no entry.
Firms that do content farming hire writers (perhaps experienced and professional - perhaps not) to create content for clients that is audience-driven. What are people searching for and NOT finding?
If you look at what is trending on sites like Twitter, Google or Yahoo, you can see what people are trying to find.
Jeff Jarvis has written and spoken a few times about the topic and sites like demandmedia.com which have made a business based on "listening to the customer" and giving them what they want. Their "manifesto" states:
Give the people what they want. It's not a new concept.
Content farming has some linkage (especially from its critics) to link farms. Those are a group of web sites that link to every other site in the group. I think that link farms are a form of spamming. Your mail isn't being spammed, but the index search engines is being spammed (AKA spamdexing or spamexing). At one time, they had to be created manually, but now they are created through automated programs and services, so it's much easier and therefore more profitable to create them. They were originally created by search engine optimizers back in 1999 because search engines relied on link popularity to figure out a kind of ranking order for search results. I'm no expert on this, so I don't know that linking is THE way to get to the top of search results these days, but it probably is still a factor.
In a way, Wikipedia does content farming. If something isn't there that you're looking for, you can suggest that it be created or create the first version yourself. The content there is what people want to find.
The people who write for these content farms are usually free-lancers who get paid by the article. Many of them write for different sites and try to create as much content as possible in order to put together an income.
I could see colleges using a bit of this business model in their own marketing. Actually, they already do. Many schools hire companies to find out what are the courses, certificates and degree programs that are in demand by their target audience.
So, consumer demand drives things. Give users what they want, where they want it. I could look at the search terms that lead people to this blog and be sure to write posts about what was missing.
The companies that produce a lot of new content every day, like Answers.com and Demand Media, are moving up the list of top U.S. web properties. What chance do I have against a site Demand Media that produces hndreds or thousands of new pieces of content a day? WikiAnswers http://wiki.answers.com is the Q&A site driven by user-generated content that drives most of answers.com's traffic.
Firms that do content farming hire writers (perhaps experienced and professional - perhaps not) to create content for clients that is audience-driven. What are people searching for and NOT finding?
If you look at what is trending on sites like Twitter, Google or Yahoo, you can see what people are trying to find.
Jeff Jarvis has written and spoken a few times about the topic and sites like demandmedia.com which have made a business based on "listening to the customer" and giving them what they want. Their "manifesto" states:
"We believe that consumers tell you exactly what they need – if you’ll just take the time to ask or listen. The Internet is the world’s greatest market research platform; so we immerse ourselves in the billions of signals of consumer demand that it provides each day. While more traditional media companies focus on supplying experiences they believe consumers might like, we’re unapologetically dedicated to delivering the ones they already demand. This core trait guides the content we create, the social applications we develop, and the communities that we nurture. It’s incredibly liberating to operate this way, knowing that everything we do satisfies the real world interests of 100 million consumers each month."
Give the people what they want. It's not a new concept.
Content farming has some linkage (especially from its critics) to link farms. Those are a group of web sites that link to every other site in the group. I think that link farms are a form of spamming. Your mail isn't being spammed, but the index search engines is being spammed (AKA spamdexing or spamexing). At one time, they had to be created manually, but now they are created through automated programs and services, so it's much easier and therefore more profitable to create them. They were originally created by search engine optimizers back in 1999 because search engines relied on link popularity to figure out a kind of ranking order for search results. I'm no expert on this, so I don't know that linking is THE way to get to the top of search results these days, but it probably is still a factor.
In a way, Wikipedia does content farming. If something isn't there that you're looking for, you can suggest that it be created or create the first version yourself. The content there is what people want to find.
The people who write for these content farms are usually free-lancers who get paid by the article. Many of them write for different sites and try to create as much content as possible in order to put together an income.
I could see colleges using a bit of this business model in their own marketing. Actually, they already do. Many schools hire companies to find out what are the courses, certificates and degree programs that are in demand by their target audience.
So, consumer demand drives things. Give users what they want, where they want it. I could look at the search terms that lead people to this blog and be sure to write posts about what was missing.
The companies that produce a lot of new content every day, like Answers.com and Demand Media, are moving up the list of top U.S. web properties. What chance do I have against a site Demand Media that produces hndreds or thousands of new pieces of content a day? WikiAnswers http://wiki.answers.com is the Q&A site driven by user-generated content that drives most of answers.com's traffic.
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