One of the big things I work on with my sites is making content. It’s a lot of work but one of my favorite parts of running a website.

The only trouble is… not everything really does all that well.

That part should be obvious. I mean, we can’t expect every little thing any of us writes to be brilliant. It would be nice but for most of us it just doesn’t happen.

Some people are fans of writing something for their sites every day. That’s nice, but the problem is that it can encourage you to create clutter, rather than meaningful content.

Take a few minutes to think about what you’re writing. Is it good quality? Do you think the search engines will like it? How about your regular readers? And the people who find it through the search engines?

Writing just to get something written may mean that your site is constantly updated, but that’s not the end all, be all of website or blog ownership. Make sure that what you’re writing is meeting your goals too. Otherwise it’s just clutter.

You do know your goals, right?

Not everyone has the same goals for their sites. My main goal is to keep earning enough money that I can work at home, rather than having to work outside the home. Beyond that, I’d like to earn enough to let my husband work at home.

No mention of content there, you notice that?

That’s because creating good content is a part of those goals. If I’m not finding ways to bring people into my sites, I can’t make money. The quality of my content is what gives me a chance to earn from my sites.

Oh, and I also want to enjoy what I’m doing.

For others, blogging or owning a website is all about sharing their thoughts. Earning money is secondary. For still others, it’s money, money, money and they’ll promote anything and everything if there’s a chance it will earn something for them. And of course many are like me, wanting to earn a living by being helpful and providing useful information.

But There’s a Catch…

There’s one big catch to creating quality content. If you aren’t getting any traffic, it may as well be clutter. No one is reading it. No one is being helped by it. It’s not even helping you.

Well, unless you’re writing for the love of it or just for practice. But if you want to earn money, getting readers matters. A lot.

I’ll readily admit that I don’t enjoy marketing nearly as much as writing. I’d probably have a much more popular site if I were better about my marketing efforts. I’m working on it, and I figure I’ll get there eventually.

There are a lot of ways to market your site and even individual pages, and many really are in essence other kinds of content creation.

Social media sites, for example. Posting on Twitter and Facebook are certainly in part content creation even as they market your site.

Article marketing is also a form of content creation. You’re just doing it for other sites in the hopes of building links back to your own site, and maybe even some traffic. The same goes for guest posting on someone else’s blog.

Each of these types of marketing has advantages and disadvantages. Social media marketing is more social, and takes time. Too much time if you aren’t careful about how much you let yourself get into them. But it is often easier to get Twitter followers than it is to get email signups, and you can automate the posting of your blog posts to Twitter if you like. Be sure to think about how much personal interaction you want to give.

Article marketing takes the time you could be spending on creating content for your own site. You need to know that you’re doing it in a way that will build up your site. They shouldn’t all just link back to your home page, for example. You need to think about what the action is you would like for readers of your distributed articles to take.

These tools can be great for taking the clutter potential away from your site. Write something great? Tweet it! Share it on Facebook! Link to it in your article marketing efforts. Do what you can to make sure it gets out there. It may not work every time, but you have to keep trying.

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Disclosure: I often review or mention products for which I may receive compensation in the form of affiliate commissions. All opinions are my own.